F3: Actress Demo Reel

Douglas Villalba

Douglas Villalba

Well-known member
This are a few clips from one of my short films. Andrea Calle, an up and coming actress ask me for some clips for her demo reel. She is always busy, so she never has time to come by and pickup her ProRes HQ clips. I'm getting ready for a feature I'm DPing this week, so I did a quick DaVinci Resolve grading and put it together for her to download.
The actual short film was nominated for directing, cinematography, editing and Andrea won best actress.

Enjoy and let me know what you think.


https://vimeo.com/71331274

 
Hi Douglas, nice looking shots, however the most important thing for an actor's demo reel is dialogue, so you really need to get some dialogue scenes in there. Also the intro plates go for far too long for a demo reel, most casting directors would probably just turn off the video before ever getting to the actual footage, and the director and dop's names shouldn't be title plates (it's meant to be a showcase for the actress, no?). At most, your name and the directors name and the title of the film should be a text overlay in the corner of the frame - to make it clear that the reel is a showcase for your actress.

Hope that helps!
 
I also read somewhere that an actors demo reel should limit or not even have any actors of the same sex appearing in it for the simple and selfish reason that any casting directors etc..watching the reel may end up more interested in the other actor(s).

Obviously if the actor is still building their reel and has limited clips it can be difficult, but perhaps more close ups can be used or over the shoulder shots where any other actress is cut out of frame.

Just a thought and definitely not a hard an fast rule.

Footage looks amazing.
 
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Those are good advises. However those clips are from a short that we made for a festival that required very little dialog. I was nominated for directing, photography and editor, but it was Andrea who won best actress and the $1K that came with it. The production was made with those two girls. The other one had never acted before and I didn't have any help at all. It was shot at a park near by and in my house within 4 hours.

I was supposed to be flying tomorrow to shoot a feature and I didn't have time to put it on HDD and give it to her. I upload it to Vimeo so she can download it later and add the clips she wants to her demo reel. I just took the whole edited short, deleted when ever she was not in it, graded it in Resolve and uploaded it to Vimeo.

If you go to my page, you will see that I don't even have my own demo reel, so I have no idea what a demo reel should include. Your recommendations have inspired me to make my own demo reel. I would really appreciate if you guys take a look at my work on my page, YT and Vimeo and give me ideas on what to use. I would really appreciate it.
 
Nice images. Just my two cents, but when you do a demo reel for an actor it should show their full range. There is a very limited range in this piece for obvious reasons as you have explained. So some clips showing her in other emotional and physical situations would certainly give prospective directors, agents and casting people a better idea of her acting abilities.
Best
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Performer show reels need to grab the casting director by the throat and yell CAST ME!!! They are interested in playing age range, vocal quality, and above all their acting - so a show reel needs to show how they would fit into as many genres as they can. They're not interested in pretty images, they want full body and facial closeups. Close enough to see skin condition, and eyes and teeth.
 
True. I just skimmed it over. Didn't seem like an actors reel at all and without dialogue.
The reel? intro was so long and slow I just wanted to turn it off.
 
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