Teen Vogue has matured over the years, knowing today's teens are going to be tomorrow's "Sex and the City" and "Bold Type" career women. They're getting them ready through...careers and all the possibilities it has to offer.
The three-days summit starts with "Career Day." A field trip that takes you from CAA, Creative Artist Agency then to HBO.
When Team CAA & HBO arrived at CAA's headquarters, they serendipitously arrived in a middle of confidential yet typical long-distant conference call with a client.
A team of three agents hovering over a notebook, the main lead agent in the middle, directing the conference call. The Product Placement/Branding/Endorsement agent to the left. Then, a Movie Theatrical Agent flanking on the right. They fall under the new Digital Media Department, where social media and YouTubers are discovered, represented, then guided in their careers.
This under-wraps is the heart of an A-List talent agency. CAA is known for it's packaging, taking the talent, finding it's interests and likes and skills then aligning that talent with the right brands to advertise while, simultaneously breaking that talent beyond her or his comfort zone, by advising them to take acting classes to get acting roles in movies and films. This is the heart of CAA. By inviting Teen Vogue in on a typical conference call, CAA invited them into what makes CAA a pioneer that broke the model in talent agency then lead the pack.
These hot, luminaries of CAA talent agents also what to prove that the abusive stereotype of an Hollywood shark agent, aka "Ari Gold of Entourage" has been fired and there's a new league of Millennial talent agents of great ethnic and gender diversity has taken over, to better represent today's society.
This is why Teen Vogue was invited to hover a top secret conference call with a trio of agents, representing various departments; and the lead agent is a proud Howard University graduate.
In fact, that Howard University/Broadcast Journalism grad was shocked when her professor advised her to be a talent agent. Shocked, this CAA talent refused to have a stereotypical talent agent throw a chair at her. Facing she's gonna graduate from college soon, she went ahead and followed her professor's advice then landed in CAA's training program where she succeed to be CAA's hottest luminaries. She and her contemporary peers has kicked the abusive Ari Golds to the curb.
They want to prove that the real CAA is anti-Entourage, anti-Ari Gold. Today's current CAA millennial agents do not tolerate physical, verbal, and sexual abuse at CAA. Those will be thrown out like trash.
CAA's Movie Theatrical Agent is a military brat from a military family in a military town. You can't get more real than the military. You can't get more further from Hollywood than the military. But yes, he hated his college degree so he took his cousin's advice and entered the trainee program.
With his no-nonsense military background, Movie Theatrical Agent always tell a client that he takes on, you better take acting classes and make the effort to show up for auditions and call times. If you're half-ass backwards and not going all the way through it, it's a waste of his precious time and energy best spent somewhere. You need military tough love and discipline to be a movie and tv star at CAA.
There's a reason these hot CAA luminary agents are spending time and energy on this particular client.
This client, they were discussing with, have drive, ambition, out-goingness, funny, honesty, interests that she wants to pursue and had accomplished and achieved without failure. These CAA agents mentioned, that as soon as this client finished acting on a movie set, she still continued to shoot then edit her Vine and YouTube videos after filming then before returning to the movie set to act even more. Continuous acting, from movie set to her own social media videos.
Who is that CAA client? Liza Koshy. How did this started? Easy. Being CAA and having their finger on the pulse. The heads-up asked their emerging agents, look for then get ethnically ambiguous talent with a lot of drive and sparkle and they're unique. They got Liza Koshy.
Before any of these CAA agents take on a client. Yes, talent but that drive and ambition and interest(s) better come from the talent client with inside them. Because, agents pressuring then squeezing their clients into something that they're not, will break and fail. Ambition, drive, and interest must come from within the talent. Plus, they treat each and every client as an individual, going on their own path, making them unique while guiding them.
Think of CAA agents as elevated guidance counselors.
We'll discuss that battery spark Liza Koshy later on...
Let's focused on established talent, Zendaya....
After being invited to eavesdrop on a Liza Koshy conference about guiding her next career goals and potential projects coming up the pipeline, Teen Vogue field trip moved onto CAA's very own fashion department where they represent their fashion designers, called Licensing where talent, from talent department, are matched up with brands that best represent each other. This is also equity deals and joint ventures department where business development specialists consider a variety of opportunities for brands seeking to leverage celebrity and influencer partnerships that maximize acceleration with key target audiences.
During the fashion presentation, CAA revealed that they partnered Zendaya with Tommy Hilfilger for Hilfilger's Fall 2019 Tommy x Zendaya Collection, debut at Apollo Theater during NY Fashion Week. This is where they showcased top secret technical sketches and fabric swatches then talked about the embellishment differences between runway and commercial. Yes, those Licensing agents are lucky enough to get the actual runway clothes but they need to shortened because agents aren't six-foot tall models.
Zendaya's story continued, of course, to HBO, where she's one of the stars of it's hit, "Euphoria."
The Director of Programming, took time out of her busy schedule, to describe what a tv network Director of Programming does.
She listens to sale pitches, where wanna-be producers/screenwriters vocally try to sell them an idea for a tv show. If she accepts your sales pitch, you better have a script to give her.
Well, honestly, 99% of sales pitches she gets everyday are rejected because she's the tastemaker/gatekepper. Those are not right for HBO. Good for other networks, but not for HBO.
The 1% she does accepts, with scripts, doesn't mean they won the lottery. More revisions and more edits, called "polishes," with options, mean they rent the script as they work on it. If lucky, perhaps the network will shoot a pilot to test it out on the audience.
If the pilot works as a series, then the network buys it in order to turn it into a series. Once bought and approved as series, then casting and hiring then location scouting happens. This means the series is happening.
Director of Programming is also hunting for tv series materials. She's also buys or option/rents rights to books and existing tv series from international tv market that might be a right fit for HBO.
She's the one who bought the American rights to Israeli tv drama, "Euphoria." Once approved, Zendaya casted in the show.
See, how real Hollywood works. It's synergy in action. Where a star is multi-purpose.
Teen Vogue Summit continued to hit it out of the ball park with drive, from Issa Rae then from Busy Philipps...
Yes, Busy Philipps may be socially acceptable on her looks. Because of her looks, people warn her that she's expendable. So she focused on her work ethics, first to arrive, last to leave, whether she was a California Pizza Kitchen-she recommend the BBQ Chicken Pizza and Salad-to her starring in tv series.
Great Gerwig debut her take on "Little Women" as the cherry on top best saved for last at Saturday's Teen Vogue Summit.
Sunday's Teen Vogue Summit was the last day. So, everybody talked about slowing, sometimes saying "no," and doing mediation for mental health.
Yes, Camila Coelho admits she is blessed with opportunities but she advised to saying "no" when the brand endorsement is wrong for her.
Both Camila Coelho and Sophia Bush both talked about "me time." Whether it's no business talk after 7pm with her husband then they settle in for the night watching Netflix.
For Sophia Bush, other than using her Journalism college background in environmentalism, she tries to separate her public life from her private time with her mom, family, and friends.
Teen Vogue Summit takes you through the career gamut.
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