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 suddenly become a semi-movie star, your fan following on social media will dramatically increase, and your buddies will start seeing you in a new light.
To get to the point where 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. Various 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 haven’t heard the saying: “If a proposal looks too proper to be true, it probably is.”
IT’S JUST SO EASY TO CON
Without 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.
Style photographer Bijoy Raghavan explains the rip-off: “Shopkeepers or belongings sellers fake to be modeling dealers or photographers. They pick 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
These young human beings have little or no assistance in professional steering in their preliminary days. “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 paint 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 between ₹2,000 and ₹50,000. Genuine modeling agencies do not ask for any advance costs. They take a percentage 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 bogus auditions are held. A 25-year-old from Roorkee, Uttarakhand, on the condition of anonymity, stocks that 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. “About two hundred younger individuals auditioned for roles in serials, ramp shows, and TV commercials. The enterprise director promised he’d launch us alongside a big name from Bollywood.
I went to the audition. After that day, we never heard from those humans,” he says. Genuine auditions are not paid, explains Pranav Awasthi, director of Glitz Modelling. “If we all ask you to pay for auditions, remember 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 faux modeling agencies have mushroomed in India in recent 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, cautioning models to stay far from such sellers.
