SonicPond can provide you with a professional, fully edited showreel. We can convert your material from most online digital formats, DVD, mini DV, VHS, and edit your clips digitally to provide you with a dynamic, 3-5 minute showreel that
promotes you to the full. If you let us know in advance, we will even record episodes for you on their TX date, for inclusion on the reel.
The format for the showreel
will usually consist of 3-5 scenes, finished with your contact details and headshot(s) to finish off the
reel. Opening montages have gone heavily out of fashion with Casting Directors in the last year or two - the common complaint being that they get bored 'waiting to see you act'. But we can include one if preferred. A short montage, 20 seconds long maximum, with dialogue included, can be a decent middle ground.
Any material provided on older videos can be cleaned and
spruced using video cleaning technology in order to bring it closer to the quality of
your DVD material. (see below). All graphics, effects, transitions etc are included as standard.
The finished product will be provided for you on
DVD, if required, and on the format most suitable for
inclusion on your Spotlight page. We will also upload a version straight onto
Vimeo for you (the site often prefferd by film makers these days). We can also provide you with your finished
showreel in any digital format (AVI, MP4, WMV, MOV etc), at any resolution or bitrate,
for you to include on any website for streaming. Mandy, CastNet, CastWeb and Spotlight all have specific and different requirements for the size and resolution of video, and we will tailor make any digital specification needed, for only a small extra cost, as well as assist you in painlessly uploading the files successfully. Provide us with your Spotlight Update PIN, and we will be happy to put your new reel straight onto your profile for you, at the best possible quality, at no extra cost.
As an optional extra, if you would like us to permanently host the video on a
custom built SonicPond web page, we can arrange that too, so that you can simply email agents/casting directors the link and get them straight to your showreel without any fuss.
We will keep all your showreel clips and project files
permanently stored on extermal hard drives, so you can come back and add future scenes at any time - even years from now. Add any additional material to
the showreel at any point in the 6 months following your initial showreel creation with us, and 1
hour of editing will be done
absolutely free (usually enough for a simple update). Thereafter, editing for showreel updates and revisions is charged by the hour (see price list for details).
Click on the images on the right to see examples of our showreels
Some video recordings can suffer in quality from poor original TV reception, low resolution online formats, poor
tape quality, age, or a combination of all these factors. With modern computer
techniques, many extreme flaws in video quality can be vastly improved, so that
these pieces can sit happily in your showreel alongside more recent, crystal
clear, DVD clips. To see examples of what is possible, see the before and
after images and clips below..
Click on 'before/after' text for image comparisons, click on image for video (quicktime)
Often it is possible to edit available footage in order to change the focus of a
scene, or accentuate an actors presence in a given clip. Usually, this involves
trimming down unwanted cut-aways and recutting the sound design so that we
get more screentime for you, without the scene losing any shape or impact. For a
striking example of what is possible, see the below clips, where the actor was
able to provide extra
rushes