Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Why Never Ever Acting Class?-Career

ICE-Balaji Telefilms — Fake and Fraud
devv

This institute is fake. It is not even run by Balaji Telefilms. They have permission of just using the logo and brand name to befool people. The faculty is either lazy or crazy, always obssessed with themselves and trying to skip teaching. Moreover there is no practicals in the course. Only class room talk. At the end of the course you will be hepled in no way to finish your diploma. There are many harassing norms you have to follow.
You cant take the camera out of the campus, neither will the management take initiative to facilitate your shoot outside the campus.
Even within the studio campus, you cant shoot everywhere.And you can shoot in the sets if its available, if there is no serial crew working. Trust me, thy treat the students like second class citizen.
The camera department has only one P2 camera, which is also interlaced not progressive! the other one always stays at the service center for repairing.
Dont fall in their trap. The marketing guys are behind your money only. They will tell you all kind of lies to persuade you.
The management there at Mumbai is horrible. One Kalpesh Thakkar is a psycho who always shout at students instead of listening to their problems. And his head Jasmeet Bhasin is the biggest fraud in town, who deny you everything after sucking the fees out of you. No workshop no masterclass is ever arranged by him, although he promises to do so. Even his indecent side comes out when you ask him or support.
The diploma has to be shot in a span of 8hrs, and there also the team is decided by the management. The students have no freedom of their own regarding their work. The management and the faculty is always bitching about each other to the students. Its a real 'Saas-bahu' atmospshere! Its hell. Moreover the faculty here has rarely worked in the industry.
Its a total con. Dont fall in their traps. The marketing guys are the biggest actors around here. Beware!!!!

Livewires Media Institute — Cheated
mailsam

I was lured towards making a big advance payment and when the time came, whatever was promised was never delivered by the institute. Infact, they are scamming students to such an extent that even their instructors are ex-students of the institute and not professional ones.
They will personally call you when you send an inquiry through their website, they’ll force you to come to their institute, they give you a nice tour of the place and with sweet words will convince you to register ASAP as the batches are full blah blah OR that you are eligible for a ‘scholarship’ and you only have two days to accept this scholarship. When you rush to make the payment, they will then simply make you dance on their beats once the money is in their hands. The courses will never start on a promised date (one day its ‘the coming Thursday’ and one day its ‘next week for sure’, the batch timings are not offered as promised in your first meeting (you may want evenings and they'll only offer mornings), the way they praise about their instructors, that also is a scam as the instructors will end up being ex-students who don't even have an agenda while they teach (they are all over the place when they teach), you ask for a refund and they'll give you the rudest look ever.
Personally, Liwewires was a big scam. I've made so many visits asking them to start their batches soon and unsurprisingly, I would be joined by several other students and parents as well. Every time I went, I would see a student depressed or a parent fighting for their refunds. An extremely bad experience for me and I'm seeking for a refund as nothing is being delivered as promised.

Hollywood Film And Acting Academy

Shannon

The Hollywood Film and Acting Academy promises prospective students that they will be in a Featured Film and received imdb.com credits. A feature film was never shot and none of the students received imdb.com credits. As well, the previous class failed to shoot the Feature Film project and failed to received their promised imdb.com credit.
When I asked the director Josh Sands about the Feature Film, he told me that it was the students fault and that if we didn't like it we could leave the school. The director then attempted to shoot a short comedy film for thestudents which he again failed to produce.
We were promised to study under celebrity actors 5 days a week and only did 80% of the time.
The housing he offers had a broken window in common area the whole time I resided their which was dangerous and allowed alot of cold air into the house. The tempature in the evening was at 54 degrees, when I asked the Director/landlord if he could turn the heat up, he turned it up to 58 degrees and said that the power company told him the recommended tempature should be set to 58 degrees. When I asked him why the water for showers and washing dishers is not hot and if he would fix it, Josh told me that I had to deal with it and if I didn't like it, I could leave. The people who get trapped are the one's who have a dream of coming to Hollywood and live out of the state and country and don't know what they are getting into until the get to Hollywood. 3students including myself are opening small claims cases. BEWARE!

SCAM.HWFAA.SCAM

The Hollywood Film & Acting Academy is a total and complete scam. Never in my life did I ever think I would be the subject to verbal abuse on a constant basis from the owner Josh Sands. He is a money hungry slimeball that will tell potential students ANYTHING to get them to sign up. The students would complain and with all good reason. No curicullum, no structure, lies about feature films, imdb credits, demo reels, free headshots, among others. Our class was told we would be shooting scenes every week and although lines were memorized, character's broken down, and the insistance of the students to film, it was near impossible to get Josh off his lazy flabby fat midget a$$. His insistance on threatening students constantly, because of problems that were not the fault of the students, is because of his severe issues with Napolean Syndrome. Respect is a severe issue with him because of his tiny height. He demands it without offering it to others. He runs that school like Hitler. He will love you to your face, hate you to your back, and then find the dumbest reason to hate you to your face for his own benefit (I'll get to that).
Josh claims to not be a landlord for the free housing (which really isn't free), but will find any way to kick out a student. Once a student has signed their contract Josh purposefully creates a negative energy, and denies his students what is promised in order to upset them to the point that they either want to leave, or, will create such a confrontation that happily gives him authority to kick them out.
You have to understand this from a business stand point. Out of 18 students that were fully committed to starting their careers and signed up to his 6 month program, all but 3 left the program early. So, from a business standpoint, he doesn't feel obligated to make a feature because of the lack of students, his operating costs drop 80%, and he STILL COLLECTS on their tuition. How's that for a scam. It got so bad for him while the school was called The Hollywood Digital Film School that he shut it down and re-opened under the current name.
His former involvement with The Huntington Career College and the process in which he brings in International Students is completely illegal. He would pay Huntington's student tuition so he could obtain the proper international document for his students. This school is not accredited with the state of California for these obvious reasons and his illegal involvement with Huntington IS being investigated by authorities.
The current student who replied above in the positive, and who bashed the former students, works for the school and does not have to pay for tuition because of this. She has expressed her dislike for Josh, has bashed him as well, but she is playing a game that is favoring herself in front of Josh. N.B. is fake, and unfortunately, a terrible person who will run to Josh like Himmler would to Hitler.
While The Hollywood Film & Acting Academy has changed their website and programs, it is the same story year in and year out. The book stays the same and the cover changes. It's funny that out of 18 alumni in the Sept. program only 1 is featured on their site. The interviews and clips are ancient and the current feature that they are touting is crap, just look at their clip, and it was supposed to be made long long ago for a previous program. There will be no IMDB, their distribution is likely through selling it through iTunes which I can do with a home video.
Their promise of an edited demo reel is bulls*#t. Josh & his pushover brother Larry never have time to film so it's obvious that they "claim" to never have time to edit their reels. Students that attend who only want to act should not be forced to edit their own material if they do not know how to, and, when an editing class was offered Josh got so frustrated with trying to teach the students that he all but gave up.
In reality, Josh Sands NEVER GRADUATED from a film school. He claims that he learned more in the real world than in an accredited upper tier film school. This is an excuse for his own inability to learn from others which in turn has made him, NOT a director as he claims, but a GLORIFIED cameraman. His cinematography and lighting (which he claims to teach) is so poor a dyslexic monkey could do better (just check out his directed scenes). Recycled Parts for example is a HUGE pile of kaka.
Josh was so proud when Shug Knight came to the school that he didn't realize that he could potentially be putting the students in danger. This is a man who has been accused of murder and within a week of shooting a small scene was arrested. This is a huge reason for me leaving.
Josh's former students include an Arizona fugitive who had severe mental problems, an Arizona sex offender who is currently in jail for sleeping with one of his former students, a formerly homeless and currently alcoholic that can be obviously seen in a student testimony on the website, and a man who was previously institutionalized, had a violent temper, stalked one of the students, and was taken to a mental evaluation facility because of his threats to commit suicide by jumping off the Kodak Theatre building.
During my time as a teacher I have seen students, teachers, and faculty come and go combined (on bad terms) at a percentage close to 85 - 90%. Those that stayed were few (and worked for him), and most of those who left had their money stolen from them and had their dreams dashed when they went back home. I hope for the sake of any perspective student that they don't as well fall into Josh's trap and scam network at The Hollywood Film & Acting Academy.

Robbed by Josh

Josh is a total liar and a fake. Want proof? Ask him what films he made. He is a thief and will say or do anything to take your money.
Ask him what films he or his students made. Total loser.

Robbed by Josh

This so called school is strictly designed to steal your money. Josh Sands will lie and say anything to take your money. Neither they nor their students have produced anything except a juvenile quality horror flick, and it was so bad, it has never NEVER been shown in public.
Ask for a list of his films or his students films. Check out the credits.
If you want to learn nothing and throw your money away, go to his so called acting academy.
What a joke.
Ask for a list of what they produced. What a joke.

Hollywood Film and Acting Academy - Consumer abuse and False advertisement
Lynn

The Hollywood Film and Acting Academy promises prospective students that they will be in a Featured Film and received imdb.com credits. A feature film was never shot and none of the students received imdb.com credits. As well, the previous class failed to shoot the Feature Film project and failed to received their promised imdb.com credit.
When I asked the director Josh Sands about the Feature Film, he told me that it was the students fault and that if we didn't like it we could leave the school. The director then attempted to shoot a short comedy film for the students which he again failed to produce.
We were promised to study under celebrity actors 5 days a week and only did 80% of the time.
The housing he offers had a broken window in common area the whole time I resided their which was dangerous and allowed alot of cold air into the house. The tempature in the evening was at 54 degrees, when I asked the Director/landlord if he could turn the heat up, he turned it up to 58 degrees and said that the power company told him the recommended tempature should be set to 58 degrees. When I asked him why the water for showers and washing dishers is not hot and if he would fix it, Josh told me that I had to deal with it and if I didn't like it, I could leave. The people who get trapped are the one's who have a dream of coming to Hollywood and live out of the state and country and don't know what they are getting into until the get to Hollywood. 3 students including myself are opening small claims cases. BEWARE!

John Robert Powers
Martha

I took my daughter to JRP and paid 6000. After a month they said she was ready for iPOP. I paid over 6500 + pictures 750. They close the school without letting us know.

Wendy

My son, who is now 16, they claimed was "commercial/model material" when he was 4. I paid and took the child to "training" for at least 3 mos... Every week we sat in line, auditioned, sometimes paid... They said he needed more training, which made sense... After all, they did say "you can have talent, but you need to learn how to use it." Unfortunately, I moved away from Rockville. Bottom line, I had "paid up" for 10 more sessions, ($1300) moved far from Rockville... No refund, no support, no suggestions.

Academy of Cinema & Television

Anthony

My son heard the ad on Z100. We went to see what it was all about. It seemed to good to be true. They put you though a small screeen test and interview you. They give you a story that you must commit asap. We complied figuring we can always get a refund since the class has not started yet and the contract say you have the right to cancel. After retruning home and researchiong the company we have found that the classes are fraudulent and a scam. We have called several times but the compnay has not return our call.

Svetlana

ACT advertised on Nick cable channel that they were doing a talent search for local kids to appear on Disney and other kid’s channels. I set up an appointment and went to their office in Secaucus, NJ that they rented from La Quinta Hotels on 5/31/09. We met with Lindy **. She gave us a 1 minute interview and then my daughter was supposed to meet with Brett ** from Sovereign Talent Agency. At that time I was told that I need to call her back on 6/2/09 and find out if they picked my daughter for a call back, which of course they did. Lindy told me that she's flying out the next morning and it was very important we meet with her again before she left, which I did. I was required to pay $1950 (I put on my credit card) for their workshops before they would introduce us to talent agents and managers.
When I got home, I had a feeling it seemed like a scam so I researched them on the Internet. I was horrified by what I saw. First of all, the workshops are taught by third rate instructors, Lindy ** was labeled as a scam artist and Brett ** was on their payroll moonlighting. I immediately called them to cancel and was told that my one day period for cancellation passed. I am disputing the charge on my credit card and, hopefully, I'll get a full refund. I also found out that they had the same scam going under a different name in Florida. I'm a single parent and this is a huge hardship for me. They preyed on the fact that I was single and wanted to do something for my child due to our family situation.


Consumer abuse and False advertisement
HWFAA

This so called school is strictly designed to steal your money. Josh Sands will lie and say anything to take your money. Neither they nor their students have produced anything except a juvenile quality horror flick, and it was so bad, it has never NEVER been shown in public.
Ask for a list of his films or his students films. Check out the credits.
If you want to learn nothing and throw your money away, go to his so called acting academy.
What a joke.
Ask for a list of what they produced. What a joke.




Acting Careers — Registration amount not refunded
nikhil2991

Dear Sir/Mam, I had a contact some days before from my cell phone for a job in acting career. The fake company took my Rs.4200 amount and after that they told me do the next process of registration again and told me pay 8000 again and then i got know that the company is fake of Delhi and they did not returned my money and when i told that i will log a police complaint they kept their phone number switch off. Kindly help me in this. I have their bank account details too:- Axis Bank Account Details :- Bank Name - Axis bank Account Number - 914020021346938 Account holder Name - Acting careers IFSC Code - UTIB0000723 Account Type - Current Account Branch Name – Sector – 62, Noida Icici Bank Account Details :- Bank Name – icici bank Account Number - 081605500246 Account holder Name - Acting careers Account Type - Current Account Phone numbers of company- 9250014557 8459475578

Barry John Acting Studio — No Refund for Service Tax
KD0786

I had registered for a course with an amount of Rs. 74, 600 (Including taxes). While registering, the dates provided were incorrect and later when it came to everyone's notice, I decided to withdraw from the couse at its beginning itself. I had made a payment of half the amount i.e. Rs. 37, 300/-. While the company has agreed to refund my fee, they are deducting the service tax from it. However, since I have not availed the service, the logic would state that I shouldn't be charged any service tax either. Please let me know how to proceed with this further. Thanks


Source: http://www.consumercomplaints.in,http://www.complaintsboard.com, http://hollywood-film-and-acting-academy.pissedconsumer.com, http://www.consumeraffairs.com,http://www.complaintboard.com