To honor the many women in the LGBT community who possess a fearless entrepreneurial spirit and keen business acumen in executing their ideas SheWired has launched a Women in Business series of interviews with female business owners from producers to restaurateurs to retail business owners.
To honor the many women in the LGBT community who possess a fearless entrepreneurial spirit and keen business acumen in executing their ideas SheWired has launched a Women in Business series of interviews with female business owners from producers to restaurateurs to retail business owners.
We kick off our series of interviews with producer, actor and production company founder Michelle C. Bonilla. An actor with a long list of credits on her IMDB page including an several-year stint on ER, a role as a Klingon in Star Trek: Enterprise and appearances on 24, Luck, NYPD Blue and many more, for Bonilla, it wasn’t enough to act. The industrious thespian built Soul Art Productions from the ground up and has since delved into just about every aspect of the filmmaking business including writing, directing and the ever-important money end of the business, producing.
A winner of the ALMA (American Latino Media Arts) Award for her performance in PBS's, Award Winning Foto-Novela Series, Seeing Through Walls, under Soul Art Productions Bonilla wrote, produced and starred in the critically lauded LGBT-themed short film Slip Away. She has since, with her business partner Matt Crabtree, launched MCBMC Productions, LLC.
Currently they are working on producing the web series Failing Upwards, “about unemployment and the hilarity of trying to find a job - Even if you have to lie to get one.”
Bonilla chatted with SheWired about the ups, downs, challenges and rewards of kick starting a business.
SheWired: What inspired you to launch your own business?
Michelle C. Bonilla: I was inspired to launch my own production company, Soul Arts Productions, with the sole purpose of creating my own content. As a Latina Woman, I felt that our stories were not represented enough, and I wanted to be able to tell our stories. I also wanted to launch Soul Arts Productions as a platform for film and told stories that moved and touched people in ways that are not typically discussed or talked about. My story was the best place to start from. I successfully was able to produce my award winning short film, Slip Away, which deals with two women who were involved with each other but were torn apart because of the others addiction to cocaine and alcohol.
After coming off of creating Slip Away, I knew that I wanted to keep creating content, but wanted the content to be lighter and have a faster pace.I also wanted to launch another company that dealt with television and the new media category. Thusly, MCBMC Productions, LLC, was born. I decided it would be a great idea to have a business partner and collaborator in my new venture and enjoy the creativity and talent of my very good friend, Matt Crabtree, who is also a fantastic actor, and thought it would be marvelous to have someone to bounce ideas off of and to help in the day to day in running a production company.
Matt and I decided we would love to cultivate our own series based on the odd jobs we have had to take as actors. However, we decided, as a team, we did not want our characters and series to be centered on “actors.” So, we made the characters normal, everyday people, with slight...okay, more than slight quirks and turned it into a comedy. That is how Failing Upwards, our new comedy webs series, was born.
What attracted you most to the business you’re in? Was it practicality, passion or a little of both?
As an actress, writer, producer, PASSION is what attracted me most to continuing to grow in my field. I believe you have to be passionate in the business of filmmaking and television because you would have to be out of your mind to willingly want to get into this business! However, I also have to be practical. There is a lot of rejection, heartache and growing pains. But, I do it because the pleasure and love I feel for creating – whether I am acting, writing, or producing, is so much greater than the pain of rejection -- when it is fully executed and done correctly. There is so much reward and beauty in creating something that makes people laugh, cry, think, or just moves them, in some way or another, that you continue to make content in the face of the obvious pitfalls that this business has.
How did you develop your business plan?
We decided to use the web platform because we would have control of our material and could create and produce it ourselves. We also loved how quickly we could reach our audience. And, because the internet is so fast, we would get quicker feedback from our fans and would be able to have a closer contact with them. Also, the web is a doable, tangible, quick way to distribute your own material. Of course, we pride ourselves on quality of content and how our series looks, so “Quick” is not a pseudonym for “sloppy and poorly produced” – the quality of what is being put out there on the web is increasing immensely, which is why it was the perfect platform for Matt, myself, and our new series, “Failing Upwards”.
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