Laura UnBound wrote:
Yes and no. Generally after youve been a local somewhere for too long, people have either forgotten about you or are in a constant state of "I have my pick between a model whos here all the time, or this traveling model who will only be here once this year and who knows if she'll ever come back!" they pick the traveling model, and then see option A..they forget to book you later.
The minute you LEAVE, theres a surge of "oh my god but we never got to shoot come back!"
So even in places that have a ton of work for other girls, if you live there you arent necessarily always open to that same work.
OP: As its been said, theres a WHOLE LOT OF NOTHING between LA and NYC. There are some great people in little towns along the way but they are very spaced out and you may not be able to book a whole week, let alone even a weekends worth of work in those towns. Im not saying dont make the drive, but also dont expect every where you stop to be a money making venture.
Youd do better to make your first trip a west coast one. Ive personally gone from San Diego to Sacramento twice, and portland once. I was able to book work well in San Diego, San Fran, Sacramento, and Portland. You can even continue on to Seattle (I never got that far).
Keep in mind that people have day jobs, so youll want to spend several days in each big city to give people a chance to work with you. Unfortunately youd have to make a humongously long trip out of it to do a weekend in each city, so pick the one(s) you think will have the MOST interest in you, book those as weekends, and then figure out where the other stops fit in and how many days each place will get.
Figure in travel time. If you have a shoot at 9am in portland you cannot book a shoot in sacramento that ends at 10pm, you will not make it to portland the next day in time, or you wont sleep, or both. Give yourself at least one day to get from point A to point B so you dont have to rush and if something goes wrong (flat tire?) you arent screwed.
Get/use a GPS so you can get around strange cities. Get a map book for when that fails you.
keep at least 10 bucks in small bills and change in your cup holder for tolls or whatever may come up.
Keep in mind that people tend to list themselves as being in their nearest big city, but may actually be quite a way away from it (youve probably experienced this plenty with LA) so when someone writes you from san jose, dont assume theyre in downtown san jose, CLARIFY where exactly they are so you know how long you need to get to them.
In that same vein, be prepared for people between point A and point B to want you to stop over and work with them. (there seems to be a lot of people between sacramento and portland that dont get models coming through often).
Figure in traffic and try, if you book more than one shoot in a day, to not book shoots that are complete opposite sides of town from each other. Let your second shoot know that youre coming from another shoot, you cant end shoot 1 at 12 and start shoot 2 at 12:30, you WILL be late
Schedule this EARLY EARLY EARLY with LOTS of notice, so any changes you need to make to the schedule dont completely screw anyone over.
thank you so much for this! huge help!
