How do you survive during the downtime?

Ok, so you worked your six weeks on feature film or your six months on a seasonal tv series, and now you're wrapped for maybe three or four months, perhaps even longer during off-season time. So What do you do? How do you pay the backlog of bills? Replenish your kit?

Keep freelancing. There will always be weddings, parties, graduations, date nights, boudoir shoots, maternity shoots, e-sessions etc

If you're desperate for supplies try finding samples. (For example, I have 14 samples of Lancome Genefique serum in my kit and they were free at a cosmetics counter) You can also order all kinds of samples/disposables online for less than $2.

Yeah, I suppose that's one way. But the wedding market is already being done by by MUA's who do that side of the industry FT, y'know, the Specializers. Then there is the agency route, but a payday for one gig is 90 days from billing, and the "event" gigs are only near the end of the school year.

The freelance corporate, catalogue or commercial editorial gigs are once every one to 3 months, and those paydays are 30 - 45 days later.

I've seen some MUA's in the industry turn to sales, (retail, own-brand, and MLM - Avon, Mary Kay, Senegence, etc), and some turn to teaching.

No... The answer I am looking for, is the S.O. that already has a regular 9-5 job outside of the industry that supports his/her MUA S.O. during the off season or downtime.

Originally Posted by vogueboy /img/forum/go_quote.gif

Yeah, I suppose that's one way. But the wedding market is already being done by by MUA's who do that side of the industry FT, y'know, the Specializers. Then there is the agency route, but a payday for one gig is 90 days from billing, and the "event" gigs are only near the end of the school year.

The freelance corporate, catalogue or commercial editorial gigs are once every one to 3 months, and those paydays are 30 - 45 days later.

I've seen some MUA's in the industry turn to sales, (retail, own-brand, and MLM - Avon, Mary Kay, Senegence, etc), and some turn to teaching.

No... The answer I am looking for, is the S.O. that already has a regular 9-5 job outside of the industry that supports his/her MUA S.O. during the off season or downtime.

Click to expand...

True. Being a real full-time artist doesn't always out food on the table. 

I've tried Mary Kay and AVON, and with the amount of time and effort you have to out into it, I don't know how anyone makes than $100 a month on that. My grocery bills are $100 per week!

During the down time I try my best to revamp my advertising, update my website, do a bit of time for print as well as network with other fellow makeup artists. 

Yeah, a bunch of features recently wrapped here in Toronto, so a bunch of us are "networking" Which means we are telling each other campfire set stories and we all know there is no work until the new year. There are too many of us to work on Robocop right now and a couple of MUA's got temporary teaching gigs...

This past Friday, I got a desprate text message conversation from a fellow free-lancer. (We worked together in retail back in 2000 and she has just got into doing make-up for a national sports tv network, and due to the up-coming holidays, the network is cutting back on support staff.) At anyrate she's wondering what her options are as a free-lancer and of course networking.

Unfortunately, she's finding out like the rest of us that it's difficult finding work during slow periods like during the winter holiday season and that sometimes we don't work for two months straight.

That's the one thing I encounter when retailers are trying to break into the free-lance market... They find out rather quickly it's unstable, thus most don't last long as free-lancers.

After 8 years in the business, I've figured out a thing or two about downtime. Living in Las Vegas, we don't have much in the way of production gigs and we certainly aren't a fashion mecca (besides shopping) that gives you print or editorial work. There's just enough production work to keep a few artists busy and the rest of us have to cater to private clients and commercial gigs like conventions. It really, truly comes down to planning ahead and thinking a year or more in advance. If you know your committing to a six week gig and won't be marketing yourself, trying to get retail clients (weddings, etc) then you better just get honest about it and live on a budget that will hold you over for at least three months till the next gig comes along. It's really difficult to do both retail and production work at the same time because retail tends to book far in advance and requires much more marketing, but is usually smaller (albeit higher paying) gigs. Production has a tendency to be quite a bit shorter notice in comparison, so if your in it for that side of the business you definitely don't want to book up your retail calendar and turn down the next feature film opportunity. 

Bottom Line: figure out which side of the business you truly are in it for and come up with a plan that supports that choice. That may mean getting super anal about your budget, but it may also mean shifting around what's most important to you. 

** When I say retail, I'm talking about when an individual, not a company, procures your services. The money is generally higher per hour, but the gig smaller in quantity. Think about shopping at Target vs. Costco.

I agree budgeting ahead for the lean times is critical for a free-lancer or even a union MUA. When I host guests, they are surprised and amused, and mildly confounded by my food selection. Everything comes in a can or dried goods in air-tight packaging. I like to call it my bunker food because it has to last at least 2 years, and I know already I won't have steady work for 3 months in any given year. I buy fresh when I know my pay periods 2 months in advance and I have minimal bills to pay. At any rate, each free-lancer has their own method of budgeting that suits them based on their lifestyle. I am sure another free-lancer will have a better way of budgeting my situation than what I've just laid out.

Originally Posted by vogueboy /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I agree budgeting ahead for the lean times is critical for a free-lancer or even a union MUA.

When I host guests, they are surprised and amused, and mildly confounded by my food selection. Everything comes in a can or dried goods in air-tight packaging.

I like to call it my bunker food because it has to last at least 2 years, and I know already I won't have steady work for 3 months in any given year. I buy fresh when I know my pay periods 2 months in advance and I have minimal bills to pay.

At any rate, each free-lancer has their own method of budgeting that suits them based on their lifestyle. I am sure another free-lancer will have a better way of budgeting my situation than what I've just laid out.

Click to expand...

You know you've been FB'ed too much when you look for the like button after a post /emoticons/[email protected] 2x" width="20" height="20" />

I've been in the film industry for 10 years although not with makeup but with set decoration.  I have thought about attempting to migrate over to the makeup department as that's been where my interests have been lately, but oddly it's a department I understand so little about as I'm either totally behind the scenes off set or flying around on set nonstop trying to do a hundred different tasks by myself that I seldom get the opportunity to be social.  Although makeup seems more interesting to me, continuing to be in this line of work doesn't really solve the ultimate problems I have with the industry as a long-term final career which are the long hours, generally awkward schedules, and the feast or famine issue that comes with freelancing which you are describing.

I've thought about trying to break free by picking up another job part time or something just to start pushing myself in a different direction, but it does make you unavailable for work when it does pop up because as we all know, when film work arrives, it arrives very swiftly.  I at least know that living where I am now that there has been an abundance of projects even if some departments and jobs are more saturated than others.  I do remember there being plenty of times in past years when work would be lean for everyone as you are describing which at least adds to the camaraderie but also contributes to an underlying competition.

I'm interested in what you had to say about side jobs in particular because I somehow assumed it would be easy to pick up freelancing work doing weddings or events or other such makeup-related odd jobs in your downtime, but the way you describe the "specializers" gives me pause.  I never really thought about it that way, but I could see how that could be intimidating.  Any job that you aren't able to spend your full time promoting and have gaping holes in your schedule is going to suffer.  Not to mention it's nearly impossible to plan more than a few days ahead of time in case something pops up.

I just save money like crazy in preparation for down time which is easy to do as you're often too busy working to spend money and your meals and gas and whatnot are taken care of.  I've managed to make that work for quite some time although it's not always easy to show restraint.

Side note, don't they offer some sort of rental for your kit or something?  I'm not sure how that works in your department, but we get kit rentals that cover the items we use as well as an expendables budget to buy items we are using explicitly for the show.

Yeah we get a kit rental, it's usually small. I am guessing you're a Member of Art? being in film for 10 years. You could make Make-up your 2nd and go from there. It's a union loop-hole that some Members take advantage of. For example I know of a craft girl who is a member, she graduated make-up school 2 yrs ago and she made Make-up her 2nd and since she's already a Member, she can take priority calls despite her lack of skills and experience. She didn't even have to take the Trade test. However, like you've already stated, it's going to be the same "crew-job description" if you move over to the Beauty Division... weird schedules, feast / famine etc. At least the option is there for you since you do seem very interested in it. I say keep your options open in both departments. If a Craft person can do it...