demo reels
A good demo reel is one of the most important tools in any industry professional’s toolbox. Your reel sells you as an actor, a host, a director- anyone who needs to make a big impression in a short time. Casting directors, producers, and agents watch thousands of reels, and having a professionally edited reel will help you stand out from the pack right away.
We at Joe’s Reels are industry leaders in reel editing. Our editors have been cutting reels for over ten years, have been nominated for three Emmys, and been twice named BEST DEMO REEL EDITORS by Backstage magazine. Let us help you create the best demo reel possible!
We at Joe’s Reels are industry leaders in reel editing. Our editors have been cutting reels for over ten years, have been nominated for three Emmys, and been twice named BEST DEMO REEL EDITORS by Backstage magazine. Let us help you create the best demo reel possible!
getting started
Making your reel with Joe’s Reels is quick, painless, and fun! We follow four simple steps to building and maintaining a reel that will launch your career:
Step 1 – Organizing Your Material
What should be on your reel?
Step 2 – Preparing Your Media
How do you get your clips to the editor?
Step 3 – Editing Your Reel
You’re prepared and ready to edit!
Step 4 – Updating Your Reel
Your reel got you a gig! Now to add that work to your reel.
Extra Advice
Find even more in-depth tips here.
Step 1 – Organizing Your Material
What should be on your reel?
Step 2 – Preparing Your Media
How do you get your clips to the editor?
Step 3 – Editing Your Reel
You’re prepared and ready to edit!
Step 4 – Updating Your Reel
Your reel got you a gig! Now to add that work to your reel.
Extra Advice
Find even more in-depth tips here.
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organizing your material
CLIPS: For actors: As best you can, try and find clips where your acting is good but also where you’re driving the scene. You can drive it as the crying prisoner or as the hard-nosed detective, as the cheerleader or as the nerd. Try to find scenes where you are the center of the action. Where you’re active, even if you’re just sitting around.
If your demo is of the non-scripted variety: Try to find clips where you are making good TV happen. If you ask a brilliant question that provokes a powerful answer, or if you do something that makes people say, “I never thought of that before,” or better yet, “I’ve never seen that before,” bring that stuff in.
Actors or non-scripted folk have no fear, though, we will help you make the best selections. Just narrow it down for us.
ONE-LINERS: If you get a laugh, make a great statement, button a long passage with an articulate zinger, and you do it in a clip that only takes a couple of seconds, mark it down and bring it in. One-liners can be used as transitions, introductory elements, and as energizers throughout your demo.
MONTAGE SHOTS: Not everyone needs or wants a montage, and some people just don’t like ‘em. One thing for sure – no montages at the top of the reel. If you have one it will be at the end. But that being said, there are many reasons you might want to have a montage: you are a super sexy model type and want to focus in on your good looks, a character actor who plays a wide variety of roles with a lot of different looks, or if you have a good amount of emotional moments that aren’t shown in your scenes. Good montage images are any shots where the camera is mainly on YOU and you’re NOT talking. You could be laughing, crying, fighting, looking foxy, turning away from the camera, canning peaches, etc. Keep it in mind, it might be useful.
If your demo is of the non-scripted variety: Try to find clips where you are making good TV happen. If you ask a brilliant question that provokes a powerful answer, or if you do something that makes people say, “I never thought of that before,” or better yet, “I’ve never seen that before,” bring that stuff in.
Actors or non-scripted folk have no fear, though, we will help you make the best selections. Just narrow it down for us.
ONE-LINERS: If you get a laugh, make a great statement, button a long passage with an articulate zinger, and you do it in a clip that only takes a couple of seconds, mark it down and bring it in. One-liners can be used as transitions, introductory elements, and as energizers throughout your demo.
MONTAGE SHOTS: Not everyone needs or wants a montage, and some people just don’t like ‘em. One thing for sure – no montages at the top of the reel. If you have one it will be at the end. But that being said, there are many reasons you might want to have a montage: you are a super sexy model type and want to focus in on your good looks, a character actor who plays a wide variety of roles with a lot of different looks, or if you have a good amount of emotional moments that aren’t shown in your scenes. Good montage images are any shots where the camera is mainly on YOU and you’re NOT talking. You could be laughing, crying, fighting, looking foxy, turning away from the camera, canning peaches, etc. Keep it in mind, it might be useful.
preparing your media
Your media will generally be of two flavors – digital files and DVDs – so let’s start with those. First, find your scenes and notate the time code. If it’s ten minutes and seventeen seconds into the DVD, your counter will read 0:10:17. There will always be a time counter whether it’s a stand alone DVD player or a digital file like a QuickTime movie. Using the timecode information, make a list that looks something like this:
You can source your material yourself or often we can source it for you. If you have source material on YouTube, iTunes or the like, chances are we can find a way to get it for you. So don’t worry about it and mark your timecode as normal.
Some notes on digital files: try to use QuickTime, it’s the easiest for us to work with. If you want to get all technical and stuff, create a QuickTime with a ProRes, H.264, or Avid codec.
• Not recommended: raw MPEG, .WMV (Windows Media), or Flash. If you have a file in one of these disfavored formats and you absolutely can’t get it any other way, we can try to work with it, but results won’t be guaranteed and you’ll have to pay for the time spent figuring it out. We’re super smart like robots from the future, but even the Terminator had trouble finding Sarah Connor.
TIVO or DVR: If you have something recorded on a TiVO or other DVR, bring in the box – yes, the whole box and the remote control- and we can transfer your scenes directly from your unit into our computer. Just cue up your scenes basically as described above. DVRs are usually very good about providing time code so making your list will be easy.
TAPE and OTHER FORMATS: We can use MiniDV and DVCAM. We cannot use other tape formats you probably aren’t using anyway. We’d be more than happy to recommend a place to have these formats transferred if you’re interested, just give us a call.
- Goodfellas DVD – 0:10:17 – I kick Robert DeNiro in the nuts then do a monologue.
- Monkey Trouble .MOV – 0:35:15 – I slap a trained monkey. He slaps me back.
- iCarly YouTube video – 0:55:12 – I take a pull on a cigar and scowl. I look awesome.
- Flags of Our Fathers DVD – 1:22:13 – I pour a milkshake over Clint Eastwood’s head.
You can source your material yourself or often we can source it for you. If you have source material on YouTube, iTunes or the like, chances are we can find a way to get it for you. So don’t worry about it and mark your timecode as normal.
Some notes on digital files: try to use QuickTime, it’s the easiest for us to work with. If you want to get all technical and stuff, create a QuickTime with a ProRes, H.264, or Avid codec.
• Not recommended: raw MPEG, .WMV (Windows Media), or Flash. If you have a file in one of these disfavored formats and you absolutely can’t get it any other way, we can try to work with it, but results won’t be guaranteed and you’ll have to pay for the time spent figuring it out. We’re super smart like robots from the future, but even the Terminator had trouble finding Sarah Connor.
TIVO or DVR: If you have something recorded on a TiVO or other DVR, bring in the box – yes, the whole box and the remote control- and we can transfer your scenes directly from your unit into our computer. Just cue up your scenes basically as described above. DVRs are usually very good about providing time code so making your list will be easy.
- MAKE SURE YOU BRING IN YOUR POWER CABLE AND REMOTE CONTROL as these boxes are useless without the remote.
- TiVOs and DVRs are a mixed bag. They work the vast majority of the time but the technology is always changing and sometimes they are uncooperative. Keep that in mind.
TAPE and OTHER FORMATS: We can use MiniDV and DVCAM. We cannot use other tape formats you probably aren’t using anyway. We’d be more than happy to recommend a place to have these formats transferred if you’re interested, just give us a call.
editing your reel
So now that we have the pieces, what can you expect when we put them together? There are basically two ways to make a reel. Choose your approach.
THE JOE’S REELS APPROACH – We edit and design the demo to a rough draft, then client and editor tweak it together until you, the client, are happy with the finished product.
YOUR APPROACH – You design your demo, and we do the editing. If you have editing experience, or are very confident in your ideas – this is the choice for you. You come up with all the ideas and we work the magic editing box.
You’re probably thinking “Hey, can we do a little bit of both approaches? You know, collaborate?” Sure we can, but we don’t recommend a collaborative approach in the rough editing phase. It doesn’t get you results that are any better and it always takes a lot more time and, therefore, money.
Here’s an article Joe wrote for Backstage West outlining the Joe’s Reels philosophy:
The vast majority of clients choose the Joe’s Reels approach because we provide an objective eye. We have edited every kind of demo reel there is – our experience is deep, our judgment is good, and our results are proven. Don’t be scared, we never force our opinions on you and we promise that you’ll never walk away unhappy.
Once the editing is done, we can make you a watermarked screener QuickTime so that you can show it to friends, family or representation. Your digitized material will be left on the computer in case you want to make further changes. After that, your demo is put into our digital archives so it can be retrieved and updated at a later time.
THE JOE’S REELS APPROACH – We edit and design the demo to a rough draft, then client and editor tweak it together until you, the client, are happy with the finished product.
YOUR APPROACH – You design your demo, and we do the editing. If you have editing experience, or are very confident in your ideas – this is the choice for you. You come up with all the ideas and we work the magic editing box.
You’re probably thinking “Hey, can we do a little bit of both approaches? You know, collaborate?” Sure we can, but we don’t recommend a collaborative approach in the rough editing phase. It doesn’t get you results that are any better and it always takes a lot more time and, therefore, money.
Here’s an article Joe wrote for Backstage West outlining the Joe’s Reels philosophy:
The vast majority of clients choose the Joe’s Reels approach because we provide an objective eye. We have edited every kind of demo reel there is – our experience is deep, our judgment is good, and our results are proven. Don’t be scared, we never force our opinions on you and we promise that you’ll never walk away unhappy.
Once the editing is done, we can make you a watermarked screener QuickTime so that you can show it to friends, family or representation. Your digitized material will be left on the computer in case you want to make further changes. After that, your demo is put into our digital archives so it can be retrieved and updated at a later time.
updating your reel
So now you have an awesome demo reel but you just booked a kick-ass part onTrue Detective as a jive-talking therapist, or perhaps you’ve been hired to interview celebs at the red carpet premiere of Indiana Jones 6: Revenge of Short Round. You want to put your new stuff on your reel. What happens now?
We keep everything in a digital archive for just such purposes. You can edit your new stuff into your old reel seamlessly and without any quality loss because storing data digitally allows us to start editing right where we left off the last time, whether it’s been one week or one year since we saw you last. This also means you don’t have to bring back the files or DVDs we dealt with in previous edit sessions. Just bring in the new footage.
There is no extra charge to keep your demo in our archives. We love you guys that much. However, hard drives are fickle beasts and it’s possible that your files might fail in between sessions so make sure to keep copies of your material also.
We keep everything in a digital archive for just such purposes. You can edit your new stuff into your old reel seamlessly and without any quality loss because storing data digitally allows us to start editing right where we left off the last time, whether it’s been one week or one year since we saw you last. This also means you don’t have to bring back the files or DVDs we dealt with in previous edit sessions. Just bring in the new footage.
There is no extra charge to keep your demo in our archives. We love you guys that much. However, hard drives are fickle beasts and it’s possible that your files might fail in between sessions so make sure to keep copies of your material also.
extra advice
That’s the basics of how we do things. Need more? Check out these links to videos and articles we have done over the years:
Why You Need a Reel!
What Should Be On My Reel?
From the Top!
Why You Need a Reel!
What Should Be On My Reel?
From the Top!