Oct. 28th, 2004 01:12 pm
(no subject)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
muckefuckLast night, I turned to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
monshu and said, "After we take of this, I want to discuss with you some issues raised by last night's episode of Manhunt."
And I was serious.
Watching it was essentially the price of (a) being with him and (b) having the privilege of seeing my hometown team clobbered in another anticlimactic ball game. Tuesdays were all about QE4tSG until Bravo decided to play switcheroo and got the old man hooked. Having seen two episodes now, I have to admit that it's not at all bad for a reality show (which I fully realise is like saying "As infectious diseases go, you could really do a lot worse.") The challenges actually seem to make some sense, as evidenced by their ability to raise some issues about the relationship of art and commerce (even if they do so in less than a straightforward and honest fashion).
The centerpiece of Tuesday's show was a "genderbender" photoshoot. The models were turned over to a team of makeup artists who crafted extreme looks for them with glossy lipstick, festish leather and so forth, then to a photographer who posed them alternatively with bondage equipment and elevators. The lead makeup artist and the photographer then reviewed the final photographs, chatted with each man (including an embedded spy) in turn, and made a decision to eliminate two.
As we were watching the footage relating to Paulo--a bit of his makeover, comments from a makeup artist, testimony from the spy, etc.--we expected that they were setting us up for his elimination. He complained about not having had any say in the styling of his hair and pleaded with a makeup artist, who later criticised his uncooperativeness as something potential clients would not put up with, for some input into his makeover. The spy characterised him and another contestant, Maurice, as "too cool" and pointed to their aloofness as damaging to the "teamwork" necessary in the profession.monshu and I found ourselves agreeing. After all, how can you expect to find work if you think you can tell the people who hired you how to do their job?
But a comment from another participant began to nag at me. The professional photographer said to Maurice was "I felt I had to tell you what do all the time." Now, it's possible that the photographer was only talking about technique--that he objected to having to give precise instructions on how to assume certain poses, to position his head, to manipulated his facial expressions, etc.--but I doubt it. I think he may have been disappointed in Maurice's lack of ideas to make the shots more interesting.
So what exactly is the ideal role of a model? Are they props to be manipulated at the whim of the artists--is hiring one, in essence, not much different than borrowing a palm tree or renting out a zoo animal? Or are they artists in their own right working collaboratively with the makeup artists, photographers, and others to bring a designer's vision to life? The criticism of Maurice's passivity suggests the latter, but the criticism of Paulo's headstrongness suggests the former.
I also began to reevaluate the charges leveled against Paulo when I considered him not as a commodity, but as a proprietary brand whose chief promoter is himself. Ideally, in a talent-based business, you want to get beyond the point where someone hires you because you fit a generic profile, e.g. "Get me a light-skinned Hispanic male between 24 and 28", to where people hire you because they want to work with you. You want to avoid anything that might hurt the marketability of your "image", like extreme typecasting or association with failure.
The corporate bias of the show's producers (who hired these men because they didn't want the expense and combativeness of name actors) is obviously going to be against any individual who asserts that he has an image to protect and wants to control that. Several times, the professional models on camera dismissed one or another contestant as not having "what it takes to make it in this business". I wonder what qualities they were referring to. Is Paulo's aggressive defence of his own image going to make him poison to potential employers or is the only thing that will stop him from being unfairly exploited by them?
I ended up thinking about commercial artists likebitterlawngnome and urso and contemplating how they balance the demands of an employer not only with their own artistic impulses, but with the necessities of self-promotion. The client needs to present her firm or product in a certain way to attract business, whereas the artist--particularly, I would guess, if he is a freelancer--needs to build a portfolio that will help him to obtain fulfilling and/or renumerative work. Ideally, these two goals coincide, but probably not without a lot of negotiation. What qualities does one need to achieve that harmony?
monshu and said, "After we take of this, I want to discuss with you some issues raised by last night's episode of Manhunt."And I was serious.
Watching it was essentially the price of (a) being with him and (b) having the privilege of seeing my hometown team clobbered in another anticlimactic ball game. Tuesdays were all about QE4tSG until Bravo decided to play switcheroo and got the old man hooked. Having seen two episodes now, I have to admit that it's not at all bad for a reality show (which I fully realise is like saying "As infectious diseases go, you could really do a lot worse.") The challenges actually seem to make some sense, as evidenced by their ability to raise some issues about the relationship of art and commerce (even if they do so in less than a straightforward and honest fashion).
The centerpiece of Tuesday's show was a "genderbender" photoshoot. The models were turned over to a team of makeup artists who crafted extreme looks for them with glossy lipstick, festish leather and so forth, then to a photographer who posed them alternatively with bondage equipment and elevators. The lead makeup artist and the photographer then reviewed the final photographs, chatted with each man (including an embedded spy) in turn, and made a decision to eliminate two.
As we were watching the footage relating to Paulo--a bit of his makeover, comments from a makeup artist, testimony from the spy, etc.--we expected that they were setting us up for his elimination. He complained about not having had any say in the styling of his hair and pleaded with a makeup artist, who later criticised his uncooperativeness as something potential clients would not put up with, for some input into his makeover. The spy characterised him and another contestant, Maurice, as "too cool" and pointed to their aloofness as damaging to the "teamwork" necessary in the profession.
monshu and I found ourselves agreeing. After all, how can you expect to find work if you think you can tell the people who hired you how to do their job?But a comment from another participant began to nag at me. The professional photographer said to Maurice was "I felt I had to tell you what do all the time." Now, it's possible that the photographer was only talking about technique--that he objected to having to give precise instructions on how to assume certain poses, to position his head, to manipulated his facial expressions, etc.--but I doubt it. I think he may have been disappointed in Maurice's lack of ideas to make the shots more interesting.
So what exactly is the ideal role of a model? Are they props to be manipulated at the whim of the artists--is hiring one, in essence, not much different than borrowing a palm tree or renting out a zoo animal? Or are they artists in their own right working collaboratively with the makeup artists, photographers, and others to bring a designer's vision to life? The criticism of Maurice's passivity suggests the latter, but the criticism of Paulo's headstrongness suggests the former.
I also began to reevaluate the charges leveled against Paulo when I considered him not as a commodity, but as a proprietary brand whose chief promoter is himself. Ideally, in a talent-based business, you want to get beyond the point where someone hires you because you fit a generic profile, e.g. "Get me a light-skinned Hispanic male between 24 and 28", to where people hire you because they want to work with you. You want to avoid anything that might hurt the marketability of your "image", like extreme typecasting or association with failure.
The corporate bias of the show's producers (who hired these men because they didn't want the expense and combativeness of name actors) is obviously going to be against any individual who asserts that he has an image to protect and wants to control that. Several times, the professional models on camera dismissed one or another contestant as not having "what it takes to make it in this business". I wonder what qualities they were referring to. Is Paulo's aggressive defence of his own image going to make him poison to potential employers or is the only thing that will stop him from being unfairly exploited by them?
I ended up thinking about commercial artists like
bitterlawngnome and urso and contemplating how they balance the demands of an employer not only with their own artistic impulses, but with the necessities of self-promotion. The client needs to present her firm or product in a certain way to attract business, whereas the artist--particularly, I would guess, if he is a freelancer--needs to build a portfolio that will help him to obtain fulfilling and/or renumerative work. Ideally, these two goals coincide, but probably not without a lot of negotiation. What qualities does one need to achieve that harmony?![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
My goal is to make people look as much like themselves as possible, where an actor or pro model is often hired for their ability to look like someone they are not.
People who are well-connected with their bodies or emotions are generally better to work with, for me. You can give them a general direction, like, "three quarters profile" and they will move and react in a way that expresses something about who they are, without having to be told in excruciating detail. You may want to change the angle slightly or tell them to look up or down or something but basically every movement they make is expressive of who they are.
The worst people for me to work with are the ones who are severely dissociated from their bodies and emotions and semi-conciously work hard to *not* show who they are, while at the same time being too inhibited to pretend to be someone they are not. They come across as expressionless and boring no matter what. When he says "I had to tell him what to do all the time" I would imagine it's something like this - you can tell such people very exhaustively what you want them to do, to no useful effect.
no subject
The professionals on the show spoke a lot about the models' expressiveness when they were reviewing the photographs, but in a vague enough manner that I couldn't follow just what they were getting at. Your clearer comments help me to imagine what they were probably getting at. Part of acting "too cool" is suppressing a desire to reveal much personality or take any risks in self-presentation.