Making Your Demo
Choose Your Material
SCENES: Try and find scenes 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. 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-acting 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 hit a particularly cogent part of your presentation that makes people say, "I never thought of it that way," bring that stuff in.
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, montage elements, introductory elements, and as energizers throughout your demo.
MONTAGE SHOTS: Not everyone needs a montage, and some people just don't like 'em. We think it's a good idea to include a montage IF: 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.