John Robert Powers

My name is Ariana Martinez. The week of July 25^th, I was a 2015 International Model & Talent (IMTA) contestant in NYC. I gained the knowledge to know what it takes to be a Model and an Actor at John Robert Powers, Philadelphia. I was trained by the finniest. Mindy and Mr. Ross knows best! The training I took pushed me to be noticed by Agents from all over the world and got me to win many awards. Besides all the awards I’ve won at the IMTA, my greatest accomplishment during the IMTA week was being the first runner up for Commercial Model of the year, Runway and Fashion Print. It was an Amazing week! It was the training I received from John Robert Powers that got me to be noticed by agents and call-​backs from Barcelona, Finland, NY, LA and many more. My career just got a super head start and I just wanted to take the time to thank John Robert Powers, Philadelphia (Mindy and Mr. Ross) for getting me this far. Awesome!

My name is Floyd Marshall Jr. CEO of Gazelle Films in Philadelphia and a proud graduate of John Robert Powers. Mindy are Mr. Ross are phenomenal and the tools they gave me helped me to get a great manager (through them) Cathy Parker Management. I have fond memories of the classes and the people I shared them with, a lot of whom I stay in touch with to this day. I attended Powers in 2006, attended the MIAA”s in New York and had a great experience. The work ethic that Mindy Sills taught I still practice to this day. It’s helped me in casting my own films and stage plays. I’ve done numerous independent films, print work, voice overs etc, due to the skills I was taught at this school. They don’t guarantee you’ll be an overnight success, but they give you a work ethic which you need in this business to succeed. A lot of what I’ve done I credit to having gone here because they gave me my start and for that I’m eternally grateful. And if you’re curious as to if this is a real review please Google me. I’m on IMDB and the web.

This is a school and (supposedly) an agency that will charge you for portfolio pictures and comp cards and lead you to believe that they will find work for you. They will also want you to go to the big modeling convention in New York because they swear that if you do, you will exponentially increase your chances of being noticed and booked by a big NYC agency. I attended JRP but stopped short of going to the convention, so I can’t verify how true that is. My guess is that it’s a lie and that the convention is just another moneymaker for JRP.
I will be lenient and not completely diss JRP as I did another modeling agency because, unlike that agency, they did get me a paying gig at a cooking convention, and I made a sweet buck there for eight hours’ work. I can’t remember now exactly how much they paid me because it was years ago, but it was a nice chunk of change.
But that was the only gig I got from them. My advice is to attend JRP’S classes on makeup application, runway walking, etc., but stop short of getting portfolio pictures, because that’s where you really get rooked. If it turns out that you don’t have to pay out of pocket for the pictures (because things may have changed since my days at JRP), fine, allow them to be taken and do what you want with them. But give a firm «No» if they request that you need to pay out of pocket for comp cards or any other so-​called professional pictures.
From that point, take what you learned in JRP’s classes and use it as an enhancement when applying at a *real* agency in NYC. The *real* agency will, or should, appreciate that you took the time to learn the techniques associated with modeling. If gigs arise through JRP, whether they are paying or not, accept them. That way, when you sit down with an agent at a NYC agency, you can look her in the eye and honestly tell her you have experience.
The *real* agencies will never charge you up front for portfolio pictures, and here’s why: if they sign you, they will set up an account for you and charge those pictures to your account. The agency then reimburses itself from the money you earn from bookings. JRP doesn’t operate this way, and neither do any of the school agencies, because as a rule, they don’t make their money from bookings; they primarily make it from classes and pictures.
Another truth, and this one is hard to swallow, is that you stand pretty much a 0% chance of making it in high-​fashion modeling unless, if you’re a woman, you’re at least 5’8″ and a no bigger than a size 4. (I’m not too sure on the requirements for men, but I suspect that you need to be at least 6’0′ tall.) The school agencies will feed you this bull about how, if you’re shorter and/​or have a bigger dress size, they can find work for you as a commercial model. This is what I was told, but it’s a lie. I got nothing, and you will probably get nothing; it’s high-​fashion or bust in this industry.
In fact, even if you fulfill the high-​fashion height and dress-​size requirement, you may still come away with nothing from the school agencies because, as I previously mentioned, they make few if any profits on bookings. If you want to be a model, take my advice: go to these places to learn how to be a model, but decline to have your pictures taken. Then apply to the NYC agencies. You can do that online via their webpages if you don’t want to physically go to NYC. It will take a certain amount of persistence, but if you apply regularly, even to the same agencies, you will probably hear something from them eventually, and then you will take it from there.
This is a long review that wasn’t completely devoted to JRP, but I thought I would use them as a platform to reveal what I’ve learned about this industry through research and, above all, learning the hard way. I wish someone had given me this reality check before I blew so much money on my modeling endeavor. :(