Often a casting director will only have the time to watch the first few moments of each reel. Your face needs to appear right at the start, and it needs to be your best scene, or the one from the most famous show you’ve worked on. If you’ve worked with a big name celebrity – … Read more
If they’re looking through 50 showreels to find an actor, they won’t appreciate that yours is 5 minutes long. They may not even bother to watch it. They probably won’t even watch the whole thing. Keep it to 3 minutes or less – 3 minutes is a long time on screen. That’s where having a … Read more
That short you starred in at film school ten years ago? You don’t look like that any more. Ditch it. The scene you did that was hilarious even though you’re an extra in the background? Ditch it. Show off your best performances that are recent and represent who you are as an actor now, and … Read more
The footage you choose must be of the highest quality. Each shot needs to be well lit. Each scene needs to be properly scaled to fit in the frame – footage shot on a phone, for example, needs to be sized to fit well with the widescreen clips that come before and after it. Blurry, … Read more
You need to make sure the scenes you include in a showreel feature you. You may need the occasional shot of another actor for the scene to make sense, or for context, but this is YOUR showreel. A casting director may simply skip through your reel, stopping at random points – and if each time … Read more