You may have read the article I posted back in March on Using The Internet To Find A Job. Back when I wrote it I had only stumbled on Facebook's Production Notices page *that day*, and had no IDEA what a masterful networking and job finding site it was. As a fan, jobs magically appear in my live news feed-- I don't even have to do anything to look for them. It's like if Craigslist actually had Craig come to your house every morning with a list of the jobs in your local area. This is an amazing resource for anyone in the industry, from unpaid interns to producers, composers, painters, actors, editors, sound mixers, and more. I wondered, who on earth has the time and dedication to do all this? 
CRC: You guys run an amazing Facebook page that alerts people to industry jobs. I don't even have to exert effort to go on Craigslist or Mandy, the PN jobs are just posted right to my Live Feed. While a fantastic resource for people like myself, it can't possibly pay your bills. What else do you guys do?
First of all Thank you!
Sonia: I'm a freelance Producer myself. I was working out of Miami and between shows when PN was born, but now I am working for an L.A. based production company for a new show currently filming in Phoenix AZ for WEtv.
FUN FACT: Originally from Miami, Florida, Sonia has been working in non-scripted TV since 2002, starting from an internship at Late Show with David Letterman to years at MTV in both New York and L.A.
Micah: Right now since Sonia, (let's call her Eve, the Mother of PN,) is working full time, I am the man behind the scenes for the moment at PN. I like to think of myself as the Wizard of Oz, or PN, pulling the cords and puffing the smoke with a microphone that has grown beyond our expectations. Once PN took off, and Sonia started her job, I focus my full time attention on PN (with a scene study class snuck in here or there). We knew PN would not be what it is now without care around the clock, and the appreciation and love we were getting at first was all we needed to get by. Once I realized that the landlord wouldn't accept PN love as rent, it was time to make a hard decision. So we decided to leave it to the people, the people who post with us and the people who look for jobs through us, we had a Fundraiser. Out of our 30,000 PNer's, 250 found it in them to donate, which got us through the first month. We realize that we can't do a week long fundraiser every month, so we find other ways to make money to keep this running.
CRC: How did you come up with the idea for the Production Notices page?
Sonia: I always see people on my Facebook page posting jobs in production - looking for people within their network, and when I have a job to offer, my Facebook page is the first place I got to for recommendations. But sometimes it just seems to be limiting - so I thought - someone should make a Facebook page where people in production posts insider jobs - a 6 degrees of separation type of thing - I turned to Micah and told him that - and he said WHY DON'T YOU MAKE ONE? And right at that moment, history was made.
Micah: What she said. But the funny thing was, we thought this would be used a couple times a week by at the most a thousand or so people. Two weeks in we hit 10,000 and had a full fledged business. And it grew organically, first we posted all the jobs on the main page until it was getting too much. So we started breaking it down by major cities and states, and now have over 30 pages. Of these 2 others that we requested by our fans, a separate Unpaid page, and an Internship page as well as 2 Casting Pages, one for Reality and one for Actors. We built this city on rock and roll.
FUN FACT: Micah was born in New York and grew up in South Florida. Always prone to being creative, he played in many local bands, such as TV Kills Kids ("go figure", says Micah,) with Robi Valyi, and he's hosted everything from concerts to Open Mics.
CRC: I counted 34 related PN pages for cities and countries around the world. Do you maintain them all? How much time does it take during the day to run the site?
Sonia: It takes all day really - it is a full time job. When I wasn't working, Micah and I would sit all day on our laptops either in our apartment or at a cafe that has wifi and work on PN all day long. But now that I am on a show, Micah runs it - I help out here and there but he really is the mastermind behind it all - for now that is ;)
Micah: I've posted jobs at 2AM before.. it doesn't matter the time, when jobs come in, they get posted.. unless I'm sleeping that is!! My apologies to the East coast, sometimes I sleep in!!FUN FACT: While not PNing, Micah started attending a scene study class in L.A. Look out world!
CRC: Let's say someone who just graduated film school wants to move somewhere they can get a job on a film, but they don't like the idea of moving to a huge metropolis like New York or LA. What other cities get the most PN posts?
Sonia: LOUISIANA!
Micah: What she said!!
FUN FACT: Sonia and Micah met on a show she was producing in Miami for WEtv called "I Want to Save Your Life"-- he was one of the participants.
CRC: You have 21,847 people who 'like' you on Facebook, myself included, as of this moment. I bet you get some weird emails. What is the strangest thing people think you can help them with?
Sonia: Micah? We get a lot of people who send us their resumes thinking that we are the people hiring but other than that nothing too crazy - oh yea we get hate mail sometimes haha.
Micah: Yeah, nothing too bad. Just some people seem to have this misconception that we are the all seeing and all knowing PN. Now, while that goes flawlessly with my whole Wizard of Oz comparison, we do have our limits on what we can do. I think most people get it.
FUN FACT: In 2009 Micah had a run as Vinnie Black in Miami's "Tony and Tina's Wedding", which actually seems like a ton of fun.God, I love these people. And guess what? They love each other too! HUZZAH!
Sonia: We started dating right after ["I Want to Save Your Life"] wrapped, moved in together after 2 months and were engaged after 4 months! We moved to Los Angeles together in March (right when we started PN). We are planning to get married later this year and live happily ever after together.
Micah: I would have never actually done the play if I never met the amazing Sonia. Kinda awesome that I met her on a show called "I Want to Save Your Life" cause she changed mine!!
Production Notices can be found here:
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Love Sonia & Micah <3
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ReplyDeleteIt would be cool if you could give credit to the photogs for the pictures.
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