At MAKUP, trainee and work experience placements are fact, not fiction. MAKUP graduates have just benefited from the best experience any trainee make-up artist could ask for. For the last 5 weeks our students have been working as full-time paid trainees on Tim Burton’s live action remake of the classic Disney film ‘Dumbo’.
Obviously, this is every trainee’s dream – not only did they get paid for gaining essential on-the-job experience, but they were also able to watch and learn from some of the UK’s top MakeUp Artists and Hairdressers.
As an added bonus, they were able to network with makeup designers and supervisors, to help build those crucial contacts for future employment. You could be the best makeup artist in the world, but without the opportunity to meet people your career will take a lot longer to grow.
Furthermore, students have had their details requested and some have already been offered further trainee positions on other really exciting projects.
In addition, Veronica was working on the film, as she believes it is essential to continually update her own skills and provide placements through her ever-growing bank of industry contacts.

Lance’s story:We were all extremely nervous at first to start on such a huge production! Seeing as we’ve only recently graduated, this was an opportunity not to be missed! We packed our bags, headed over and talked about how excited we were to start our two weeks’ paid trainee jobs.

Not suprisingly – the first day was intense! We were thrown straight in at the deep end! But thanks to Veronica’s training we were more than prepared for the challenges that were about to come our way. After a very busy morning, we found ourselves meeting so many fantastic makeup artists with a great deal of knowledge and experience to share. Everyone was so nice and welcoming, and had nothing but wonderful things to say about us!

Moreover, the next few days were as equally intense, but getting easier day by day. The first week finished off with the feeling that we had gained a lot of confidence and experience. We all agreed about how excited we were to come back for our final week at Big Ears!

The start of our second week went equally as well – switching between working in the Crowd Room and getting to experience set life for the first time on a big production was amazing! Thanks to Veronica’s wise words, we knew a lot of the dos and donts of working on set and exactly how you should act (see Veronica’s blog post, here).

Accordingly, during our time in the Crowd Room we were able to put our skills to the test and started doing tattoo covers, men’s hairdressing, wig blocking, and prepping and derigging women’s hair. All while keeping a watchful eye out to learn from other hair and makeup artists along the way!
As we were coming to the end of the second week and the end of our official pl
acement, we had amazing news that we were all offered the opportunity to stay on! So our 2 weeks turned into 5! We were all completely over the moon!A huge thank you goes to Veronica for putting our names forward for this! And another huge thank you to everyone on Dumbo for being so kind, welcoming and generous with all they do!Have a Disney day!!!
#Birmingham #film #TV #makeup #hair #makeupartist #MUA #trainee #Dumbo #Disney #PinewoodStudios #makeupschool #mmakup #makeuptraining #filmandtvmakeup