entertainment – Penn & Beyond

Untitled Entertainment

This is the next in a series of posts by recipients of the 2018 Career Services Summer Funding Grant. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they’ve been spending their summer. You can read the entire series here.

This entry is by Derek Cano, COL ’19

Coming to a university like Penn has been one of the best experiences of my life. They have provided me, a first generation low-income student, the means to afford and attend a world class institution. Once again, Penn has gone above and beyond to offer me professional opportunities that truly have truly made a difference in my career development. This summer I had the incredible opportunity to intern for Untitled Entertainment in Beverly Hills. Untitled is an entertainment management company most known for managing clients like Madonna, Naomi Campbell, Emma Watson, and Uma Thurman.

My daily tasks at Untitled ranged from a variety of responsibilities. Since it was a medium sized office, I was able to take on a bunch of tasks. As all internships go, I cleaned the kitchen, sent out mail, delivered packages, and printed materials. However, specific to this internship I had the opportunity to get experience working reception (usually a starting place for many in entertainment), reading scripts, printing casting materials, writing coverage for managers and assistants, and covering desks for assistants. Each of these tasks that I would get to perform gave me a comprehensive understanding of what kind of everyday procedures go into being a manager in entertainment. This entertainment as whole helped me realize that I definitely want to get into entertainment management rather than agent work.

The entertainment industry as whole is quite complex and massive. Before coming to Untitled I had very little experience or knowledge of what negotiations, deals, and discussions go into large projects like movies or television series. This internship helped me a get a solid grasp on what film, television, and Broadway management are like from the perspective of talent representation. That is, those whose career’s are to represent actors and actresses.

One of the first big distinctions I learned this summer was the difference between a talent agent and a talent manager. At first this distinction was passed on me, I once thought they were the same but I soon learned that agents are meant to find and book roles for talent. Every actor or actress typically has an agent whose purpose is to find them roles in Television or Films. However, the manager is quite different. Of course they are involved in booking their clients with roles, but their purpose is to create careers for their clients. That is, they are tasked with managing the overall career of the performer. The manager tends to be a good friend to their clients, having multiple discussions throughout the weeks about a variety of topics from new roles to ordinary things like vacations. One time this summer, a manager at Untitled was discussing vacation plans with her client (Uma Thurman) and asked her assistant (who I was shadowing at the time) where Montenegro was? Silly right. Well they didn’t know, but luckily I did so I was able to get on the phone and speak to Uma Thurman about Montenegro. Therefore, as you see through this anecdote the role of the manager is much more personal with the clients than that of the agent.

Untitled Entertainment

This entry is by Derek Cano, COL ’19

Dispatches from the 2018 Austin Film Festival Writer’s Conference

J. Michael DeAngelis, Digital Resources Manager

The past two years, it has been my privilege to attend the Austin Film Festival & Writer’s Conference. It is a unique event, featuring a festival of films and shorts that are screenwriter driven and a conference on careers in writing for film, television, theater and podcasting. As a writer myself, I find the conference to be both invaluable and energizing. I can’t thank my colleagues at Career Services enough for supporting my travel to the conference and it’s my pleasure to report back to our students and alumni on what I learned this year.

Here are some of the highlights and takeaways from this year’s conference.

There are more jobs than ever in television, but it’s harder than ever to make a living at it. That was the main topic of discussion during a live taping of the Script Notes podcast. Fast Company ran an article earlier this month called “The Death of the Hollywood Middle Class“, which goes into detail about how the proliferation of streaming services which offer typically shorter seasons than broadcast networks, effects the living of writers, who are paid per episode. As the way in which television content is produced and delivered changes, unions like the WGA are having to try and stay ahead of the curve. I highly encourage everyone interested in writing for television to both read the full article and listen to the Script Notes episode as well.

Podcasts are more popular than ever, but it’s still “the wild west”. As the host of our very own CS Radio podcast, I was particularly interested in attending the podcasting seminars. While CS Radio is a non-fiction, informative show, there’s an entire culture of audio dramas gaining popularity via podcasting. Shows like Bubble, Girl in Space, The Black Tapes and Wolf 359 exist in an exciting intersection of classic radio dramas and DIY garage band grunge. Due to the relatively low cost of producing a podcast, along with direct consumer support from platforms like Patreon, writers are finding a way to get noticed by telling stories they’re passionate about and recording them as podcasts.

There’s no one path to a career in entertainment. I had the great pleasure of getting hear the legendary producer/director Roger Corman talk at the conference. He spoke about how he had gone to college for engineering, despite always wanting a career in the movie business. Struggling to find work in entertainment, Corman got a job as a civil engineer. After just four days on the job, he walked into the HR department and said “This has all been a terrible mistake!” He did land a job at Fox as a script reader and then went to graduate school at Oxford where he studied literature before returning to the studio. Corman noted that his engineering degree helped him quickly learn the technical side of filmmaking, while his literature studies helped him understand what made a good story and how to give a movie a solid structure.

I’ll be talking more about what I learned on next week’s CS Radio.

Concept to Completion

This is the next in a series of posts by recipients of the Career Services Summer Funding Grant. We’ve asked funding recipients to reflect on their summer experiences and talk about the industries in which they’ve been spending their summer. You can read the entire series here.

This entry is by Ajani Wilhelm, WH ’19, recipient of the Rich Ross Summer Funding Award in Entertainment

This summer I had the opportunity to intern at ESM Productions, a production company based in center city Philadelphia. ESM Productions is a ‘concept-to-completion’ business, meaning they work with clients from their most abstract ideas to develop a production for them. In addition to tasks like that, ESM also co-produces many events and works within teams to assist in other productions.

As an intern, I screened all the phone calls that came into the office, directing clients and vendors alike. During meetings, I kept the meeting minutes and listened to important strategy formulation plans. Us interns also acted as office managers, maintaining the conference room, running errands, and keeping inventory of our equipment and supplies. Aside from traditional office duties, I also got hands on experience with multiple production-related projects. Event production requires a lot of flexibility, so many of my projects tested various areas of expertise. My largest project, however, did not involve an actual production. My task was to create a presentation pitching the company to potential clients, as ESM secures many of their jobs through bids. My presentation detailed the history, mission, and objectives of ESM while also showing off several of their most distinguished clients. In the production business, past clients are very useful tools when choosing producers. ESM, having produced events for everyone from Jay-Z to President Obama, takes great pride in their reputation as a top-tier production company.

I had the opportunity to work on multiple productions this summer with ESM. I prepared schedules and created a directory along with the team for the Drexel Convocation, I assisted the camera crew in planning for the meadows festival, and I created production directories for the cities of Milan and San Francisco. These were the most significant projects of mine, but there were many to choose from. So much of what I learned about the production business is best taught through experience. I only experienced a summer with ESM, and I can tell that there is still a lot for me to learn. This was a great way for me to get my foot in the door and see what production really looks like, behind the stage doors.

Things that I will truly cherish from this summer are the relationships I have made with other people. The connections I secured with interns, staff, senior staff, contractors, and alumni have been instrumental in the success of this summer. Only through candid speech and personal experience can you really see the impact stressful jobs such as this create. The people I interacted with also helped me get an idea for what company culture looks like in businesses that aren’t as formal as those on wall street. I thoroughly enjoyed being able to come to work in shorts or a polo as opposed to a full suit.

Overall, I enjoyed interning at ESM productions very much. Their relaxed atmosphere, valuable business acumen, and star-studded list of clients are just parts of what makes ESM a premier production company. Being able to develop relationships here at ESM should help me pursue my career in this direction, possibly with ESM’s partner company RocNation.

Variety

This entry is by Danielle Moore, COL ’18

When I arrived at the West Los Angeles offices of Variety – whose iconic red sign is clearly visible from the perpetually traffic-jammed highway below – I was excited but unsure of what to expect. Ushered up to the 9th floor of the Penske Media Corporation, the parent company of Variety owned by Penn alum Jay Penske, I was giddy to find on the lobby coffee table the full portfolio of the company’s bespoke print publications – including not only the weekly print edition of Variety, but also fashion industry mainstays like Women’s Wear Daily and Beauty, Inc. So you can imagine my glee when, later that morning, my boss led me to a rack of Variety issues and told me to “feel free” to take copies whenever I pleased.

The magazines, though, were far from the only perk of the job – and also far from the coolest part of the offices. The fifth floor boasts a turquoise mural painted by famed L.A. street artist Banksy, featuring – quite appropriately – a slew of legendary movie quotes. Framed black-and-white photographs of stars featured in Variety dot the entirety of the 9-story office building. I certainly couldn’t complain about my seat on the top floor of the building, next to the editors of movie news site Deadline, and across from a portrait of Kate Winslet and a candid of Samuel L. Jackson and Quentin Tarantino. Celebrities in the office though, were not merely in photo form; Tom Hiddleston and Seth Rogen were among the stars who visited the office to promote projects while I was there!

My very first weekend on the job, I was given the opportunity to cover EditFest LA, the American Cinema Editor’s annual conference, held on the Walt Disney Studios Lot – whose backstage location alone provided this lifetime Disney devotee an unprecedented thrill. An even bigger thrill was being introduced to Kevin Tent, the editor of the acclaimed films of director Alexander Payne, including Nebraska and The Descendants. Additionally, since I interned during the height of Emmy campaign season, I also had the opportunity to cover an event for FX’s American Crime Story: The People Vs. OJ Simpson, featuring Lead Actress nominee Sarah Paulson, former prosecutor Marcia Clark, and Executive Producer Ryan Murphy.

In addition to gaining experience in industry event coverage, I was also tasked with contributing to the marketing campaigns for one of Variety’s recently acquired and re-branded properties, Variety 411. I drafted eblasts for subscribers, wrote advertising copy, researched film festival partnerships, and commandeered several social media channels. I particularly appreciated the opportunity to complete these diverse tasks, as they allowed me to participate in nearly all essential facets of a digital and print entertainment media publisher in today’s market. I am incredibly grateful for this experience, as it not only afforded me the opportunity to contribute to a cornerstone company in entertainment, but also cemented my interest in working in media that focuses on the creative and systematic creation of art in the entertainment industry.