Feedback on Demo Reels (Revisited)

Lots of feedback on the Demo Reels (Revisited) article. Here’s a sampling of the emails I received.

My wife and I both read your column and think the world of your common sense. Honestly, that’s all it is sometimes in this business — common sense (and talent, and a million other things).

Thank you for two particular points you made regarding demo reels. I’ve edited a few reels for friends (and friends of friends) and I cannot believe some of the choices they want made. I’m going to give any prospective client a copy of this article and point them to two things in particular.

1. Make the scene about you. Editors for big TV shows usually cut around their stars, not you. If I cannot re-edit this footage to make you the star, please be satisfied with a shorter version of the clip or great-looking montage material. A good reel editor can work magic, but only with the footage they’re given.

2. Sound! This really applies to a lot of actors with student film copy. Actors: student filmmakers are LEARNING how to make films, and tend to overlook sound. What you get is a great-looking, yet empty-feeling footage. So get creative. Suggest to your editor adding a little “jukebox noise” or dogs barking in the background to flesh out the picture.

Thanks again.

Awesome points. Thank you! Not a big fan of the montage, myself, but I absolutely get your point about using the material you’re given. And, right back to a statement I made a couple of years ago on this: Don’t rush to get your reel together if what you really need to be working on is building your resumé to include roles large enough to yield good tape!

GREAT article about demo reels! I just had to mention that you probably saw the work of David Manship (at what used to be Phase-L Productions) if you saw scenes re-edited to feature a non-starring actor. He is legendary for doing that. In fact, he’s the only editor I know of who specializes in doing that for actors and he has taught the editors in his shop to do the same. The same is true of getting the best quality source material. He’s the man! Most of the other edit houses in town order their airchecks from him as he does digital airchecks of everything on primetime television every night (and has a library of same dating back ten years). Most of his clients are series regulars, guest stars, and award-winning actors who are referred by their top-flight agents and managers, but he does take on some actors who are newer to the business.

And YES, DVDs are now the way to go. They do DVDs at his shop with multi-menus that allow you to put additional scenes or other types of work (singing, commercials, etc.) on the same DVD as your acting demo and it’s all very sophisticated. You can even have your picture/resumé on there, too. He doesn’t recommend a montage (he thinks it’s a way for an editor to make lots of money on actors when casting directors don’t really want to see a montage) but will use a montage as the menu screen for your DVD if you have one and you’d like it seen. Also, he often uses the menu screen as the location for the contact information for the talent’s representation. That way, before the demo starts and as soon as the demo ends you return to the main menu that includes the talent’s contact info. Obviously I’m a very happy customer, but I would aver that there are probably hundreds of us out there.

Excellent! I love hearing about people who are providing creative alternatives to the basic delivery methods usually associated with actors’ promotional material. Sure, there can be a downside to being an early adopter of “cutting edge” actor marketing tools (*ahem* Business card-sized demo reel CDs, anyone?), but this seems like a great example of getting known early on for being the go-to guy on the nonlinear demo reel presentation method.

I’m in an MFA program right now and we’re starting to plan for our showcase next year. I read your take on the DVD demo reel. My class has had a discussion about doing a demo reel of our class. The basic format of the submission would be a packet of resumés, headshots, and a DVD. The DVD would have headshots and resumés also, and roughly two to three minutes of each actor (it’d be set up so the agents or CDs could pick whose they watched and not have to fast forward through everything). What is your take on a giant group demo?

Group submissions of any kind have their potential pitfalls. Because there is little to assure that each actor is of the same level, talent-wise, it’s a risk to some extent. Even if there are a bunch of excellent actors on the DVD, if my overall impression is “Eh, needs some work,” about anyone, that could extend to my opinion of most actors on the DVD. Of course, you do have some “quality control” simply because you’re all actors of the same MFA program (but even you know you aren’t all at the same level, I’d imagine).

I love the idea of a DVD showcase of actors, but I worry that the length of the overall DVD might be a problem. When industry turns out for a showcase, it’s a commitment of a few hours. We show up for cocktails and snacks and schmoozing first, then watch a (hopefully short) show, then do more schmoozing. We know we’re committed to a block of time away from the office, phones, and current projects. But when a DVD arrives at our desk, you’re basically asking us to stop what we’re doing so that we can watch it. Not so much of a problem with a two-minute demo reel… but with a full-length showcase DVD? Even if it rocks (and even though we can choose to watch one scene now and another later and so on), we may look at the overall time commitment as something we can’t spare, during the workday.

So, while I think it’s a great idea in theory, I worry that in practice it might now go over so well. But who knows?!? It may be brilliant and it may change the way league schools showcase their actors every year from here on out… but it’s hard to know what the industry’s reaction to anything “new” is going to be until you’ve put it out there for the sampling.

Good luck to you! Let me know how it goes over.


Bonnie Gillespie is living her dreams by helping others figure out how to live theirs. Wanna work with Bon? Start here. Thanks!


Originally published by Actors Access at http://more.showfax.com/columns/avoice/archives/000637.html. Please support the many wonderful resources provided by the Breakdown Services family. This posting is the author’s personal archive.

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