I have a confession to make. The piece on my reel that I get complimented on the most often, and has opened the most doors, is not from a feature film or a television show, or even a short or webisode. It is a monologue from an out of print play, filmed by a friend late one night in his loft. There was no make-up artist or sound engineer or any of the other things we believe we must have in order to film, just the two of us. We created it for the sole purpose of cutting it into my reel.

Now, if we’re talking about sheer quantity, I had plenty of tape already, and some of it was really high quality studio stuff. I had different looks, a little drama, a little comedy, but I needed a really intense emotional scene because that is part of what I particularly have to sell as an actress. (Claire said it would be like her not having a smart scene. Now you know a little more about how we see ourselves. Me – woman teetering on the verge, Claire – smart.) My reel was missing the type of scene I regularly did in class or on stage, and had done on film as well, but had never received the tape or the sound was terrible or any other of the many possible things that can go wrong went wrong to make that tape unusable.

A demo reel is an interesting thing. It is so important! Often times it is our only way to show our work to people in the industry, and yet we create it in this passive way. We wait to be cast. We wait for the tape. We hope it’s good. We hope we weren’t cut. I am not against people collecting tape from the projects they work on. Of course you should! I just hear so often that people don’t have a reel because they never received the tape or because they don’t like the tape they have. Stop waiting. Identify what is missing from your reel and shoot it! Do it yourself, or with a friend, or use one of the services that has popped up which will write, shoot and edit a scene for you. By all means, make it look good, but the most important thing is your acting. Make sure that it is tape that you will be proud to show. It will be an investment of time, creativity and probably a little money, but I think it is so worth it. You will not only get to show that you can act, but that you can act on film. Your reel is at least as important as your headshot and you would never just wait until someone happened to take a good picture of you to get one of those.

Do I always tell people when they ask what that tape really is from? No, I’ve occasionally said vaguely, “It’s from an Indy I shot last year.” Am I ever ashamed that it is something I shot on my own? No. In fact, I think I will always tell people that I created it from here on out. We are in the midst of a seismic shift. The paradigm of the entertainment industry is undergoing massive changes. Why not show you are one of the enterprising people out there creating your own work? Just think what that says to an agent or manager that you are meeting with. If you can put together your own film shoot, surely you will show up on time and prepared to auditions. Instead of having to tell them how ambitious and creative you are, you can show them.

I don’t think this is just an issue for those new to film and TV. Our reels need to grow and change with us, just as our headshots do. I will leave you with a question. How are you taking control of the impression you make with your materials?

Photo Credit: Eric Rabe (Creative Commons)