What Makes Good Showreel Material?
When choosing material for a showreel, it is easy to be drawn towards the most dramatic, emotional or impressive piece you can find.
But that isn't necessarily what makes something good showreel material.
The purpose of the footage is to give casting a useful sense of you on camera: what kind of actor you are, what sorts of characters you might be right for and what you might be capable of.
So, when deciding whether a piece is worth filming, these are the things I would consider.
Could I realistically be cast as this character?
The first question is simple: does the character make sense for you?
That doesn't mean you should only play versions of yourself. Good actors can play people who are very different from them. But there still needs to be something believable about the casting.
Think about your playing age, appearance, energy and the qualities you naturally bring to a role.
One of the great advantages of creating your own material is that you can show casting something they haven't previously seen from you.
If your professional work has mostly involved one kind of character, you can use self-generated material to show another side of what you might be able to play.
But the aim is to expand the picture of you, not simply to show that you can play something completely unrelated.
What does this piece show casting about me?
I think it is useful to think of your footage as a collection of material that builds a picture of the actor.
Every piece doesn't need to demonstrate something completely different. But there should be a reason for including it.
Perhaps one piece shows you in an ordinary, everyday situation. Another might show a darker side. Another might demonstrate your comic ability or your capacity to handle more emotional material.
Before choosing a piece, ask yourself:
What will casting learn about me by watching this?
A showreel isn't a live-action list of everything you've ever done.
Its job is to sell you.
If you have only four pieces of screen work and only one of them is genuinely good, I would much rather see the one good piece than all four.
I understand why actors with limited screen experience often feel they need to include everything. Getting work is difficult, and even footage that didn't turn out particularly well can feel important because the experience itself was important.
But the reel isn't there to celebrate your career so far.
It is a shop window designed to make casting want to look further.
Should the material be ordinary or emotionally dramatic?
I think an ordinary scene is one of the best places to start.
If I see an actor playing a simple, everyday scene with complete conviction, one of the questions that may naturally occur to me is:
I wonder what happens if this actor is forced out of the ordinary?
That gives you a very good reason to include something with greater emotional range.
But it can work the other way too.
A powerful emotional scene can grab someone's attention immediately. If the first thought is, “Wow — that's powerful,” following it with something much more ordinary and understated can be a very good contrast.
The important thing isn't that every reel has to contain a particular amount of emotion.
It's that the different pieces should give casting useful information about you.
A reel made entirely from highly emotional scenes can actually tell casting surprisingly little about how you behave in the ordinary world of television and film.
Equally, a reel that never takes you anywhere emotionally may leave casting wondering what happens when the character is put under pressure.
Good material can answer both questions.
Does the material allow me to do some actual screen acting?
A good piece of writing doesn't necessarily make a good piece of showreel material.
One thing I would be particularly wary of is material where the character spends a lot of time describing how they feel.
That can work perfectly well on stage, where the audience may be too far away to read every small thought and reaction.
On screen, we are much closer.
It is usually far more interesting to see what a character is feeling than to have them explain it.
The same applies to pieces that contain large amounts of dialogue but very little change.
Some of the most powerful moments on screen are completely unspoken. We watch someone hear something, register it, reassess their position and change in front of us. Those moments are one of the great advantages screen acting has over stage acting.
So when looking at a piece of material, don't just look at the words. Look at what is happening to the character while they are saying them.
Does something change?
I particularly like material in which the character is not simply arriving with a fixed position and delivering it.
Television and film are full of moments where someone learns something, realises something, becomes suspicious, changes their mind, sees another person differently or suddenly understands what is really happening.
Those changes give an actor something to play.
They also give the viewer something to watch.
A piece doesn't need a huge plot twist. The change can be very small.
Sometimes it is simply the moment we see an actor realise that what they thought a few seconds earlier is no longer true.
Those moments can be extremely revealing on camera.
Does it work on camera without lots of production around me?
The performance should be the main event.
Be careful with material that depends heavily on props, complicated physical action, elaborate locations, period costumes or a particular visual style.
A period scene can be excellent if the production supports it. But if you're trying to recreate something that clearly needs a much larger budget, the limitations of the production can become more noticeable than the acting.
The same applies to trying to make a small piece look like a blockbuster film.
You don't need casting to be impressed by the production.
You need to give them a clear opportunity to watch you.
The technical side still matters.
Poor sound, distracting backgrounds, bad lighting or framing that makes it difficult to see your face can all get in the way.
Ideally, the technical quality should simply allow the performance to come through without distraction.
How much material should you include?
My broad principle here is:
Convey as much as possible in the shortest amount of time.
Actors are natural storytellers, which can sometimes work against them when making a reel.
They can become concerned with making sure the casting director understands everything that has happened in the scene.
But casting doesn't need the whole story.
They don't need to see your character walk into the room, introduce themselves and establish the situation before anything interesting happens.
They want to see you.
For my own ideal reel, I'd be thinking about roughly three or four different pieces, each around a minute.
That gives you enough time to show different aspects of yourself without asking someone to sit through long scenes.
The exact length matters less than the principle: get to the useful material quickly.
Does each piece add something?
If you have several pieces that all show essentially the same version of you, you probably don't need all of them.
And if you have a weaker piece simply because you feel you need to “fill out” the reel, leave it out.
A strong 60-second clip is more valuable than a weak three-minute clip.
Your reel should not become a catalogue of everything you've done.
It should be a carefully chosen collection of your strongest evidence.
And finally: why are you choosing this piece?
This is perhaps the simplest test.
Are you choosing it because it genuinely suits you and gives you something interesting to play?
Or because it is famous?
Because it has a big emotional breakdown?
Because it makes you look impressive?
Because it is different from anything you've done before?
None of those things is automatically useful.
The best material is usually the material that gives you a strong opportunity to show what you can actually do on camera.
So before committing to a piece, ask yourself:
Could I realistically be cast as this character?
What does this show casting about me?
Does it give me something to play?
Is there something to see happening to the character?
Does it work on camera without lots of production around it?
Does it add something to the rest of my footage?
And perhaps most importantly:
Will this make casting want to see more of me?
That is ultimately what good showreel material needs to do.
Once you've found material that suits you, the next question is whether it should be a monologue or a scene. Monologue or a Scene? Read the article →