Bobbi Brown Makeup Manual: For Everyone from Beginner to Pro (36 page)

BOOKING WORK

Once your promotional tools are completed and your portfolio looks great, you need a plan.
Determine what your career goals are. Do you want to work in retail, with private clients, or for commercial clients in print or in film and television?
You might end up with a combination of work, but maintaining a focus is important. It will determine whether you spend more time developing your book or your reel. In either case, you will need to identify a group of potential clients and contact them. Follow these guidelines:

SHOW YOUR WORK
Develop a mailing list, and send out your portfolio and/or résumé. Sending promotional cards and your résumé is a quick way to remind possible employers of your work.

FOLLOW UP
Call within a week of leaving or mailing your materials.

THANK POTENTIAL CLIENTS
by sending a card thanking them for their time and advice. Ask them if there are any available opportunities.

Fashion stylists or editors are often the key to being hired on a high profile shoot. The bigger the stylist, the better the artist has to be.

Commit your goals to paper. Learn as much as you can about photographers who work in the industry, as they often decide which stylists to hire. To get print work, start bringing your portfolio to magazine editors, photographers, and other potential employers. The only way to do this is to have an appointment, so be prepared to spend lots of time on the phone. You can look on the mastheads of magazines to find the fashion and beauty editors and art directors to call. Find out the drop-off days specified by the agencies. These are the specific days and times set up for portfolio reviews. A publication called
The Black Book
lists everyone in the print world and is an invaluable resource for contact information (see Resource Guide).

Don’t be afraid to explore several avenues of employment at once. Saturate the market with your card, sending it to not only magazine editors, photographers, and agents but also to local stores and salons. Contact department stores about doing fashion shows or other promotional events. Volunteer to do the makeup for fund-raising fashion shows or productions at local theaters. To help break into the more prestigious and higher paying areas of makeup artistry, do whatever you can to meet the top players in the field. Call or send a friendly personal note along with your promotional card. It will help if you keep up to date on the industry—read all the fashion and entertainment magazines to keep track of the top photographers, models, designers, and makeup artists. Know who does which advertising campaigns, study photographers’ and makeup artists’ styles, and be able to recognize their work.

Remember that in the fashion industry—like any other business—people hire people. So always be nice, smile, and say thank you. Potential clients will remember you for it next time, when you come back with more experience and more photographs in your portfolio. Also, when you’re just starting out, don’t think too much about what you’ll get out of a makeup job. Take all the jobs you can, because you never know what you might learn or what contacts you might make.

It’s also worth noting that when you are getting started and looking for freelance work, there are going to be dry spells. It’s important to be frugal with your money, to learn how to budget when you do get paying freelance work, and to have another source of income to fall back on (waiting tables, working retail, dog walking, etc.). And when you do have downtime between assignments, use it constructively—make calls, send out your résumé and promotional card, and do more test shoots to build your portfolio.

MANAGING YOUR BUSINESS

It is never too early to begin to develop a business plan and system. On a computer, in a planner, or directly in your current scrapbook, create a simple log of all your contacts and work completed. The log should include the date, name, company (when relevant), contact number, topic, result, and follow-up. Print your digital photographs from shoots, labeled with the date and persons involved, to include in the scrapbook or log. Networking is such a huge part of being a freelance makeup artist that it is important to keep a detailed record of all your contacts and previous work.

You will need to negotiate the terms and fees for each job, prepare confirmations to make sure that the terms and conditions are met, generate invoices, keep accurate financial records, and collect all payments. Terms might include payments for travel and per diems, materials costs, and assistant rates. You need to know the scope of the project before these terms can be set. Ask questions and take notes, only making your decision when you have all the information you need. Then send confirmation, also called a deal memo. It is a document that includes the job description, day rate, overtime rate, the flat dollar amount if overtime is not included, length of project in days, the number of assistants and pay rate, a materials budget, and for stylists, clauses regarding reimbursement for clothing damage. Create job folders for each job, with copies of receipts, any advance checks, signed vouchers, and invoices. Prepare a professional invoice form, and send it to the client at the end of the shoot. Send a credit sheet, indicating the job you worked on and how you want your credit to read, to the appropriate person. Templates of business forms used in the industry can be found at makeuphairandstyling.com.

Remember that many expenses are tax deductible. Keep a categorized record of automobile, travel, and entertainment expenses, plus records of money spent on office supplies and office equipment. Record the purpose of the expense on each receipt, and file it by category, with a copy in the job folder.

Maintaining and updating your portfolio and résumé is essential. Stay current. Know what is going on in entertainment, fashion, and beauty. Look at magazines, fashion shows, and music videos. Always dress appropriately, be prepared and on time, be decisive and efficient. If you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all. Networking is a major part of the job, so make contacts, listen with interest, be positive, make phone calls, send thank-you cards, and keep your promises.

AGENCIES

Agencies provide a wide range of services, including finding work for their talent, doing promotional work, negotiating and collecting fees, and offering career management. In exchange for those services, the artist pays the agency 20 percent of his or her fee.

When starting out as a freelance makeup artist, you will undoubtedly experience frustration. You need a good portfolio to get an agent, but without an agent, it may be hard to get the jobs you need to produce a good book. Having agency representation does help you secure the best assignments. Begin with research. Take the time to learn something about different agencies. What is their philosophy? What type of work do they do? How many artists do they represent? Who are these artists? Why is a certain one the right agency for you? Interview several agencies that seem to be a good match. Ask what you can expect from them. How do they promote their talent? Bring a résumé that lists all the photographers, editors, art directors, stylists, models, etc., who have worked with you. Include all your work done for magazines, catalogs, ads, or videos. Don’t be discouraged if the agency doesn’t sign you on the spot. It pays to be persistent; after making the initial contact with an agency, keep in touch. Follow up by sending additional tear sheets from new assignments, and try to make another appointment a few months later. It’s also helpful to ask for constructive criticism. Find out what the agent likes or doesn’t like about your book or promotional card, and take the advice to heart.

One of the best ways to get a foot in the door at an agency is to be willing to work as an assistant to one of the agency’s makeup artists. Before you call, know which artists the agency represents, what projects they might be working on, and which ones you are most interested in and/or most qualified to assist on. The need for extra assistants often arises at the last minute, and whoever is available and interested may get the job.

RATES

Rates vary depending on experience and location. Rates paid in New York and Los Angeles are generally higher than rates in other places. Research the going daily and hourly rates in your area, and always charge competitively.

Chapter 10

ESSENTIAL EQUIPMENT for the PROFESSIONAL

DEVELOPING & STOCKING the PROFESSIONAL MAKEUP KIT

A good makeup kit contains all the products and tools you need to do your work.
The appearance and organization of your kit are a big part of the first impression you make when you show up for a job. No one wants to work with a makeup artist whose kit is dirty and disorganized.

One of the best ways to carry your supplies is in a small rolling suitcase. (A shoulder bag or backpack will be too heavy and not good for your back.) Organize all your equipment and supplies in containers. Zip-top plastic bags, palettes, vitamin boxes, brush rolls, small makeup bags, and dop kits are all excellent tools for keeping everything in its place. To make it easy to find what you need, label each container clearly so you know what’s inside without having to open it. A helpful trick is to transfer makeup into smaller containers to save space. Create a complete foundation palette by taking slices off your stick foundations. Pour liquids into smaller jars. Create a palette of multiple corrector and concealer shades. Arrange slices of lipsticks as well as balm in a lip palette. The more organized your kit is, the more efficient you’ll be as a makeup artist.

After each job, take the time to put everything back in its place. Clean any tools you used, sharpen pencils, spray cream products with alcohol, wipe off powder shadows, and replace products as needed. That way, your kit will always be ready to go, and you won’t have to scramble when you get a call to do a job at the last minute.

You never know what you will encounter when arriving on a job, so it makes sense to have all your supplies with you. Since that means toting around hundreds of products, it pays to organize them in categories. A checklist for everything you need to complete a professional kit follows.

THE ESSENTIAL KIT
(at right)

These are the basic supplies that you should always have with you.

Skincare

Foundation palette

Lip and cheek palette

Eye shadows

Full brush kit

Lip liners

Lip glosses

Bronzer

Gel eyeliner

Mascara

Eyelash curler