An inmate in jail is stripped of everything that makes them an individual. When the cast of 60 Days In goes “inside,” they experience this first hand.  What can prisoners do while locked up to retain a sense of individuality and control?  Our team discovered the concept of “Fakeup” - a process whereby inmates use the everyday items available to them to create makeup and beauty products, and thus express themselves.  With the popularity of makeup tutorials online, it was a perfect way to tell a serious story in an engaging and relatable way.

From research and feedback from actual inmates, we created a jailhouse “makeup look” that is 100% achievable while incarcerated.  Every item used is available in a jail, and the beauty products were created by hand on set.  A makeup artist was cast as our “inmate” to execute the fakeup look on camera. We shot in 6K with three camera setups -- a side angle, front angle, and tabletop angle --  to best replicate the highly recognizable ‘tutorial’ format.  Our framing was planned so that explanatory text could be incorporated into the environment seamlessly.

The popular visual style combined with the message of the video are what made this Fakeup piece so successful.  It’s the #1 most viewed video on the 60 Days In Facebook page.  It connected on both an emotional and intellectual level.  Organically, it went viral - reaching 9.5 million views, and drawing 93K shares, 18k comments, and 45 million overall impressions. People personally connected to this video in a few different ways. Some were shocked that this was a real phenomenon.  Others were impressed by the creativity of the self expression.  Many others shared personal anecdotes from when they themselves were inmates, and compared their methods to the ones in the tutorial.  It was truly a way to humanize inmates and engage a massive audience.