the hair that beat me

it started out like any other job. i received the call sheet, which provided me the following answers to my questions of how many people are we talking here? what all will we need to do?

24 models.
4 makeup artists (to do makeup and hair).
two assistants.
one makeup artist doing just body makeup.
one photographer shooting for PR things, one shooting for web. plus some models will be in a green room.

i received a call from the booker for the job. i asked if i needed to bring anything special and was told no. i asked what this was for and he told me "PR photos...billboards and the website...things like that".

i arrived with minutes to spare...we were told to make them look pretty and fresh, and that we were to have just twenty minutes to get each person ready and to work FAST.

fine. we got to work. i completed looks on three models and was working on my fourth when all hell broke loose.

"they need to look just like they looked yesterday" (yesterday? what the hell were they doing yesterday?)
"they need to be really stylized, edgy, and modern" (the complete opposite of the 'pretty and fresh' we just spent the last hour perfecting....and i HATE the term 'edgy')

one of the artists asked:
"do you have photos to show us of what they did yesterday?"

"no! just ask the models what they had! we don't have forty five minutes to find you pictures!" snapped some fat ass queen with a little dog.

(of course, i consulted with the eighteen year old girl from wisconsin who was sitting in my chair about her look, and she replied to me, "i dunno....i guess my eyes looked kind of black....")

great.

once we convinced the producers that we needed photos, they downloaded some to a laptop--candid shots from the day before, some from far away, some of people just hanging out....not the best of scenarios from which to replicate a hairstyle or makeup look.

and those with the most extensive, tricked-out, and, dare i say?, complicated styles seemed to gravitate towards me (or maybe it just felt that way).

i decided to be up for the challenge. after all, i can do "photoshoot hair": a million pins in the back and tons of spray. it needed to look good enough that they could work it from the front to almost profile.

the first girl who had sat in my chair (whom i had just spent twenty minutes curling into a fresh, tousled 'do) required a very sleek twist up into a mohawk with the ends sprayed out onto her forehead. i did my best. i determined that it was not my best work, but passable.

another girl slunk over towards me and....what was this?? oh no.

it seemed that yesterday her hair was styled with rats, these spongy things that one can put into one's hair to create the illusion of...well...more hair:


it seemed that yesterday, the hairstylist had pinned these rats all along the nape of her neck, and rolled the ends of her hair over them. this created a modern bettie page-ish look. she also had rolled bangs like this:


needless to say, these types of styles are not exactly my forte (and that's putting it mildly). i did the best i could. i pinned some rollers i had thrown into my bag underneath and brushed her hair over top of them to create the rolled illusion...i figured (though i never like to rely on retouching photos), that they would retouch the hell out of these and they only had to stay in as long as it took her to shoot the photo.

i went onto the set. my heart stopped, as i realized that by "green room", they didn't mean the typical "green room" (as in, waiting area....like on david letterman, when they refer to their guests as "waiting in the green room"). they meant, instead, "green screen".....which is a very different concept. a green screen is the backdrop to a video shoot, wherein the subject will do their thing, and later a background will be superimposed in, like this:



i was in some serious trouble. my "photoshoot hair", with it's hundreds of pins in the back, was not going to cut it. this model needed to be prepared to twist and turn, to strut and twirl, in front of that green screen.

so i started again. i removed my temporary "rat rollers". i curled. i pinned under. i thought it looked great.

i was asked to change it. they wanted it to look "exactly like yesterday....more 'fashion'" (which is a not-so-nice way of saying, "this looks cheesy and not as hip as when the other person did it"). i went back to the rollers. another artist helped me, but it still looked like crap. of course, everyone gathered around and had to throw in their three cents:

"it's too short"
"it's not even on the sides"
"it was fuller on top yesterday"
"the bangs are lopsided"

finally, it was passed along to yet another artist, who made it look perfect in about five seconds.

live and learn.

and that evening, my first in over a week where i could relax and not set my alarm, i marched post-haste to huckleberry bar, where i downed three harvey wallbangers and was consoled by a good friend.