From this past Thursday thru Saturday over 60 of the industry’s top entertainers and executives converged on the 2014 Merge Summit that was originally created by Dr. Holly Carter and the infamous Hollywood Casting Director Robi Reed as it lead more than 20 dynamic classes and workshops.
The workshops on branding, music, television, radio, film and new media, provided many attendees with the opportunity to interface, learn from, and partner with some the industry’s best. (If you are not familiar, The Merge Summit features interactive panel discussions, workshops, and keynote presentations, all led by leading entertainers and executives from television, film, music and new media).
There were many highlights of the weekend, but ONE of the key panels that stood out to us was the Black-ish panel that was attended by the cast of the new ABC show (Anthony Anderson, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Laurence Fishburne), and the show’s creator/Executive Producer Kenya Barris and Executive Producer Larry Wilmore.
The panel was hosted by Shawn Robinson who is- as we all know-one of the anchors/correspondents of Access Hollywood. As the panel moderator, Robinson was excellent as she was able to invoke some interesting questions about what issues the cast and writers had behind the scenes as the show was being created.
If you are not familiar, the show is a single-camera comedy that centers on a middle-class African-American family as they deal with their children- and other issues- because of their stature.
Anyway, the highlight of panel had to be Anthony Anderson who was always witty and comedic comments and remarks and who happened to always know what to say even when there were some awkward moments (especially when Fishburn blurted out a certain word to the audience as Anderson reminded him quickly that the audience was Christian based, which he replied the exact same response. Needless to say, the audience loved it.)
Anderson was definitely the highlight of the weekend for us, but there were many amazing panels that we will touch base on with some other reviews and interviews that will be posted shortly!
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