Showreel Tips
The purpose of your showreel is to show as much about your emotional range as possible. However, industry professionals have an endless list of Showreels overflowing in their inboxes, so you need to be economical with their time and show as much about yourself in as quick a space of time as possible.
This means every line of dialogue you deliver and every reaction must show something else about your emotional range. In a showreel, two lines delivered in the same way, is one wasted opportunity to show something new about you as an actor.
It doesn't matter if it's a lovely truthful, interesting delivery, once you've shown it once, you don't need to show it again. A helpful exercise, is to plan your showreel in 20 second sections. Imagine every 20 seconds, in order to retain the viewers attention, there needs to be a dynamic shift in your performance.
If you already have a showreel, watch it back and try to work out if you're showing something different roughly every 20 seconds. If you're not, chances are your showreel isn't as emotionally dynamic as it could be. Remember, if it's not in your showreel, the casting director doesn't know you can do it. Most actors have a much more expansive emotional range than their showreel suggests.
Don't sell yourself short, be specific, and prepare your performance with intention. We know it's difficult to be an authority on your own work as an actor, so if you need help with this, drop us a DM and we can tell you how to improve your showreel immediately.
Having a showreel filled with your accent repertoire may be impressive, but it is the wrong priority as an actor starting out in the industry.
“Starting out” = less than 10 professional TV or Film credits.
Statistically, it is so unlikely that you will work (in TV and Film) in a different accent, until you have established yourself beyond those first 10 credits. Vocal/character versatility is impressive, and often considered the pinnacle of an actor's craft, but you aren't going to be up for the same roles as Timothée Chalomet right away. Even if you're capable of it!
Your showreel needs to be an example of how you can be cast now and not in ten years time. Casting directors need to see your immediate value, not your career ambition. This strategy feels counterintuitive to our desires as actors, but it's what gets results.
If you really want to show off your accent repertoire, simply use the voice reel feature on Spotlight and upload a short clearly labelled audio clip for each accent you can do. For theatre and voiceover castings, this allows the casting team to find what they're looking for as easily as possible.
It also means you don't need to keep paying for new showreel scenes for every new accent you've learned. Keep your showreel focussed on a core set of characters you could be cast as immediately and only on emotional versatility. Accents, like other skills, have their place, but keep them separate from your video CV.
Most casting directors will click on the first video that catches their eye: usually the one in the top-left corner of your Spotlight page, because this is the obvious place for an actor to put their best work and psychologically where the first place the brain is drawn to.
Industry professionals don’t have the time to sift through 45 minutes of footage, no matter how impressive it is. You're judged on your first/main clip, not how many clips you have. There are no points for having the most footage: only for having the most effective.They shouldn’t need to even click on a second video, let alone another 15, to get a full understanding of you as an actor. Set yourself a limit of just 3 standout scenes to make up your showreel.
This forces you to prioritise quality and ensures every scene is different, dynamic, and highlights something new about you as an actor. Edit those three scenes into one continuous showreel and upload to that prime time top left spot. You can upload each scene separately underneath and label via genre/Character Archetype but keep that full showreel as the standout video.
Seeing your full video cv should be as easy as one click. Think of your Spotlight page as a shopfront: it should look professional and polished. Aim for the sleek simplicity of an Apple Store: minimal high value products on display - not the clutter of a bargain bin: a chaos of low value products on display.
Remember, your aim is to deliver maximum impact in minimal time, not overwhelm with quantity. Design your showreel and spotlight page with intention and you will see results.
Casting Directors and Agents don't learn anything about you as an actor if your showreel is you looking moodily into the distance to sad music.
As an actor, your showreel should showcase you and your ability to evoke emotion and connect with the viewer. Focus on using your emotional range to impact the Casting Director, not distracting them with loud or competing music, which can shift focus away from your line delivery.
Music in film is used to manipulate the audience's feelings: in your showreel you should rely solely on your acting to do that. Because that's what they're looking for: an actor with the ability to bring a compelling script off the page with a dynamic display of emotional range.
Remember: they're interested in your acting, not production quality. Keep it simple and authentic. Trust that your acting is enough to get you saved on file.
1. What has just happened before the scene?
2. What happens in the scene?
3. What is your character's objective in the scene? (what do they want from the other person)
4. Does their objective change throughout the scene?
5. What is the obstacle preventing them from achieving their objective? (Physical or Internal)
6. What is at stake if they do not achieve their objective?
7. How does your character feel about the other character in the scene?
8. Does it change?
9. What is your characters' opinion on everything the other character says and does?Casting directors need to see how you interact with other actors, not just deliver lines on your own. While monologues might show off a one-take performance, they make it hard to demonstrate your ability to move from moment to moment naturally because you're self-generating the entire scene.
If you’ve trained at drama school, you may have experienced an exaggerated emphasis on monologues. In reality, monologues are a niche acting medium and are rarely used in TV or film. The roles you’ll be auditioning for will almost always involve interacting with other characters in a scene.
Acting is about listening and reacting—arguably more than speaking—and monologues don’t showcase this essential skill. Think of it like tennis: hitting a ball against a wall may be more controlled, but the real excitement comes from two players reacting to each other's shots. It’s the same with screen acting.
Duologues let casting directors see how you engage with another actor, create chemistry, and adapt in real-time. This dynamic interplay makes your performance feel alive, demonstrating your ability to collaborate and react authentically. Showcasing your reactions and emotional shifts should take priority over self-generated line delivery.
That doesn’t mean your favourite monologue is useless. Add it as a bonus clip on your Spotlight page, but keep your main showreel focused on scenes that highlight your interactions with other actors. Your showreel should reflect the type of work you’re auditioning for.
Your first attempt doesn’t need to be the Wimbledon final, but it should still show you playing the full game. Don’t sell yourself short by showing only 50% of what an audience wants to see.
After reviewing over 2,000 showreels, the most common mistake we see is actors trying to showcase too many characters too soon.
This happens because many actors view Archetypal versatility as the ultimate goal of their craft. However, this level of range is typically associated with actors at the peak of their careers. While it’s admirable to aim high, communicating your ten-year career ambition is not an effective strategy if your goal is to book work now.
Showreels have an unspoken time limit of just a few minutes to leave an impression. Trying to cram in numerous characters often forfeits any emotional depth. It might feel safer to showcase a broad range of characters, but this strategy dilutes your personal brand.
Your showreel is your video CV. Like any good CV, it should highlight profound competence in one area, rather than scattered examples of limited ability across multiple areas.
A generic CV listing limited ability for ten different skills won’t land a job in any one field. However, a focused CV showcasing mastery in a specific skill is far more likely to get you hired. This principle applies across all industries.
The Jack of all trades can apply for more jobs, but the Master of One is never out of work.
While casting a wide net might intuitively feel safer because it keeps more options open, the truth is, you’re not showcasing exceptional talent in any one role, so you're not really being considered for any of them. For every character in your showreel, there will be someone else presenting more depth and nuance for that specific role.
Most successful actors start their careers by focusing on 1-3 Archetypal roles and showcasing they can add more emotional depth to these characters than anyone else. Their first few credits can often be attributed to a clear and consistent personal brand that made their talents visible to the industry.
To make yourself more visible:
1. Limit your showreel to no more than three characters.
2. Choose scenes that allow you to display significant emotional depth for each one.
3. Be patient. Don't change it every few months. If your branding is strong, they'll see you.
Your character's job role... shows nothing about your acting.
The costume you wear.... shows nothing about your acting.
The location your scene is set in... shows nothing about your acting.
The time period of your scene.... shows nothing about your acting.
The lenses on the camera.... show nothing about your acting.
All of the above examples may be the most exciting details to choose when creating your showreel, but they are one dimensional. Showreels that prioritize one dimensional things, don't get actors results.
This is like focusing on the icing before you've even baked the cake. The icing might be the tasty bit, but no one wants to eat a big useless pile of icing.
Be disciplined. Before you even think about any of the flashy details, make sure you have a dynamic character arc planned out that prioritises showcasing your full emotional toolkit. An expensive camera is useless, if it captures you delivering every line in the same way.
Once you've done this, you can have fun with environment, time period, costumes, production quality etc. But these details only improve the impact of your showreel when your acting is the main focus.
Don't focus on the icing until you've baked the cake.
Your showreel is a proof of concept for your acting range. Yet many actors have a wider emotional range than their showreel suggests. While they know what they’re capable of, it’s often not reflected in their video CV.
A casting director is not judging you on what you think you're capable of... but what is visible to them in your showreel. If you have a showreel with limited emotional shifts... it looks as though you're an actor with a limited emotional range.
Your showreel is often your first introduction to industry professionals. First impressions count. Don't sell yourself short. Make sure your showreel showcases your full emotional range.
Remember, if you don't show it in your showreel, casting director's don't know you can do it.
Talent remains undiscovered if it isn't visible.
When putting your showreel together, you have to think from an audience's perspective. Every time a scene cuts, it breaks the viewer's attention.
So for example, a showreel with 10 different clips from 10 different scenes, will break the casting director's attention 10 times.
Rather than showcasing 10 different things about you, like you think it’s doing, what it’s actually doing is forcing the viewer to re-invest their attention with every new clip. This will make the nuances of your performance much less digestible.
Solution:
2 to 3 high value scenes with interesting arcs > cramming in as many fast paced low value clips as possible.
It can be very difficult to source good professional scripts that haven’t been overused.
Actors often think they’re being original by choosing scenes from popular shows like Sex Education, Top Boy, & Fleabag. In reality, casting directors have seen these same scenes over and over again, and as a result, you’re setting yourself up for failure by comparison with the original well known performance.
You have to think from a Casting Director’s perspective, imagine if you had to watch 15 versions of the same scene in the space of a day…You’re making your job of communicating your unique value much harder than it needs to be.
Solution:
Always use a brand new script. Written for you, or written yourself.
Manipulate your own scripts to showcase your unique value and you will see results.
Innovation > Imitation
The most important element you need to showcase in your showreel is your emotional range. However, you can’t do this if the character you’re playing in your showreel scene has a limited emotional arc.
Most scripts (hey, not all) but most scripts used for showreels are from TV & Film. The character they are playing usually starts and finishes their scene in a similar emotional place.
For example, if you take a 2 minute scene from an episode of TV, the pace is usually very slow in that one scene because it’s been written to carefully and slowly further an hour long narrative rather than showcase an actors range in 2 minutes.
Solution:
Once again, write your own scripts, or have scripts written for you, with the specific purpose of showcasing your emotional range.
If a script has limited emotional shifts, then there’s a limit to how much value you can show to casting directors…they don’t know you can do something, if you don’t show it.
How long should your showreel be?
1 minute? 2 minutes? 3? 4? 5?
Have you noticed that you get a different answer depending on who you ask?
Too many actors focus solely on the length of their showreel, while the actual content of it takes a back seat. This is crazy, as it’s the content of your showreel that will get you cast regardless of how long or short your showreel actually is.
General advice suggests the 'Less is more' approach is effective...But a 5 minute reel that showcases 10 different qualities about an actor is far more effective than a 2 minute reel that showcases just 1.
Following general advice never gets results. Following a specific strategy, does.
Focus on the specific amount of value you are communicating in the content of your showreel over obsessing about length.
Delivering two lines in the same way in your showreel is wasting an opportunity.
Your showreel is a chance to showcase as much value in as short a space of time as possible. You must be economical with a casting director's time.
Too many actors end up delivering multiple lines with the exact same volume, tone, and intonation. This means you've shown a casting director one quality about yourself in one minute.
This is generally due to one of two things:
1. The actor isn't aware of how they're communicating
2. The actor is solely focused on a truthful performance
Become a better authority on your own work. If you don't watch yourself back over and over again, you can't develop your craft. We are in the business of communication, and successful actors are very aware of how they are communicating at all times.
Focusing on a truthful performance should always be your first priority, but to consistently get cast, you need to find the most interesting way of telling the truth.
Casting directors need to know that you are an actor with unlimited ways of serving the story. That's how the industry defines your job as an actor.
Make sure your performance is engaging from start to finish by varying your tone, delivery, volume etc. Identify how your character's opinion changes on every line.
Find the most interesting way of telling the truth.
There's always another way of delivering a line, you just need to work hard enough to find it.
Find more specificity in your work, and you will see results.
Around 65% of an audience's experience watching film comes from the sound.
We've watched over 2000 showreels and when something feels off - it's usually the sound quality disrupting the audience’s experience.
3/4 showreels have poor sound quality. This is a huge problem holding many actors back, because if the sound quality is off, it's unlikely for an agent or casting director to watch more than 20 seconds.
Why?
Because you're wasting their time. Industry professionals have a never ending list of showreels to get through, so put yourself in their shoes. If the sound quality is poor or inconsistent why would you take this showreel seriously?
Your showreel is an indication of your professionalism as well as your acting ability. They can't learn anything about you if your showreel has glaringly obvious technical issues.
Solution:
Close your eyes and listen to your showreel. Listen to it again. One more time.
Is it clear? If the answer is no, look out for these things:
Audio too quiet
Audio too loud
Audio quality inconsistent
Distracting background music
Audio out of sync with actors
Background noise e.g wind, trains, shouting
Random, inexplicable noises
Some of these things are fixable, some of them mean starting from scratch. If you're not sure, drop us a message and we'll give you our feedback.
Make sure your talent can be heard and you will see results
Both are necessary marketing tools for an actor to have, but at different stages in your career. So what's the difference?
A Showreel is an example of an actor's acting ability or emotional range. This video CV is going to be most valuable to actors looking to get their first 5-10 credits. If you don't have credits to put on your reel yet, the best way to build trust with a casting director is creating a reel that pitches your potential value and showcases as much depth about you as an actor as possible. It should be 2-3 scenes that showcase your emotional range and archetypical value as effectively as possible. This is the truest form of an acting reel.
A Demo reel is going to be most valuable to actors who already have 10+ professional mainstream credits. At this stage, providing social proof of the work you've already been cast in, and how another casting director has already approved your emotional range 10+ times, is the appropriate approach to start landing bigger roles.
It should be a montage of 10+ 20-30 second clips with titles of the credit stamped at the bottom of the screen on each clip. This is the truest form of a credit reel.
A lot of actors aren't making progress in their careers because they are using the wrong type of video CV to market themselves.
For 99% of our followers we would assume that at this stage in your career you need be focusing on creating a Showreel rather than building a Demoreel to pitch your potential value to the industry.
A few scenes that showcase your acting ability effectively > random student film clips & 1 TV speaking role edited together.
It's all well and good investing time and money into creating a showreel to market yourself, but if it sits on your hard-drive gathering dust then it's been a poor investment. You need to make your footage as visible and accessible as possible for an industry professional to find what they're looking for.
Showreel footage is a solution to an industry professionals problem, but you have to know exactly what they're looking for so you know which solution you should lead with when you make contact.
For example, if a casting director is casting for a comedy, it's not particularly economical for their time if you send your full showreel over and they have to sift through 3 minutes of drama footage before they find what they're looking for.
An agent however, will likely want to see as much about your castability and emotional range as possible, so sending your full showreel is going to provide them with the most value.
This is why we would recommend displaying both your showreel and your showreel scenes separately on your Spotlight. This means they have the option to view your full showreel or just the scene they need to see.
A great way to apply for a casting and show your awareness of their casting problem is to attach exactly what will be of value to them straight away at the top of your email, and attach your spotlight link to the rest of your marketing information at the end.
Excellent content will only get you so far, unless you put yourself in the shoes of potential employers and make it as easy as possible for them to see your value. Adopt a strategy that reverse engineers the industry's algorithm and you'll start to get more responses.
If your strategy is general, you'll have general results. The more specific your approach, the more visible you become.
What usually separates two talented actors from each other, is where they find their thoughts on screen.
Most actors (& humans in general) have a natural tendency to find their thoughts from below. This results in the majority of their performance being directed downwards, hiding their full range of emotion from the viewer.
The top 1% of actors, 9 times out of 10, will find their thoughts from above, as they know where the light will be catching their eyes. Showcasing this level of awareness can put you one step ahead of your competition.
If you watch any captivating television or film performances, the actor’s eyes are usually forwards or upwards, meaning what they're doing is being captured by the camera in the top third of the screen.
Make sure your showreel showcases your performance in the top 3rd of the screen, by finding your thoughts from above. This will transform a mediocre performance into an outstanding one.
The first time you step on set, it's easy to feel like a deer in the headlights - especially when you hear the C word for the first time…
Continuity.
What does it mean? & Why does it trip up so many actors?
Essentially, it means you have to do the same thing in each take so that the editor can use various takes to cut the final scene. Continuity mainly refers to your movements in front of the camera. You need to keep these consistent for the scene to be editable.
What it doesn’t refer to (within reason) is your line delivery and your reactions. Any good Director will want you to vary this, and keep exploring and finding new nuances with each take.
Lots of actors get ready for their first take, give it everything, then hear 'cut' and completely forget what they just did. Only to be told by the Director that they did a different movement on every single line.
Nothing brings you out of the moment more than having to remember movements like a robot, and you really don't want your experience on set to just be remembering movements, you can't do this in tandem with giving your best performance.
The best actors always keep it simple, if you don't need to move, then don't. Ultimately, if a movement doesn't add anything to the character's journey, it's unnecessary.
And if you struggle to remember what you just did, it's likely that the movement was disconnected from the character anyway. Unless it's something very specific, less is generally more. Particularly in showreels, as you're being judged on your acting, not how many times or different ways you can move.
Limited connected movements > morris dancing randomly throughout the scene.
Articulation and pronunciation are imperative for an audience to understand and follow the narrative.
Lots of actors who haven't been to drama school struggle with this. However, you don't need to go to drama school to master your articulation, but you must consider the perspective of your audience (casting director, agent, producer, director).
The viewer cannot follow the narrative if they can't understand what you're saying. This isn't about volume, (the microphone can be perfectly pointed to your diaphragm) but if you're misplacing vowels and dropping consonants, the meaning of the line can be missed.
Underline the key words to your line to make sure the meaning is clear to the audience. Pronunciation is in the vowels, so make sure your vowels are accurate
Ensure the character’s point is landed with final consonants, so make sure to nail your T's, D's, B's, P's, & K's.
Don't guess at words that aren't in your vocabulary - do your research.
Don't overdo naturalism. You know what you're saying... but the audience doesn't.
You are being judged on your storytelling ability (you have the context of what's coming next in the scene, they don't), so make sure you're serving the narrative with clarity and specificity.
A lot of actors put a lot of pressure on their close up, thinking it's the most important shot, when actually it should just be seen as one of many different shots used throughout the shoot…
This results in an actor becoming tense and too focussed on staying still. Being “small” or “bringing it down” are not directions you should ever listen to. This can make you hold your breath unnaturally, and all the life in your performance disappears.
It seems obvious, but the most important thing to remember is to breathe. If you're feeling tense, the likelihood is that you're holding your breath.
The camera is a bullshit detector. It loves behaviour. It hates acting.
The easiest way the camera catches you acting is when you stop breathing. It becomes obvious you are an actor trying to be still rather than the character playing their objective.
Your performance doesn't suddenly need to change for the close up, it just means the camera is capturing the nuances behind what you're already doing more intimately.
Stillness and stiffness are two very different things. The best way to find stillness, is to breathe…make sure you are breathing the other actor’s line in to fuel your response.
Breathing is ordinarily subconscious, but start making it conscious when you're putting your reps in front of the camera and you'll forget the camera is even there.
A performance fuelled by breath is an active performance. An active performance is a truthful performance. And a truthful performance makes the camera very happy.
As actors, sometimes we forget that the final cut of a project is not under our control. The director will always have the final say in which of your takes they use.
To try and get every take ‘right’ is the wrong approach. Instead, you need to focus on offering as much variation as you can throughout the shoot.The actors who can change their truth at the drop of a hat, are the actors who find themselves in regular employment.
Your job is not to find one way of telling a story, it is to offer as many different reactions, and line deliveries as possible to maximise the number of usable options in the final cut. This doesn't mean improvised backflips or bursting into song… it means subtle changes to your delivery on every take.
We guarantee your favourite take will not be the same as the directors. It's very difficult to be present in your work, and then be an objective authority on that work after hearing ‘cut’. It's far too much for an actor to think about, which is why we have directors.
Always offer as much variation in your performance as possible. This is the culture working actors adopt. (Remember 99% actors are not regularly employed).
Be engaged in the process, and unattached to the outcome. You don't have to do it all yourself!
All any good actor can do is keep offering different nuanced ways of navigating a character arc with every take. And when one of those takes is confiscated by the director, there's nothing more you can do.
You can't get it wrong, if you can't get it right. So take the pressure off yourself. Have the freedom to be playful and you’ll find your culture as an actor!
Eye contact is one of the most important elements that determine whether a screen acting performance is engaging or not. Our favourite actors do this effortlessly.
But why do so many aspiring actors struggle with this?
Insecurity.
As Tom Hardy once said “you've got to know your shit when you're looking someone in the eye”.
In real life, one of two things will happen when two people hold eye contact with each other for long enough… they’ll fight, or they'll end up in bed together. Subconsciously we all know this, and that's why a lot of actors are too eager to break eye contact in a scene way too early. Yep, it's that deep.
If we look someone in the eye for long enough, it starts to get uncomfortable. But to gain the ability of manipulating the tension in a scene, you need to get past that feeling. You need to love that feeling.
Every time eye contact is held between two characters, the audience feels something, and every time it's broken, that feeling dissipates.
9/10 times if an actor breaks eye contact in their showreel, it's out of insecurity, you need to be in total control of your eye contact.
If in doubt, hold it much longer than feels natural (we can always cut it earlier in post production).
The best scenes we've produced are when the actors break eye contact scarcely, and when they do, they know exactly why they're doing it.
Practice holding eye contact for much longer than is comfortable when you're putting in reps in front of the camera.
Remember, you don't need a reason to hold eye contact. Only one to break it.
Many actors believe that learning your lines in the build up to the day of filming, is all the preparation you need to deliver your best performance, when ultimately this should be the bare minimum.
It is of course vital you learn your lines from back to front and to a point where it doesn’t feel like a memory test when the director calls action. But this means nothing if you haven’t done the necessary preparation into what’s happening for your character in the scene... If your preparation is just learning your lines alone, then it’s very likely you will leave the set feeling you didn’t do your best work.
Knowing your character's backstory and objective is vital to allowing yourself to be fully aware of what’s going on in the scene and understanding your character's intention behind each line.
It’s worth noting as well, that as important as it is to understand your character’s own line’s it’s arguably just as important, to understand the other characters dialogue as well. Ultimately, their dialogue will inform how you’re going to deliver yours.
It’s also important that you map the journey of the scene. Focus on finding those beat changes and those dynamic shifts, where one of the lines completely impacts both characters' objectives in the scene, causing a new emotional shift to occur.
By doing this you will not only gauge a clearer outlay of the emotional journey that your character goes on from start to finish, but it will allow you to find so much more depth and nuance in your performance.
Start with this character work before even attempting to memorise lines, and you will know the scene, not just the dialogue.
A clear understanding of character objective + given circumstances + knowing your lines better than your weekly shop = Top 1% Performance
Holding eye contact with the other character makes the scene about them.
Breaking eye contact makes the scene about your character.
Holding eye contact builds tension, removing it breaks it.
Looking at a characters eyes then lips to eyes again builds romantic tension.
The more a character blinks, the more relaxed they are.
The less a character blinks, the more intense the emotion they are feeling is.
Glazing your eyes over shows the character is not present in this scene.
Looking down communicates lower status.