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Posted: Tuesday January 12, 2010
Make-Up Artist magazine
Note: Article from Issue 82 of Make-Up Artist magazine.
New site helps make-up artists market themselves
At first, make-up effects artist and Famehog cofounder Jason Hamer pictured his new Web site as "YouTube meets IMDB meets Facebook," he said.
But this fall, after a year of consulting with make-up artists and other movie production people about the site while it was still in beta, Hamer and co-founder/designer Scott Mallone emerged with something slightly different: a database of visual resumes.
 Famehog.com is geared specifically to movie-industry professionals. Users create their own pages, where they can post their resumes and film credits, photos and video of past and present work and contact information. An online video tutorial demonstrates how to create pages and add or edit information. There are two price tiers; $9.95 per month for 50 megabytes of storage or $19.95 per month for unlimited storage. Users who aren’t comfortable with computers can pay a little extra to have the company build a page for them.
"Most people, for $9.95, can fit a majority of their work on the page," said business manager Doug Raggio.
 Famehog is not Facebook, or any other kind of a social networking site, because the make-up artists Hamer consulted (among them Kazuhiro Tsuji, Jeff Dawn and Bill Corso) didn’t want another social networking site. To avoid what Raggio calls "lookie-loos," the site vets potential users. "We review every application," he said. "We ask, 'Are they a legitimate make-up artist? Do they have industry cred?' Guild membership is an immediate in. We look at schools, film credits, whether you have a manager, whether you’re actively working in the industry. If we refuse someone, we tell them to build their portfolio and come back later."
Added Hamer, "We wanted to keep a higher standard and make it for people who are really serious about their careers."
Looking through users' reels and photos can be entertaining, but Famehog is not an entertainment channel like YouTube; it’s strictly for work. And while it serves some of the same functions as IMDB, there are significant differences.
"IMDB is a database, and it’s awesome for what it is, but you can’t see what people have done," Hamer said. With his site, "I can see what movies someone did and what they did IN the movie. It gives you a better sense of their work."
 Eryn Krueger Mekash is among the site's users. "I’ve never really had time to do my own Web site or ship my portfolio all over, so this is much easier to use," she said. She prefers it to IMDB, which she said requires a two- to three-week approval process for any changes and has listed what she calls inaccurate credit information.
"Famehog was put together by people who are knowledgeable about effects," said Corso. "It's really artist friendly, whereas IMDB is more of a general information site."
Famehog was inspired in part by actors' online portfolios. "It was an idea the make-up industry hadn't adapted, but they really needed it," Hamer said. Eventually, he hopes to expand the company’s scope internationally.
Added Raggio, "When we go out to people in the make-up community, they say 'Where have you been?'"
For more information, go to www.famehog.com.
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