Hey everyone,
Welcome back. In Part Three of this series we’ll talk about demo reels. It’s the film business. For those of you that really want to get into this, the more tape that you can have, and quality tape, the better. And once you get enough quality material together, you want to cut together a demo reel, and that is going to be able to be used to market you to potential casting directors, directors, etc.

Now, what goes into a great demo reel? Ready? It’s really simple. It’s the money of a scene that you were in. We don’t want to see the whole three-minute scene. We don’t want to see the whole two-minute scene. Honest to God, I want to see about 15 to 20 seconds tops, and that’s it, and then move on to the next clip that you have that shows you in a different light.

If you have three straight scenes where it’s pretty much the same guy, same energy: getting angry or upset, we got that. “But my hair was different.” We don’t care that your hair was different. Doesn’t matter. That part doesn’t matter. We’re trying to find your range, the different types of characters we can see you as. So again, I don’t need a lot of content, in terms of length of scene. “I get it. This is what I do for a living. I hire talent. I get it.” That’s the casting director’s perspective.

So a quality demo reel should be under a couple minutes in my opinion. Three minutes tops, and that’s if you’ve got a lot of wonderful material. You always want to open with the best stuff, of course, right? Don’t bury the lead, as they say. Get it up to the front. And let’s say you have five pieces, three student films that are just okay and two that are really good.

I’m telling you, just use the two really good ones, take the three student film clips out. Maybe cut them together as a little montage with music for the opening. You don’t have to use the acting from it. Maybe the audio was poor or the production value wasn’t up to it, but there’s just this little segment, a nice look of yours, another nice look, that can be just this opening little montage, leading into your name, two quick scenes, out, and that’s it. It lasts a total of 45 seconds or a minute tops, and that’s your demo reel? Yeah.
That’s better than showing them crap and things that are showing them really the same character over and over. Don’t do that. Okay? Hope that helps. There’s a lot more to demo reels, but that’s the most important part to it. Reach out if you have questions too.