The lure of the glittering glamour international may be difficult to face up. A shot of your face splashed large than lifestyles on a billboard or an interesting function in a TV industry can novel-rashly flip around your life. You all of a sudden become a semi-movie star, your fan following on social media dramatically will increase, and your buddies start seeing you in a new light. To get to the point in which this may manifest, all you need is that one fortunate break — but when you have no clue how to get it, and yet the desperation doesn’t depart, be careful of your next step.
A variety of gullible modeling aspirants are falling into traps set by using easy-talking, social media-savvy racketeers. Their victims are commonly starry-eyed and unwell-informed, often from small towns and desperate to make it large. Most of them haven’t heard the saying: “If a proposal looks too proper to be true, it probably is.”
IT’S JUST SO EASY TO CON
In the absence of a regulatory body for modeling agencies, it’s easy for con artists to cheat the green hopefuls. Even when they’re fleeced, the aspiring models don’t approach law enforcement officials, fearing harassment and mocking. For them, expertise comes too overdue and at a substitute high rate.
Explaining the rip-off, style photographer Bijoy Raghavan says, “Shopkeepers or belongings sellers fake to be modeling dealers or photographers. They pick out up different human beings’ paintings and skip them off as their own. Abroad, you have regulatory bodies together with MAMA (Managers And Models Association). There’s no such body in India, which makes it smooth for racketeers to perform.”
“There’s no such issue as a registration price for modeling. Also, you do not require a model or artist card. This is a scam. There’s no approved body in India to trouble this type of card,” says Praveen Bhatt
In their preliminary days, these young human beings have little or no assistance in professional steering. “Racketeers entice them inside the call of getting them to work, take the money, and vanish. In many instances, the scammers actually close down their workplace and run away,” says Raghavan.
YOU DON’T NEED A CARD to paintings as a model!
One of the pink flags is the point out of a modeling card; any agent who talks approximately it is a fraudster. Fake organizations tell you to pay for a version/artist card. They additionally ask for registration/club fees that could be everywhere among ₹2,000 and ₹50,000. Genuine modeling agencies do not ask for any in advance costs. They take a percent of your charge once you get a few words.
Fashion photographer Praveen Bhatt says, “There’s no such component as a registration price for modeling. Also, you don’t require a model card. This is a rip-off. I can’t trust that people can fall for it. There may be no such factor as a version card because there is no approved frame in India to difficulty this card. Also, never pay money to a person who guarantees your figure. Nobody can guarantee work in this discipline.”
PAID AUDITIONS? REALLY?
The faux companies additionally ask models to pay for auditions. It’s now not simply the metros where such faux auditions are held. A 25-yr-old from Roorkee, Uttarakhand, at the condition of anonymity, stocks that a so-referred to as modeling co-ordinator approached him on Facebook, providing to get him a wreck. An audition becomes held in a cramped, rented hall in a rundown locality, for which the ‘co-ordinator’ charged ₹500 in keeping with the individual.
“No, you can make an artists’ federation similar to that. They’ll need to undergo the Federation of Western India Cine Employees. Artist playing cards made via a random frame can’t be legitimate,” says Gajendra Chauhan, actor, and former FTII chairman
“There had been about two hundred younger individuals who auditioned for roles in serials, ramp shows, and TV commercials. The director of the enterprise promised that he’d launch us alongside a big name from Bollywood. I went to the audition. After that day, we in no way heard from those humans,” he says.
Genuine auditions are in no way paid, explains Pranav Awasthi, director, Glitz Modelling. “If all of us asks you to pay for auditions, remember that they’re fake. Most of them are staged to create quick money via dishonesty,” he warns.
TALENT, NOT MONEY, MAKES YOU A MODEL
Bhatt says that faux modeling agencies have mushroomed in India in the past few years. “It’s tough to bust them as they perform thru social media. They take advantage of the truth that young people are now determined to grow to be successful in a single day,” says Bhatt. Every month, he comes across 10-15 cases of aspiring fashions being cheated by faux sellers. Bhatt recently uploaded a video on Facebook, caution models to stay far from such sellers.
