A couple of weeks back within a couple of jobs; I had the pleasure of both assisting another HMUA and then having two HMUAs assist me. It got me thinking about the role of assisting in the industry and what it meant to assist.
The type of assisting you do will vary from artist to artist and different sectors of the industry. Generally jobs include things like helping tidy the key artists kit, being on hand to pass items, cleaning brushes, keeping the workspace organised, grabbing anything the talent needs and so on. The assistant may also play a bigger role and actually apply make up/style hair and help with touch up. From what I have learned from both assisting and having people assist me, I would offer this advice.
Turn up early. If you turn up late, it will be noticed. Certain situations may occur where it is inevitable but always allow extra time for your journey and ideally turn up before the key make up artist so you are ready to help straight away.
Be respectful of the key artist’s kit. Put things back in their place. Clean brushes carefully. Keep it tidy while they are busy on set.
Don’t try and pass your own details to the client or ask about upcoming jobs. This is not the time or place and you are there to assist the key artist, this is their client.
Do have a clean, organised, fully competent but compact kit.
Ask questions! Show an interest in kit, products and techniques. You are there to learn as well as help. It is invaluable to be able to watch an industry artist at work.
I asked fellow HMUA Ashley Jordan Jones about his experience of assisting;
Assisting is one of the most incredible things you can do for your career as a makeup artist. The only con is that it’s quite often unpaid but you can’t really put a price on the amount you can learn from the people you assist and the opportunities it will give you.
My first assisting job was with Emily Jane Williams, the owner of EMJ Company. We first met when my college assisted at the European exercise response training and I was paired with Emily, after helping her out for the week, she went on to invite me to assist her on shoots for Cosmopolitan magazine which was massive for me and as a kid from a small town really lit a fire under me to make this work as my career. I have since been lucky enough to assist multiple times at fashion week and was in talks to work internationally before the coronavirus pandemic and without assisting none of that would have been possible.
My best advice for getting assisting jobs would be to contact artists via their agencies to get onto the assistants list, you won’t always get a reply and you might wait months and months to get asked for your availability but it’s the only way to assist the big artists.
For smaller artists you can generally reach out via email or social media and sometimes they’ll put out castings on their social media that you can apply for, if you’re going to take this approach I would definitely ensure your social media are portfolio standard.
One way that has massively helped me and that I would recommend anyone doing that wants to get into assisting is getting to know other assistants, especially first assistants The assisting community is quite close knit and we all try and help each other out and recommend each other to artists when we’re not available. It’s a lot of pressure recommending someone to assist an artist you have a relationship with.
