An essential tool

A tightly edited showreel can help both a young actor and an established one get more work. Shown the right way, a strong reel opens doors, gets a callback, or lands representation. Like a CV, it’s a living document. It should grow and change as you do.

Showing your best side

If you’re not yet landing big roles, a reel can still highlight what you do have: presence, range, the moments where you’re clearly the strongest thing on screen. Depending on what you’re going up for, a reel can also be built to lean into a specific strength, comedy, drama, presenting work, or stage-trained physicality.

At the end of the day, the goal is to have you come across at your best. That sometimes means being direct about why a sequence isn’t working yet, or how a small change could lift it.

Working with your footage

Footage rarely arrives as one clean file. I’m used to pulling material together from different sources and formats, whether it’s on a drive, downloaded from a shared link, or sitting on a disc, and shaping it into one reel, ready for wherever it needs to live: Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, Vimeo or BBC iPlayer or a broadcaster’s own platform.

The process

Most of the time, I’ll do a first pass on the footage and come back with a suggested running order, then take it from there with your notes. Once the order’s agreed, things move quickly.

A reel should run two to three minutes, five at the absolute most. Long enough to prove your range, short enough that a casting director never has a reason to stop watching.

Getting it out there

If you need help setting up or uploading to a YouTube or Vimeo profile, that’s part of the service too, just let me know.