We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Richie Hidalgo a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Richie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

I worked on a horror movie last year called “I THOUGHT I HEARD SOMETHING”. it was a project that I was very excited about when I had come up with the idea 3 years ago. I started writing the script in 2021 and I had it finalized in 2023. I had a short window of time to get everyone cast as well as find a crew that would be available on the dates we set up, but it worked out for everyone when the time came around. We finished filming in 3 days and I finished post production in 2 months. We submit it to several festivals and even though we got rejected at several places, our film won Best Horror Film at Austin After Dark in Austin Texas. It was a shocking turn of events I never would have expected, and I was beyond thankful for my crew and cast to help me out through the whole process. This was my most meaningful project that I’ve done recently, because I’m a filmmaker that loves and is known for comedy. People didn’t expect me to do something like horror, and I wanted to show people that I don’t just have one avenue, I can do multiple genres if I want to. I had a lot of fun doing this project, and now I want to keep doing horror

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

So I’m an actor/filmmaker/writer/and producer that works in the DFW area. I have an unofficial film company called Nonavos, that’s a youtube channel where I post all of my work that I do. I’ve been making films and sketches since 2019 with my best friend , Daniel Aaron Bryant, who is the co creator of Nonavos. What started as a friendship where we only wanted to do dumb sketch comedy blossomed into something truly beautiful where we started thinking outside of the box in terms of what we could do to improve our brand. When we first started out, we got a lot of criticism from people saying that our content wasn’t good, we didn’t know what we were doing, and all we could do was just keep trying things to help us find our IDENTITY. I want to say that the thing that separates us from the rest is our perseverance. Any time I’ve been faced with failure, or we hit the ground, I want to get back up and run even faster. Simply for the fact that I failed, it fuels me and motivates me to try to be better. In 2021, we released a short film titled “The Last Comedy”. It’s my first official short film that I say that I worked on that I’m truly proud of. We submitted to festivals all over Texas, and we got into about 60% of the ones we submitted to. I won Best Director at the Texas Longhorn Film Festival in San Antonio, probably one of my favorite moments of 2022 to say the least. I never expected to win an award like that so early. after seeing people’s reactions and how much they loved the film and how so many people came up to us and asked us what we were working on next, me and Aaron realized that we were finally on the right track.

How did you build your audience on social media?

When it comes to promoting your work, I’ve learned that it’s all about patience and timing. When we released our horror film, there were several boxes we wanted to check before we released it. We wanted it out in October, a month of promotion, and two trailers before the drop. We had done Behind the scenes footage, as well as people from the crew talking about the experience and how excited they were. Behind the scenes footage and bloopers is SOOO important, with it, you give your team personality, it’s just as important as your film. Sure the film is great, but what are you like before you say action and after you say cut?

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

The Last Holiday was a film that we made last year that looks simple to the eye, but not a lot of people know that we had a lot of issues that happened before it came out. First of all, we had all gotten covid while we were shooting, so we had to push back the shoot. What went from a couple weeks, literally turned into a year. An actress had dyed her hair, another actress had cut hers. I had to make an executive decision to reshoot everything. It was extremely stressful, especially cause it was a holiday film and I had to make sure it came out around New Years. The thing that was the most reassuring thing, was that the cast was down to do anything. Everybody worked with the new schedule, and we were all happy with the results in the end

Contact Info:

• Website: https://youtube.com/@nonavos9188?feature=shared
• Instagram: Richiehidalgo_

Image Credits
Photo 1 (left to right) : Isaiah Navarro, Richie Hidalgo , Andre Pernell Williams, Theo Alexander Photo 3 (left to right) : Alex Johnson, Richie Hidalgo, Emily Halverson Photo 4 (left to right) : Daniel Aaron Bryant, Sean Sicard, Richie Hidalgo, Mikel Fair