Every actor has their own idea of what they want their reel to look like. The most important piece of information is the footage needs to be clear and professional looking, it needs to move at a nice pace, and it should show some sort of range. The reel should showcase the actor NOT the editor. Too many bells & whistles, music, slick intros, and wild transitions can be distracting to a Casting Director or an agent and all it does is show off the editor.
Less is more is key when it comes to a reel. You want to show your best work in the shortest amount of time. It's better to have your best performance in the beginning rather than the best credit. If you do an indie film that looks great and shows you off as an actor, by all means that should be the first clip shown rather then one line on Law & Order.
Also, if it is a student film or an unknown indie it is not necessary to have a title card with the name of the film and the character you play. I usually will leave that up to the actor. The idea is to give any industry professional looking at the reel as little as possible to do. You don't want them to have to scroll through the reel from beginning to end to find your contact info.
Some prefer to have their headshot and contact info flanking the reel, in the beginning and the end. Some prefer to have the reel start immediately like Ron Scott's and his contact info will fade in & out throughout the reel so it's not too distracting but enough where a Casting Director or Agent will know they don't have to fiddle with their DVD player or scroll through the reel (if they are watching a web link) to find the contact info.
Ron Scott's Reel - Ron decided to only have his headshot and contact tagged at the end which I believe works well. Since his opening clip is so abrupt it captures your attentions.
Laura Liz Perloe's Reel - Laura's preferred to not have a headshot at all, but have her contact info tagged in the beginning and the end.
She chose her own music to fade in and out at the beginning and end of the reel. Again, it is important for clips to transition smoothly but there are times where no transition works better and you will see that in Laura's commercial reel. It's almost like watching a series of commercials on TV. No transition, just a jump to the next spot.
Donovan Ensemble - a 2 man Vaudville show that they wanted me to edit 2 hours of stage work to a minute
and a half giving it a 1920's sideshow feel, hence the black & white. In the case of Joe & Jonathan's 2 man show called Super Spectacular - this was a taped live theater performance. I will give my input but ultimately it is up to the actor to decide what scenes, and clips they want shown as well as the music, look, feel, and font. Again, I will put my own creative input but ultimately nothing will go on the reel that you don't want and vice-versa. Joe & Jonathan's show was nearly 2 hours of stage footage. Color. Bad sound quality. So we brainstormed together on how to showcase their show, making it seem funny, fast paced but not show producers bad quality footage. Since the show has a 1920's Vaudevillian feel to it, we changed it to black & white/sepia to give it that aged quality. The music i chose was from the era and there is a little sound effect of a scratching record at the beginning & end, again to give it that old style feel. Also, back the those days, movies were silent, and there were rarely any transitions, so we went with it, and took out all transitions to make the jump cuts have the authenticity of a 1920's silent film.
