While working with Robert Belushi on his reel, we had the opportunity to ask a handful of well known industry casting directors what they are looking for in an acting reel. I was surprised at their answer.

When you think of acting reels, a common structure is as follows:

- 10-20 second montage of the actor doing a bunch of really cool action movements over

- 10-15 minutes of every single scene [actor] has ever been in, ever. The more the better!

- Hip mini-montage transitions between each scene.

- 5-10 seconds of [actor] preforming dramatic head turns, often slowed down for additional emotional emphasis.

This is wrong.

Rob and I learned that casting directors are looking for something incredibly basic and to the point. They are looking for:

- Title card with the actor’s name + AFTRA/SAG indicated if applicable.

- 4-6 minutes of the actor’s best and most recent scenes they have, 1-2 seconds of black in-between each scene. Quick fade in/fade out, that’s it.

• The shorter the better. If you only have three minutes of great footage, just keep it at three minutes. That’s okay! Six minutes is the absolute max, and that’s if you simply must have everything. A five minute max is preferred.
• Make sure the scenes are recent; five years old is the age cut-off for footage. Casting directors aren’t just looking at how you act, they also want to see what you currently look like. If you had a fantastic death scene in a $50 million feature film 10 years ago when you were 95 pounds lighter and had blond hair instead of black, they don’t want to see that. They want to see you now.

- Title card with the actor’s name + any additional information they may wish to provide, such as representation info, repeat of “AFTRA/SAG”, etc.. Keep it simple, keep it on one card.

How easy was that? Well, it was actually really hard. Rob had so many great scenes to choose from, but he was a pro at working with me to select his best, most recent ones. As an editor, I have to admit it’s difficult to resist the temptation to show off by creating mind-blowing 3D graphics of Rob’s name exploding into diamonds, inter-cut with emotionally charged montages littered with dramatic head turns dissolved together with the latest transition plug-ins, but we held true.

The casting directors let us in on another little secret, called the minute-reel. This is a one minute version of the actor’s reel which shows simply 1-2 of the best examples of their work. Resist the temptation to go over 60 seconds. Why? Casting directors do this for a living and can easily tell if someone can act in 60 seconds or less. They often ask for an e-mailable 60 second version of your reel, and thus an actor should be ready with one. With Rob, all we had to do was take his first two clips from his longer reel and slap some slates on the head and tail of it. Voila! A 60 second reel.

http://www.rcediting.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Robert-Belushi-One-Minute.mov

If you ever get stuck while making a reel and can’t decide which direction to go in, simply picture yourself as a casting director who watches 50 of these a day. Are the dramatic montages going to help you decided? No. Do you want to waste 60 seconds per reel on cool montages that mean nothing to you but make the editor look good? Maybe if you were looking for an editor. Keep it basic, keep it clean, and chances are the Casting Directors of the world will thank you and hopefully hire your actor simply for being a breath of fresh air.