So you've honed your acting abilities, studied with the best teachers you could find, appeared in countless student films and industrials and Equity-waiver productions—you've paid some dues and acquired tape of yourself along the way. Or perhaps you've appeared as a guest star on a plethora of TV shows and are ready to kick your career up to the next level. You have the skills, the headshot, and the résumé—but what about the reel? Having the best three- to five-minute sample of your work can make a big difference, whether you're looking for a better agent or being called in to read for a major film or TV show.
Putting a reel together isn't easy. Actors are trained as artists, not marketers, so enlisting a professional is usually the best option. You'll need to track down every film, TV show, and commercial in which you've appeared and find a good editor to put it together. You'll also have to make decisions about the format and the content. What stays? What goes? What can be pared down? What's the best way to showcase your talents for your particular purpose?
Building a reel requires an investment of time and money, and a mistake at the beginning could mean that a casting director, agent, or producer won't watch to the end. But a great reel can help you make leaps in your career—paying for itself tenfold.
Groundwork
Before you can cut a reel, you need to round up all your footage. John Maynard, a veteran character actor with a number of television shows and feature films to his credit, has developed several strategies for getting footage when he completes a job. "As far as films go, I've always just waited until it came out on videotape or DVD to buy a copy," says Maynard. "When you're doing smaller films, that's the one thing they're supposed to guarantee you: a copy of the film."
Getting TV footage, however, can be trickier. "The first day, they're going to give you that little copy of your sides," he explains. "On the front page of that is going to have phone numbers for the production office. Keep that stuff with you, and check around that day and find out if they have an airdate for the episode. If not, call the office and find out when they expect that episode to air. That paper should also have the title of the episode. Keep checking back with them, and always be polite. As you get to the airdate, call whoever's in postproduction and ask them if you could possibly get a production copy of the tape of the episode. More often than not, they are willing to do that. Some of them actually give you a DVD copy of it." If you can't get the footage from the producers, you can record the show when it airs using a VCR or DVR, such as TiVo.
The companies that edit demo reels can usually take footage from most video formats, though DVD and VHS are the most common. In a pinch, most can also take footage directly off miniDV, Beta SP, or directly from a TiVo box.
Pare It Down With Purpose
Once your footage is ready, it has to be assembled, and that's when a reel-editing service can come in handy. For a decade, Planet Video (www.planet-video.com) has been a go-to destination for actors seeking the highest-quality reels. Run by Amy Conner and senior editor Joe Gressis, Planet Video has refined reel-cutting to a science. As time is money, Conner recommends actors do as much work as they can on their own before coming in. "We tell people to narrow down their footage to about eight minutes of their best stuff," says Conner. "A lot of times actors will want to put everything they've ever done on their reel, which is usually not a good thing. You need to be very specific about what you have that is good, how you want to sell yourself, how your video is going to help you get more work. The whole point of the demo reel is to sell yourself."
Gressis reminds actors that the reel may be a chronicle of past work, but it also is an indicator of their future. He says, "Think about where you want to go. If you've got all guest stars, putting together a reel that just focuses on the fact that you're a guest star will just get you more of that, and if your goal is to be a lead, you want to highlight the things that focus on you more as a lead."
Maynard has logged his share of time in the reel-editing suite; he's learned how to make the most of his sessions by doing as much prep work as he can before going to an editing service. "Be aware of your material," he advises. "Look at your own tapes. If you were on an episode of a TV show, be smart enough in advance and, starting at zero at the very start of the tape, find out how far you have to go into the tape to get to your scene and then how long that scene is on the tape, so that they can [find it] quickly on the Avid [editing system]. I would always go in with that stuff precued to the first scene anyhow, so that they wouldn't have to spend the time fast-forwarding and rewinding just to find things. [You can] save yourself some time and money that way." The reel editor charges $50–75 per hour, and it will take at least five hours to create these reels, so a little preparation will make the actor's money much more efficient in the edit bay.
Content Is Key
What's best to put on a reel depends on the actor being showcased. Just as a good headshot captures someone's looks and personality, the editing, order, graphics, and music of a reel can affect how an actor is viewed by agents, casting directors, and producers. But clarity must be considered before editing sizzle: Fancy effects can't camouflage weak content. "I do like to see a couple of shots of the actor before the scenes begin," explains Leah Stanko Mangum, a casting director who's been in the casting business for nine years. "It allows me to know which actor I should be watching before the reel starts. Sometimes the first scene of the reel has more than one actor in the scene, and it's not until Scene Two that I know whose reel I am viewing."
"What I've always heard is that you want to use feature film stuff first, then television, then you might use something from a soap opera, and, last but not least, commercials," says Maynard. "If you can leave commercials off, you should, because commercials are not something that theatrical [film and television] people are going to look at and say, 'This is a good gauge of that person's [acting] ability.'"
"Everybody's first thought is to go with their biggest credits, which is generally the way you do it," explains Gressis. "If you've got some good-sized credits—even if something is, maybe, a little older—if it focuses on you in a better way, if it shows you in a better light, if it's the direction your career wants to go, then by all means you should focus on that. That's one of my rules: Never replace better with newer."
La Tanya Potts has been in the casting business for eight years and has carved out a niche for herself as someone who knows how to spot a "fresh face." Though she enjoys looking at reels by emerging actors and thus expects to see independent- and lower-budget film clips, she values reels that demonstrate range in the performer. Says Potts, "I like to see two really great scenes. Three is good in some cases, but we just want to see range. We don't want to see you just nail one [character]; we want to see that you can nail more than one."
Finishing Touches
With state-of-the-art editing systems everywhere these days, it's tempting to add a lot of sizzle to a reel. But flashy graphics and the much-debated montage are not embraced by everyone. Maynard keeps in mind that the person being showcased is himself, not the editor. "The flash and the sizzle is okay as long as it doesn't get in the way," he says. "The main thing is, it's a sales piece. You're selling yourself. You're trying to get somebody interested in bringing you into an office, and you don't want them to become interested in bringing the editor into the office. You want to make sure that you stand out."
The montage—the series of fast-cutting clips that introduces or concludes the reel—is a point of debate among those who create and view reels. Potts, for one, would rather not have to sit through one of these sequences. "I skip past it," she says. "I just really need to see the work. Everything's time-sensitive. We just have to get to the meat."
Gressis, however, believes a montage can be a great way to show versatility and range in an actor. "One of the reasons why [montages] are falling out of favor is that so many people don't know why you make them," he says. "You make them to show these little gems, little moments, isolated lines that work very effectively but are by themselves. The rest of the scene is not particularly useful, and the line or look by itself makes sense. Too many people who put these montages together just throw images against music and figure that makes a working montage."
Maynard, who has his reel edited at Planet Video, prefers to keep the montage in. "One of the things I generally hear from casting directors is that they hate montages," he notes. "That's only because they're seeing bad montages. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten my demo reels mailed back to me with notes on them from the casting director saying, 'What a great demo reel!' There's a couple of montages on mine, so if they hate montages, they aren't being bothered by mine." Maynard is quick to note that his montages are short and transitional in nature: "They're fairly brief—not like a five-minute montage. It's, like, 30 seconds."
One requirement of a reel is not debatable: length. The standard is three- to five minutes—shorter is better than longer—for VHS and DVD reels and one minute for online reels—which will likely change as server space gets cheaper. In addition to cutting the full-length reels, Planet Video has begun encoding shorter versions for the web. "A lot of the online services only give you one minute. We edit [the reel] down to one minute and put it in a format that [online services] can use. [Cutting reels for the web] hasn't really impacted us, except that we need to narrow down a reel to one minute. It's another format for the actor to submit themselves," says Conner.
Ubiquity
It would be heartbreaking if you went through all the time and expense of putting a reel together only to end up with one that couldn't be viewed. For all the convenience DVD provides—not to mention the lower price—the format is still not embraced by all casting directors.
"A year-and-a-half ago, maybe one out of 10 people were getting DVDs," says Gressis. "Everyone had VHS, [but] one out of 10 were getting DVDs. Now it is almost 100 percent of both [DVD and VHS]…. I expect a year-and-a-half from now, we'll be seeing a major decline in VHS."
With set-top DVD players virtually everywhere and DVD-ROM drives in most computers, why has it taken so long for reel formats to switch to DVD? "The reason that there's still so much VHS is because of casting and because of certain agents and managers who have a lot invested in VHS," says Gressis. "We're actually now at the point where almost everybody has both."
Homemade DVDs—or at least those copied at home—are part of the reason the industry hasn't fully embraced the DVD format. Explains Potts, "One of my biggest pet peeves with the DVD is, [sometimes] it won't play. They've copied it onto something that's not compatible [with my player], and I don't know what it is—something about the copying and rewriting that doesn't allow us to play on certain DVD players. That's a bummer. I'm not a big fan of VHS, but [it's good] as a backup. You have to have something."
Mangum prefers to view and store actors' reels on her computer. Using online services such as www.speedreels.com or www.kwikreel.com, she's able to stream the reels onto her computer and send them to potential clients. "I prefer to look at an actor's reel online," she says. "It allows me to look the reels that I would like to view. I can also keep reels on my computer without having to store them. I'm on my computer everyday, like most people; I'm more likely to view a reel online than watch a DVD, unless I requested an actor's reel. It just takes less time."
It's About You
Most actors will have multiple opportunities to build and refine their reel. The task of putting the reel together can help you examine your work and better understand your talents. "The reel is a tool, not a short film," says Gressis. "The reel is not necessarily meant to entertain the casting people—hopefully you entertain them—but the whole point is that the reel is de-contextualized by nature. Nobody who is watching your reel is going to be into the story of what you're doing. They're going to be looking at what you're doing."
Maynard advises, "Try to be very honest with yourself about what your best material is, and keep those scenes absolutely as brief as possible. That's one of the hardest things—for an actor to be honest with themselves about what is good and what isn't. We go both ways. Some of us like everything we do, and then there are some of us who hate watching ourselves so much that it's difficult to decide that something is good enough to include. If you have a hard time deciding, bring somebody else in who can be objective." BSW