Title: Crystal Wright’s Packaging Your Portfolio Workshop
Year: 2008
Producer: Crystal Wright
Genre: Instructional DVD
MPAA Rating: UNRATED
Studio: Crystal Wright Live
Distributor: see website
Running time: Approximately 8 Hours on 4 DVD’s
Official Website: http://www.crystalwrightlive.com/


Crystal Wright has been in the business of teaching and/or promoting makeup artists, hair stylists, fashion stylists and manicurists for over fifteen years. She is a unique voice that has taught aspiring creatives how to promote and market themselves successfully. To that end she published the Hair, Makeup and Fashion Styling Career Guide about twelve years ago. To date it is now in its fourth edition. Then she started giving seminars coast to coast.

If Ms. Wright can be faulted for anything it is giving too much information. A seminar with her can be overwhelming and her book is oversized and loaded with a cornucopia of knowledge that few of you have the time to read and reread. Especially if you have been out working and promoting you all day. Nevertheless, her book became an industry standard.

Now Crystal has recorded her seminar verbatim as Crystal Wright’s Packaging Your Portfolio Workshop. In a very attractively packaged four DVD set she outlines everything you need, and should want, to know about how to make it in the cutthroat world of print, music video, commercials and television as a hair stylist, makeup artist, fashion stylist or manicurist. What makes this set so valuable is that you can reference it again and again.

A top business or film school would charge thousands in tuition for a class offering this marketing information. Crystal is making this knowledge available as a permanent resource for just hundreds. She has it broken down into easy to access chapters; it comes with a thirty page workbook that follows the DVD’s and gives you places to make notes. All you need to bring to it is a willingness to suspend disbelief and do what she tells you to do. Because one thing is for sure, this lady knows her stuff.

If you have a passion for this kind of work, this is an invaluable resource. The “tricks of the trade” that Crystal shares are as important to the seasoned pro as they are to the greenhorn; to the person working in ‘the fly over zone’ or on ‘the coasts’. Recorded live during one of her seminars, Crystal’s effervescent personality comes through the screen.

She takes no prisoners and tells it like it is. Nothing is sugar coated and very little is taken for granted. She also includes interviews with industry pros, a Q & A session as well as a resource list.

Crystal Wright’s Packaging Your Portfolio Workshop is a great tool to teach creative people how to market themselves properly. This DVD set is explained in greater detail on her website, http://www.crystalwrightlive.com/ where it is also made available for sale. An excellent gift for the up and coming Glam Squad member who wants to be all the he or she can be.