Shady Inquiries, TV Pilots & Reality Shows

Shady Inquiries: Real Jobs V.S. Unrewarding Unpaid Jobs

As a Make-up Artist, I receive all sorts of emails, phone calls and general inquiries for a wide range of jobs or "opportunities". Many of us are familiar with the spammed out emails of some one claiming to be a Nigerian Prince that will give you 1 million dollars if you cash a check or do some thing financially for him. By now, most of us realize that this is a scam and just pure spam. However, a lot of Make-up Artists still fail to understand or have problems decoding emails from real people that claim to have "opportunities" for them.

Through my experience in the industry and from dealing with all sorts of potential clientele - I have come to understand what emails are legit and what emails are a waste of time! This blog posting is not referring to a Bride's email/phone call - but rather- people claiming to be talent scouts, tv producers, tv people, photographers, tv shows, big companies and more.

There are many emails that some times will cause us to question whether it is "safe" to work with a person or not. In addition, many emails will leave you left with a number of questions about what the company or person is even asking you to do.

Real Job Offer Emails & Phone Calls will most of the following things:

• State the name of the person who is contacting you
• State the name of the company
• Specifically inform you of the details of the makeup services they are looking for
• Specifically explain the payment situation upfront
• Will include an office address, phone number, fax etc in the signature of the email
• Will have legitimate professional email addresses such as JohnSmith@bbbpromotions.com instead of sexxysuperman@gmail.com
• Will say where they got your information from
• Will use proper grammar v.s. slang and text language

Scams, Abusive Jobs, Unprofessional jobs, and Unrewarding jobs will do the following things:

• They some times will not give their full names
• They some times do not give the name of their company or give you multiple company names
• Their descriptions of the services needed will be extremely vague or unorganized
• Instead of offering a paying job they will use words like "this is an opportunity for you", "I have a great opportunity for you" - which will some times lead to them just trying to sell you their product or can lead to you doing work for free where things turn out to be way more involved or time consuming than what you signed up for.
• They don't clearly explain the payment situation even after you have asked several times
• They avoid answering questions about their business, location, specifics or where they got your information from
• They use a lot of improper grammar and slang in their emails
• They may be trying to sell you a product instead of offering you a job opportunity if they insist on setting up a meeting with you or get pushy on the phone. Some companies will even insist that you stay on the phone until they are done speaking about their product.
• An unrewarding job - may tell you that there's no budget for the work that you are doing and that "no one is getting paid" -- meanwhile they tell you to call their secretary at a very expensive rental location in tribeca (obviously they have enough money to have staff and a costly location - they can afford to pay the makeup artists some thing).
• Other individuals will try to tell you that their project is so important and will end up making everyone a lot of money (they rarely ever do, so don't hold your breath!)

The Inspiration For This Blog Entry:

 I was inspired to write this blog entry after receiving phone calls from several skincare and make-up companies that left me messages claiming to have "excellent opportunities" for me. After speaking with their representatives and asking them if this was regarding my services in any way - I realize that they were just being pushy and wanted to set up a meeting with me so that they could push their product on me. They were extremely vague about what the meeting would involve. I asked the woman to email me the website information and she claimed to not have access to a computer for the next couple of weeks (also weird).

FAKE T.V. PILOTS
Recently, I also received an email from some one claiming to be some sort of casting person for TV or some thing. He had said he was looking for me to do "free" work for multiple catalogs, print, calendars and more on several occasions in September. He said that he promised I would be on the TV show and would receive so much exposure and press from it.Then he said some thing in the email about how it was a TV pilot. So... what is it? -- a show or a pilot?

Theres a lot of people out there this year - that have been claiming to put people on TV shows, make people famous, and get makeup artists on reality shows. The truth is - that these are TV Pilots. Theres so many unprofessional people out there right now claiming to have TV shows. However, these are TV Pilots - any one with a camera and a bunch of free employees can pull this one off. These people make TV pilots and then try to sell the TV show to networks etc.

Unless some one says specifically who they are, what business they are, and what network the TV pilot is for then there is no guarantee that you will even be on TV. Also, some times - even if they say specifically what network the TV pilot is for - it doesn't always get picked up. I've personally worked on TV pilots with recognized celebrities and these shows never got bought by any network.

My general conclusion after working these sorts of jobs was that they were not worth my time.
So heads up - and watch out for all these people claiming to have TV Pilots or Opportunities for you!
Also, consider doing research on a company, photographer, individual etc before working with them.
(of course I am not talking about brides and everyday appointments).

Real Casting & TV Opportunities
I have also been on casting interviews for Makeover Shows for TLC. They were very professional and they were looking for a specific type of makeup artist for a new makeover show. They were very upfront with who they were, how they found me etc. Their casting director had me come to their office - which was an official TLC building. They ran through some things with me and then had me speak on camera. They never asked me to do any free work on multiple occasions and they were very straight forward.

If you are considering doing casting interviews, you shouldn't have to do "freebies" for some casting director- that doesn't even make sense to me. If the casting director is contacting you - the network will pay to have you do whatever work you are signing on for. In addition, if you do interview for a legitimate TV show or TV pilot and do not get chosen- remember - it's not the end of the world. Typically, networks are looking to cast a specific type of person for the job. Some times this specific person may be chosen based on their appearance, ethnicity or sexual orientation and it has nothing to do with your Make-up Artist skills!
Most interviews will never involve you picking up a make-up brush at all.

My boyfriend worked on several reality shows including Top Model. He told me that the casting directors will usually pick people for shows if they feel that they will create conflict or add some thing weird to the mix. He explained to me that they will rarely pick a person for a reality show based on talent or because they are good at their job. There are a few make-up artists on reality shows now that I would bet - were chosen for the conflict/weird element instead of actual talent.