Your Showreels

A good showreel can get you work.

And a bad showreel can lose you work.

It is your calling card and directors will hire you (or not) on the basis of your showreel.

So as you can imagine, it’s incredibly important to get it right and this page will tell you the essentials of a good showreel: what you should include and what you should avoid…

A showreel is: two or more short clips from various films or tv where you speak and react in a single language or genre.

So if your showreel is you in a short film, or you talking to camera in a self-tape, or you performing a scene from an acting workshop, then it’s not a showreel at all.

Did you know that on average, a casting director will watch only the first 10 seconds of your showreel?

If it’s just some music over your headshots, or an action scene where you don’t speak… then the casting director will get frustrated and switch off and you will have lost the job.

We cannot stress this enough. The first 10 seconds of your showreel are the most important and must show you acting in a good scene so if you don’t start speaking right from the opening shot, you might as well not apply for the job in the first place.

See here for why this is important.

In the old days actors put together showreels 4 or 5 minutes long or even longer with everything they had in them. And the truth is that CDs rarely, if ever, got to see more than the first 10 seconds or so.

These days it’s different and to show you why, put yourself in the place of a casting director.

Imagine you are a CD for a film and you’re looking for an actor to play someone having an emotional breakdown; and they must speak German.

You get a bunch of showreels to look at. This is what happens.

1. You open the first showreel and see an actor in a dramatic scene; it looks good but when the actor opens their mouth they speak French! You close the video and trash the application because you need a German speaker. (But halfway through the showreel the actor includes a scene in German but the CD never got that far so the actor loses the job.)
2. You open the next showreel and see a montage of the actor and their headshots and then some more music playing and some dramatic scenes of them fighting, running, staring at some bad guys and so on. You haven’t got time to waste so you skip forward and there’s still some fighting so you trash the application. Damn! (The showreel does actually include shows a good dramatic scene but the CD missed it when they skipped forward so the actor loses the job.)
3. You open the next showreel and see the actor in a workshop; the video is grainy and the sound is awful. You need a professional actor with experience so you close the video and move on. (Oh dear, the next shot on the video is of the actor in a well shot emotional scene but the CD stopped the video before they saw it so the actor loses the job.)

   But then…

4. You open the next showreel and the moment it starts you see an actor in a dramatic scene and they’re speaking German as well! You love it and yes, the actor gets the job

So this means you should not have a single showreel; you should have several short showreels, each one showing a particular side of your acting range and when you apply for a job, you link to the most appropriate showreel you have.

For example, you could have these different showreels:

1. A showreel where you are seriously emotional in all the scenes
2. A showreel where you display your action skills
3. A showreel from comedy films where you are hilarious
4. A showreel where you only speak Greek and another one where you only speak English

And so on. Make as many showreels as possible so that when you apply for a job you can attach the showreel which matches the role as close as possible.

If a job asks for a Spanish speaker, send them your Spanish showreel. And if it’s an action film, send them your action showreel.

And of course you can link to one or more showreels in your application email. If the film is a comedy filming in Dutch then by all means you can link to your English comedy showreel and your Dutch speaking dramatic showreel.

And here are the golden rules for all of your showreels.

• Get to the point – the CD needs to see you acting right from the very first frame
• One genre per showreel
• One language per showreel
• Title it – by all means have your name showing on screen (but discreetly of course) and then have a full title card at the end with your name and contact details

Obviously your best ones and that means:

• Scenes with “big name” actors – if you’ve done a scene with Penelope Cruz or Clive Owen then be sure to include it from the beginning
• Scenes with other people – not just you looking mean and moody, but scenes where you’re interacting with other people
• Scenes where you listen and react – you don’t have to speak in all your scenes because acting is often about reacting!
• Well shot scenes from professional productions

Put them up on your Vimeo channel – without password protection!

Again, you can have as many showreels as you like but be sure to link to only the relevant ones in your application!