Production Assistants

Here is how the work lines up. The New York PA ladder is its own body — a feeder system that draws from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Columbia film, the School of Visual Arts (SVA), Pratt Institute, the New School and the NYC Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) workshops and Made in NY production assistant training programmes, and runs up through the IATSE Local 161 set-PA local and Teamsters Local 817 transport coordination into the AD ladder, the office, the line producer's desk and ultimately into department-head careers.

Our NYC PAs come out of exactly that ladder. They have crewed on prestige NYC shows for HBO, Netflix, Apple TV+, Amazon, Disney+, Showtime and Paramount — Mrs. Maisel, Succession, Severance, Billions, Boardwalk Empire, Pose, The Good Wife, the Marvel and DC NYC features — and on the indie features and commercials that route through Steiner Studios, Silvercup, Kaufman Astoria, York Studios, JC Studios and the Manhattan stage rentals.

Set PAs handle lock-ups, crowd control on Manhattan street shoots, talent escort, walkie delivery and the daily call-sheet flow; office PAs run production communications, payroll filing, IATSE union paperwork and the SAG-AFTRA Local 1 talent-deal flow that lands on the line producer's desk; runners and drivers cover JFK, LaGuardia and Newark airport transfers, equipment pickups across the East Coast rental houses and the last-minute errands that the schedule cannot bear without help on every shooting day.

What makes the role work in NYC is real city fluency — knowing which intersections close cleanly under NYPD Movie & TV Unit permits. This MTA subway lines run express during the shoot window. This Manhattan parking lanes can actually be bagged through MOME and which side streets the basecamp truck can physically fit on.

Our PAs operate clear English with global crews and HODs while keeping every NYC vendor, MOME permit clerk, NYPD precinct desk, MTA Movie & TV Unit dispatcher, NYC Department of Health inspector, FDNY film safety officer, Landmarks Preservation Commission contact and community-board chair moving in real time, so the moments where a shoot day usually stalls — a missing prop from Stony Brook to set, a rerouted truck through the Holland Tunnel, a sudden venue restriction at a co-op address, a fire-code closure of a stairwell, a precinct shift change mid-scene — fix quickly and stay off the production report.

They know Steiner's 30 stages on 50 acres at the Brooklyn Navy Yard intimately, plus Silvercup, Kaufman Astoria, York Studios in the Bronx, JC Studios and Broadway Stages across the boroughs. We staff planned productions one to two weeks ahead and can usually fill last-minute positions within 24 to 48 hours, matching experience level to need against IATSE Local 161 and Teamsters Local 817 rules.