Oh the technology exists and always has. The point was that systemic racism in the industry created a long standing lack of professional ability to use it properly. Systemic prejudice. So film schools had to go out of their way to provided the training and information that professional working experience couldn’t, because studios and networks certainly weren’t on the ball about getting more non-whites involved. It seems to have faded a lot in terms of how pervasive it was. Improvements in inclusion, better tech, and professionals making a point to not make those mistakes.
Was this for me? I think you mis- understand. Its usually pretty easy to not make this mistake. Change a shirt, pick a different camera/film. Light it properly. And the issue is not in any way shape or form actual skin tone. It isn’t that the camera doesn’t have a “black people” setting. So there would not be any point to adding that sort of stuff to the cameras, or having “ethnic” cards to set exposure too (exposure is set in gray scale, you usually work with mid-gray, 50% white 50% black by saturation). Its entirely about a given recording medias ability to pick up light/dark contrast, its latitude in working with particular levels of light, ability to pick up color etc. And how you work with and around that to create the look you want. There are cards for different contrast levels (basically different shades of grey), equations for figuring out what spread of light to dark your shit can handle, rules of thumb, even cards for white balance with different shades to skew things “warm” or “cold”. All of that helps you hit the sweet spot of the look you want. And helps you avoid over or under exposing (or skewing the colors on) the most important things in the shot.
The entire issue was that a general lack of non-whites in all aspects of the media industry created a situation where few people working professionally knew, or thought to apply these properly to non-whites. And it was in no way deliberate, you were doing things properly the way they’ve always worked in the past. You just didn’t specifically account for one element that you never even considered might be an issue. You’re on a tight schedule so you go with the techniques and rules of thumb that always worked really well in the past. Its just in the past all those techniques were developed working on white people, so they tended to not work well for certain black people in certain circumstances. Cause really 90% of the time it would work fine on everyone. Only with certain limitations in what you were shooting on, it wasn’t something that came up every time, which is why it sort of lingered in the background for a long time. And the issue is increasingly not an issue. Professionals realized what was going on and compensated, there are more POC in high level media, and the tech got a lot better. So I seldom hear about it anymore. Except with certain really specific things, like make-up. Still hear that all the time.
Even when we were being taught this it was only likely to be an issue with certain kinds of video and broadcast cameras. Or certain film stocks with pretty limited capabilities. Or with very specific lighting conditions. We were shooting on B&W 16mm reversal at the time. That stuff has issues, looks cool, but issues.
Eh, it’s not like we come in as many colours as birds of paradise — that’s what the clothes are for. Humans basically come in variations of browny pink or pinky brown all in one small, dull area of the colour gamut, within a few degrees of hue of peach.
I don’t know much about the theory of make-up, but it seems to me that at this high level it’s not so much about colour so much as knowing what to do with a face to make it look as hyper-human as the physiognomy and body type. Saying you don’t have the right make-up for this or that skin-type sounds like a poor excuse for ignorance and lack of skill. And, yeah, they need to be called out on it.
What seems strange to me is that, if black skin is so atypical in modeling, the organizer types who are summoning the models and the makeup people for a given event wouldn’t tell the makeup people about what they will need to be prepared to do.
It’s totally understandable that somebody whose job involves a large number of expensive and specialized tools would only bring their favorite and most versatile man-portable selection to a given site; but that’s only the optimal response if you just have to guess what the job will involve.
If somebody tells you ahead of time, you can pack the right gear, simple. Is there some aspect of the modelling business that makes this impractical?
Nod. The Pantone model isn’t great except for mixing pigments; I find the HSL model more useful for analysing colour. If you look up those Pantones in software that will convert to other models (…Photoshop, I’m talking about Photoshop) you’ll see that all those tones cover about 15–20° of the full colour circle.
Well, we don’t really have any context other than her brief instagram post. She said she shouldn’t have to bring her own makeup, she’s not saying she has to do her own makeup.
As I mentioned, we have no context here. She’s calling out the makeup artists as those are the people that she is directly interacting with, but we have no idea if the makeup artists are indeed being told ahead of time or not. In fact, she specifically only says “often time [sic] you know what to expect” as opposed to “you knew I was going to be working this show, so you should have been prepared.” I have absolutely no problem believing that show organizers, who are organizing a million different things at once, wouldn’t even think to mention it to the makeup artists. Since it’s not like a makeup artist is going to admit to an organizer that they were unprepared, and it’s highly unlikely that a model is going to have access to the organizer to complain about it at event time, the organizer is going to be far too busy. Of course, it doesn’t really matter WHOSE fault it is - it’s the inherent racism in the industry that results in this in the first place. Everybody needs to get their shit together and fix it.
Yeah, what’s the worst that could happen to those make-up artists if they don’t have any dark foundation handy? It’s not like Naomi Campbell is suddenly going to turn up in the line-up and tear their soul out through their eyeballs and eat it for not having the right make-up to hand. Oh wait…
I have no doubt that ignorance and apathy toward non-white photographic situations contribute to the challenge, there isn’t much incentive to improve if you don’t think about the problem or don’t think that it is a problem; but there are technical issues at work.
Dynamic range is something that photographers can never seem to get enough of; and at any given level of available technology, you’ll pay more to get more of it. Also in the ‘never-enough-and-it’ll-cost-you’ is sensitivity; both the ability to collect enough photons on very short exposures and the ability to do long exposures without drowning in noise.
No matter how carefully and respectfully you approach the problem, people are deemed ‘black’ because they absorb more light, which is trickier than the alternative. We have the technology now such that we should be able to get adequate results for basically any human(if not necessarily under the most demanding photographic conditions); but lower reflectivity doesn’t help.
If that’s how it works, why not have a profile of all the models you’ll be working with so you know what to buy in advance, then give the products you used to the model at the end of the day?
My guess is they don’t usually know who they are making up in advance, but in this case, the model is well known and could probably command a little special attention, especially given that her skin color is not common in the industry.
I have to say I have no idea how much additional make up is needed. If day 1 you are working on 3 Swedish blondes and day 2 you are working on one Swedish blonde, One South Sudanese model and on Chinese model are you going to need to bring 300% more make-up and brushes? If you do one Irish redhead and one Italian brunette do they need completely different sets? share 50% of the needs? Other?
If as mentioned above many of the products only get used once is the overhead to deal with eventualities in sealed containers (with presumably some shellfire) to expensive? too heavy? Just lazy? other?
My neighbor brings a travel size suitcase full of makeup to shoots - like this one. I know she’d have even more stuff but this is the biggest she can haul around Manhattan. You think they’d have a pretty wide range of foundation if they put a bunch of them into palettes.
Not too long ago my neighbor had the her whole kit stolen. That’s a lot of expensive products to replace. I imagine insurance would cover it but yikes.
Then do the work it would take to make yourself look like a human clothes hanger, OR appreciate your body for what it actually is, OR just stop looking. Those are all things you can do, yourself, without blaming other people for existing and having a job.
I’m a photographer rather than a makeup artist. Frequently a MUAH will show up with at least a carry-on sized suitcase for a moderately serious gig with only a few models, I’ve had ones show up with three times that much. And that’s still not likely to be their full collection. A MUAH will generally know who they’re expected to work on and what they’re expected to do to them well before hand. However, they may not have any idea what those models look like before makeup and retouching, and certainly don’t know what their skin is like that particular day (oily, dry, etc)… and sometimes there’s last-minute substitutions, either of models or in the art direction, or simply things the people who hired them didn’t mention because they forgot or didn’t think it’d be relevant, so they often bring a bunch of extra stuff, just in case. In addition, this stuff is all ridiculously expensive, often fragile, and a lot of it goes bad after a while requiring replacement whether it’s seen much use or not.
Add to that the unfortunate relative scarcity of dark-skinned models. Many MUAHs don’t have a lot of experience working with them, and depending on where they are in the pay hierarchy and what sort of gig it is, may not be able to justify dropping several hundred dollars on cosmetics that will be used just that once, because they may simply not be asked to work on another model in that tonal range for a year or more. If they aren’t being paid well enough to cover the purchase themselves and still show a reasonable profit for their labour or better yet have their material purchases flat-out covered, which becomes more common at the upper levels of their trade, at least when you’re talking commercial gigs for major clients.
I can tell you for a fact there’s folks out there who’ll be happy to charge a client for a top-tier specialized MUAH, and then hire somebody on the cheap. It always bites them in the ass eventually, but until it catches up with them…
So… should this sort of thing happen at the level she’s working at? No.
Am I surprised this sort of thing happens at the level she’s working at? Also no.
