Where do I begin... Well, for starters, this so-called "agency" is basically a rickety, poorly put-together operation designed to put on the appearance that their over-priced, unneccessary modeling school actually gets their graduates modeling jobs. The jobs offered to their grads. And to recruited models typically pay minimum-yes, MINIMUM! Wage if anything at all, and then they brainwash its victims into thinking that the reason they are being paid so little is because they are not well-established in the modeling community, or are somehow not up to snuff.
I was contacted by MTM/John Casablancas (same thing) over the phone. I am not even sure how they got my # and name, as I hadn't modeled in years, but just note-THEY contacted ME. So I was excited, yet leary. They set up an appointment "orientation", and so I went... And...
There were many people there, some of which were, um, not immediately identifiable as model material, to be polite. We were each instructed to walk down a catwalk in the center of a bare-bones white room. The place looked like a clinic-cold and bare and white... Fluorescent lighting, clippings out of magazines of supermodels. The receptionist was snooty and rude.
We were each asked questions and graded based on appearance, potential, etc. If you got an A, or even a B, you were accepted and asked to sign a contract. If not, you were not accepted of course, and Kay the agent doing the hiring said she would tell you why. I was thrilled that I received an A. And all the sudden I was signing a contract!
I had few current pics, but I did have 2 semi-professional shots, and Kay said that though I needed to do a photoshoot to get a portfolio together, the 2 picas were good, and that she wanted to see more of that in the photoshoot. I paid $50 for the shoot, which was o.K., but she required that i shell out $119.95 for an online portfolio subscription, plus an additional $19.95 a mo. Which would be debited from my account automatically. She said that this online portfolio website (Supermodel.com) would assure more jobs for me and made things run smoother.
In short, I was signed on w/MTM for 2 mos. And only received one minimum-wage job which lasted for 2 days, and didn't even offset what I had paid MTM. The job wasn't even a modeling job-just a stupid, promotional recruitment job, where i basically tried to get the phone #'s of kids, so that John Casablancas could try to get them signed up to take the aforementioned rip-off modeling classes!
Kay kept saying, "I have work for you-I'm just busy!" and, "I'm signing you up for this such-and-such mannequin modeling"! Which, BTW, was min.-wage. And none of the jobs listed on the audition sheets paid enough to offset the hassle of standing in the line of like 150 other models. If I wanted to make min. Wage or $75 friggin' bucks, I'd go work for McDonald's! At least that job wouldn't be so sporadic that it's nonexistent!
When I finally confronted that moron Kay over the phone about NO WORK in 2 months of employment w/them, she gave me this crap about how it was just because I signed up close to the Holidays, blahblahblah. I told her i wanted to unsubscribe form Supermodel.com. She got irate and said that my pics i brought in originally were horrible and that they were garbage and that that was the reason it was taking so long to get work
Sorry for the looong report, but i am pissed and i wanted to get this off my chest. Ladies, it doesn't matter how pretty u are or whatever. Even if you have potential, this place is a waste of time, and they are as incompetent as the day is long. Go to a real agency-that's what i'm doing. Shame on MTM.
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