We were lucky to catch up with Felicia and Keith Allen recently and have shared our conversation below.

Felicia and Keith, appreciate you joining us today. Can you tell us about an important lesson you learned while working at a prior job?

Both Keith and I (Felicia) have a background in theatre, which is how we met. We both had been doing theatre for about 15 yrs in NYC. We moved to LA and started to pursue acting for film, I also ended up getting a job working at a toy company, initially as an actor making internal toy videos, over time, that turned into learning how to produce videos. Then Covid happened. We decided to move to Albuquerque because that’s where my family is from. At the time, looking for acting jobs was proving to be difficult. So we said, let’s take my producing and and our acting skills and let’s just make our own stuff! After going at it for about 4 years now, we really see how our acting skills have helped up direct other actors in the content we make!

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

My husband and I started Sopapilla Productions out of necessity! As actors, we noticed the opportunities here in Albuquerque were usually for smaller roles if any at all. We decided to take action and start making our own content and casting ourselves as the leads. Realistically, who would have cast us as hosts of a food show with absolutely no food show hosting experience? We would and we did. After receiving the Virtual Visionaries grant from the City of Albuquerque; a grant used to promote local businesses here in Albuquerque, ‘Enchanted Foods of ABQ’ was our debut as food show hosts and allowed us to highlight 18 different restaurants. After that, our vision was clear, we wanted to use our platform and abilities to add value to the city of Albuquerque. With minimal behind the camera experience, we decided to bust out our computers, go on YouTube and learn as much as possible about lights, camera, sound, production, and now find ourselves well-versed in all aspects production. Years of trial and error have lead us to receiving the Creative Bravos ‘Emerging Bravos Award’ which is an award given to one local Albuquerque business every year! We were also tapped by the city to be Executive Producers for Comcast Channel 26: Albuquerque’s Local and Original Channel under the Albuquerque Community Media Public Access umbrella. Within 1 year, we partnered with local filmmakers, comedians, poets, artists, and more to bring Channel 26 to the Hometown Media Awards, the national award ceremony for public access channels, and were awarded ‘Best Overall Excellence in Public Access Award’. With the ethos of community first in mind, we plan on continuing our mission uplifting local businesses and people all across the Duke City for years to come!

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

When we first started our film production business, we had an iPhone only. But we knew we had a good vision and good work ethic. We started filming small videos for social media for the City of Albuquerque and every cent we made, we put back into the business. This led us to buying more and more production equipment. As we got more proficient in filming, we started offering our services for free to local businesses, making them commercials, social media content and some internal videos. I believe this helped our reputation a lot! Even after growing, we still offer some services for free. When we started asking ourselves “How can we help our community” our business grew exponentially!

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I think one main thing we had to “unlearn” is the saying “I don’t know how to do that”. It’s so easy to not do something because you “don’t know how”. So instead we started to ask ourselves “How CAN I do that?”. There are so many resources online to learn from and so many books to read on different subjects that you can learn just about anything! Also, another big thing for us is to remember we are still always learning.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sopapillaproductions.com
• Instagram: @sopapillaproduction. @Abqchannel26
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sopapillaproductions
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjmLHQ57UP8Tw_gwmcA5WQQ