What Makes A Great Showreel?
Well, thinking of a showreel as your video CV should give you an idea of what's required. Quite simply, a great showreel should demonstrate who you are and what you can do, and all in a relatively short amount of film. Unfortunately that's much easier to achieve in principal than it is in practice!
When creating a showreel it helps to put yourself in the position of the person who'll be watching it; the director, producer, casting director or agent. Think about what will be important to these key people and make sure those are the qualities you focus on. In a Drumbox Training showreel we highlight three key areas; solo, interactive and character.
The solo work will be a piece to camera with just you working from a script, and it's designed to show that you can do the basics of television presenting.
The interactive piece is one in which you work with somebody else. For example it could be a short interview, a vox-pop piece with members of the general public, or perhaps you working in front of a crowd. The key feature is the interaction, since we need to show you playing well with others!
The character piece can be the most daunting, but also it's the most important one. It's designed to let the real you shine through without the aid of scripts or extras, and usually it consists of just you, presenting a subject that you're passionate about. It sounds simple, but in reality it takes just as much preparation to get the character piece right as it does for either of the others.
This isn't everything, however. Once we've got the three main pieces in the can, we create a fourth piece which is an edited montage of the other three, and this goes first on your showreel. It will be around 40 seconds in duration, and its job it to encourage a busy director to watch all of the pieces in full and then, hopefully, get in touch!
As with a great CV, presentation is everything. Your showreel needs to look great on the outside as well as having great footage on the inside. And one final tip; make sure that your accompanying letter has the correct name of the person you're sending it to, it's typed rather than hand-written, and that it's not too cocky. Be warned; a letter telling them you are "the best undiscovered tv talent in the world" may well result in your showreel ending up in the bin, unwatched!
So that's what it takes to create a great showreel.Click here for some showreel examples, and see what we mean.