OCshowbiz was founded, and is funded, by a small group of Orange County residents who are passionate about all manner of entertainment arts and providing encouragement for the people who make it happen, in front of the public and behind-the-scenes.

We serve Orange County, Long Beach and other areas living in the shadow of L.A. We have an enormous pool of talent that is often drawn to LA, NY, Chicago and a few other cities because they don’t have an effective way to communicate with like-minded people in their own backyard. OCshowbiz is committed to changing that.

Orange County, in its own right, should be one of the four major markets to make movies, create theatrical touring companies and provide more learning opportunities for behind the scenes technicians, writers and talent of all disciplines.

The Founders

Art Kirsch is a Brooklyn native who has made his home in Orange County for 17 years and is a lifelong arts enthusiast. Early in his career, he programmed business machines and quickly moved into sales, pioneered the application of computer graphics for business. For the past twenty years he has held a variety of management positions including VP Sales and Marketing, VP Engineering, Chief Financial Officer and President, mostly in the computer graphics printer controller industry. Recent assignments have taken him to England, Australia, Japan, Atlanta, and San Francisco. Art served as an elected school board member for nine years in Merrick N.Y. prior to his relocation to Southern California in 1987 and served in the U.S. Marine Corps. Art earned a BBA in Accounting and Finance from Pace University, New York City and has served on the boards of a number of non-profit organizations.

Art founded Day Job Productions, a volunteer filmmaking group that currently has about 100 members. Art also founded the Entertainment Arts Consortium that has proposed to build a 'teaching studio' in collaboration with the South Orange County Community College District at the former Marine helicopter base in Tustin. He also sits on two Orange County Department of Education committees, the Music and Arts Administrators Committee and Orange County Animation Project. He is also a founder of Front Row Center Live that plans to offer live concerts via the Internet.

Michael Kirsch is an Orange County based filmmaker. Mike's credits appear, or will soon appear, on more than a half-dozen movies including the Academy Award nominated documentary Dolphins (MacGillivray-Freeman). He also shot special effects segments for a Marc Forster directed thriller Stay with Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts. Part of that shoot included climbing to the top of the Brooklyn Bridge which he now adds to assignments that have taken him to the top of the Sydney Harbor Bridge and to the crow's nest of a re-creation of the USS Bounty, under full sail. He was also on assignment in Ethiopia with a crew shooting a documentary about the Nile River. Mike also does a variety of commercial and TV work. Other assignments have taken him to locations in Belgium, Australia, Tahiti, Fiji, Germany, and throughout the U.S. Mike is a graduate of Chapman University, BFA Fine Arts, Film and Television. Graduating Magna Cum Laude, his senior film project was awarded first place as Student Film of the Year.

Mike also does steadicam work for ESPN's Auto Show segments, cinematography for Flying Cam, a remote helicopter film and video company, is director of video services for The Buddy Group, a leading edge web development company where he specializes in interactive video segments. Mike has also directed a PSA for the national Juvenile Diabetes Foundation and variety of commercials.