Tools of the Trade: NYC Hairstylist Eric R. Williams
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The Producer: What are some of the tools of the trade you need to do your job?
Eric R. Williams: A great blow dryer, invest in one. Invest in a great blow dryer even if it's $200-300, it makes a big difference in your world. That's one of the things I’ve learned this year. Sometimes we’re so quick to pick up a flat iron, but it’s all about the blow dryer. Need a Mason Pearson, I’ve always been told you’re not a real hairdresser unless you have a Mason Pearson. Once you buy one, you’ll never buy another one. They last for years. I highly recommend it. They have other brushes out there similar to a Mason Pearson. A great flat iron. I love the Babyliss Nano Titanium, is one of my go-to flat irons. Amazing flat iron. It conducts high heat but because I work with so many textures of hair and ethnicities, I need a flat iron that's able to get as hot as I need it if I’m doing African American hair or if I’m doing even more fine texture hair I need it to still be nice without scorching and damaging the hair. As far as product, my favorite product right now would be the TIGI Queen for a Day. It’s a thickening spray. I realize now that I can’t go on any job without it. It really makes a difference especially if you have the finer quality hair, you’re doing a blowout and you need that thickness without stiffness.
There's a particular kind of confusion that shows up in production offices lately, and it isn't about budgets or call times. It's about a handful of terms — usage rights, likeness rights, digital replicas, AI training, derivative content — that have started appearing in the same paragraph of a contract, often used as though they mean roughly the same thing.
They don't. And the gap between them is quickly becoming one of the more consequential distinctions in commercial production.
This vocabulary comes largely from entertainment law, a world most photographers, stylists, producers, and models were never trained to navigate. It's being absorbed into advertising and commercial contracts faster than most of the industry has had time to build a shared, plain-language understanding of what it actually covers. The result is a lot of very careful people signing very specific language without a clear sense of what they've agreed to.
So it's worth slowing down and taking each term on its own.