Aaron Marcus walks through five ways to build an acting reel from scratch: find local filmmakers on Facebook, make your own short videos, audition for student films, join independent film groups on Meetup, or use a recorded monologue as a backup plan.
In this video, I'm going to be sharing with you 5 amazing ways to create an acting reel, even with no experience. And watch this to the end. I have a really good bonus video for you. It's this one huge mistake almost ruined a great headshot session. Okay, let's get started. Hi, I'm Aaron Marcus, and welcome to the Acting and Modeling Quick Tips channel and the Actor Career Center. Uh, I'm a little bit dressed up. A lot more than usual for this quick tip video. I just finished shooting an on-camera narration audition and I thought, hey, I look nice for this one. So having an acting reel can be really helpful to actors. Look, do you have to have one, especially when you're first getting started? No, you don't have to. It is helpful. It really is. And that way people can get a chance to see more of what you have done and what you can do. But here's the tricky part. What, what do you do if you don't have any experience and you haven't done any TV commercials or film or television projects? So here are 5 great ways of trying to create a reel. So number one, you should go to Facebook. Facebook is a great place to do searches, and what you want to search for are filmmakers in your area. Perhaps there are plenty of people who are shooting independent films, and they are always looking for actors, and this is a great way to connect with them and audition, and hopefully you can shoot something with them that can be used in your reel. Number 2, you can try, if you have these kinds of skills or contacts, to create your own content. Maybe you're also a writer. Maybe you can write a short screenplay. Maybe it can be, you know, 5 minutes long. Or perhaps you can get together with fellow creatives And maybe there's somebody who can shoot things for you. Maybe there's somebody else who can help with lighting, somebody with sound. Maybe you can find some other actors. Look, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, that's how they created their first major film. It was their project, and they wrote, they wrote information that really played to their strength. So anyhow, That's another option for you. Third option, student films. Now, one of the ways that you can go about trying to audition and hopefully get booked in a student film is to look into colleges, universities, or community colleges in your area. Go to the art department. So you're doing all this online and see who is teaching film classes. Now the film classes that are talking about, you know, history of American film, that doesn't make any difference to you. But what you do want to look for are classes where students are actually shooting shorts for their class. Then what you do is you contact the instructor. You can send them a headshot and resume, assuming you have one, and say that you're really interested in auditioning for a student film. That is a great way. And look, for all these things, the worst thing that can happen is the film is horrible, you can't use anything. Still, you have gotten some experience in front of a camera. Best case scenario, there are small snippets that you can take and start creating a reel with. And the best case scenario, the director is great, and the director goes on and starts doing bigger projects, and he or she liked what you did. And maybe you'll continue to work with that director. There are a number of famous actors who got started that way. Number 4, there's a really good online program. It's called Meetup, meetup.com. And I'll leave any links for you both in here in the description. And what you can do is go to meetup.com and find and do a search. Once again, it might be for filmmakers, Maybe it's screenwriters, other people that could potentially help you put together some kind of short project and start auditioning. And hopefully you can find somebody there. The other is there's an organization, it's an independent film group. And once again, I'll leave the link for you and you can do a little research and find out if there are any members in your particular area and reach out to them. Now, I have heard of some people who will record a monologue and use that as part of their reel. I guess in the worst-case scenario, I mean, that's— I guess that's better than having nothing. I can tell you that most of the casting directors that I've spoken to really don't like that just because they want to see what you look like in an actual project. So that's what I would suggest doing, you know, and only use it as a last resort. If you haven't done this yet, don't forget, subscribe, click the notification bell. If you like the video, give it a thumbs up. That's always very helpful. And most importantly, please share the link with your fellow actors through social media, through emails, so we can continue to build a channel where actors are helping each other. I did promise I was going to share another video, uh, with you. Here's the link right up here, and it's all about this one mistake that almost ruined a great headshot session. I'm Aaron Marcus, and I can't wait to talk with you again soon. See ya.
