Yesterday, I did a day on a show which I cannot name because of a non-disclosure agreement I signed–which normally I wouldn’t talk about at all, but I *did* learn something that might be of interest.
The night before, when I got the booking info, it included fairly standard instructions on what sort of clothes to wear, and if you need to bring a selection, or another whole set of clothes for a different scene. Like this:
Because of my tattoos, I brought long-sleeve options for them to choose from, but apparently they had too many background actors in the same colors, so they went with what I wore, which was a short-sleeve shirt that revealed my forearm tattoos. Which wardrobe said would be fine, but I had to go to Hair and Makeup.
The makeup artist asked if I had a “Tattoo Release form,” which, frankly, I’d never heard of before. She said, “That’s okay, but I’m going to have to change them to protect us from liability.” Apparently, some fancier and more famous tattoo artists get litigious when their work is shown without a release form.
Here are the before-and-after pics.
Legally, she said, she had to alter 30% of the tattoo to save them from a lawsuit. Which was fine, and I never wound up in front of the camera anyway, despite it being a 12-hour day. So it goes.
But I really didn’t like how my tattoos looked after the alcohol-based makeup was flicked on with a brush, and a fake tattoo magic marker added some more lines and squiggles.
So, first thing today I located a tattoo release for to send to Austin Grove which I will keep on file and bring with me to every job, just in case. If you’re an inky actor, you might want to do that too. One release form per tattoo artist on your body. Mine are all done by the same guy, so I only need one. I Googled it, and came up with this form.
When I get it back, I won’t have to worry about it anymore–unless they just don’t want any tattoos [like, say, for a period piece when tattoos weren’t common. There are ways you can cover them yourself before you self-tape an audition for something that seems dubious about actors with ink, but that’s a story for another day…