Premiere event

kev1.3s

Not too sure if this the right forum but it seems relevant to here.
My 12 year old daughter was looking at trying to sign up to a talent agency a couple of weeks ago and came across this website claiming to be biased in Dublin and filled out some information, a couple of weeks later my wife gets a call from an American number where this guy claimed to have gotten her details from within the industry and wanted to get her to come to Dublin on Saturday to audition for there agency which supplies talent to Disney and all the big studios.
Now I'm pretty sceptical from the start and try to tell my daughter that this isn't genuine biased on what I can find about this crowd but for one reason or another I find myself bringing her up for the audition on Saturday morning.
The audition was in the grand ballroom of the intercontinental hotel at 8 am and I would say there were at least 150 kids there to "audition" and started with this guy putting parents on a guilt trip for spending time on there smartphones instead of listening to and indulging there children like he does with his family, after that we were split into two separate groups of about 60-75 kids and brought in to audition where our group was weeded down to 5-6 kids who had qualified for a second audition and given a booklet with instructions for how to contact them today.
On the way out we were told that we will be required to pay for our place immediately after the second audition if we were accepted and after reading the booklet turned out to start at $2000 for entry into two talent shows that apparently has scouts from all the major studios, although level 1 would only get you in contact with agents who are looking for actresses for advertisements. On top of that my wife was expected to pay $900 to go to these talent shows with her!
The whole thing was screaming scam to me and when they rang my wife this morning to arrange a second audition my wife asked them to outline all the fees they got evasive and aggressive accusing her of not showing enough interest in her child to bother reading the booklet.
I will point out that on the web I've found that Disney don't go to these showcase events to locate talent.
This has left my daughter very disappointed and upset and I can only feel sorry for every other kid who was disappointed or even worse any parent who is out of pocket.
Anyway not that I particularly want my daughter getting into this but it is what she wants so is there any reputable companies out there to help her on her way?

oleg_phl

Hi Kev,

Thanks for such a valuable post!

I after having the same skeptical approach to all this. My situation is even worse now, I have got a talented kid indeed and she also made through both qualification stages. Now she has been invited to the premier and asked to sign to one of the option as you suggested in your post starting from $2000.

I have managed to get time until tomorrow, to make the decision. I also doubt how genuine is all this, but the worse is that my kid is so happy that she is through to Orlando on 18th Dec. I am hesitating to pay the money, as you suggested there is very little information on them online. anybody else came across with this?

kev1.3s

Hi Oleg, far be it from me to tell you what to do! I have no doubt that they chose the best children and there may be some limited oppertunitys for success but make no mistake this company's primary business model is to get as much money off you and me as possible. My daughter is upset about it which is probably what they want but I'm not going to fork out the best part of €10,000 when you consider flights and accomadation to bring her over there and more than likely see her disappointed again.
Let me know how you get on with whatever you decide. Good luck!

kev1.3s

http://www.auditionsfree.com/about/child-acting-scams/disney-auditions-and-nickelodeon-auditions-how-the-scam-works/#
Definite read before parting with any cash.