Hello beautiful people!
Let’s invert some pyramids and rank some footage!
Here… let’s do a li’l vid watchin’!
There’s a hierarchy of material, ranked badassiest to suckiest. You want as much of the former and as little of the latter as possible. And if all you have is the latter, you have to decide if it helps you at all.
Just like you’ve gotta keep your hair trimmed — even when you’re growing it out — you don’t want to keep footage around that’s making your whole head o’ hair look like hell.
None of your lower-ranked footage is (by classification alone) useless on a reel! It’s just lower-ranked than the juicier stuff. Consider doing some creative editing to make what you do have work if you’re gonna be totally out of footage otherwise. Used sparingly, some lower-ranked items can be helpful in rounding out a reel. Just remember you’re always teaching the buyers what to expect from you. Be really sure your footage is representing you at your best.
Remember: Your reel is not a retrospective of everything you’ve ever done on camera… it’s the story of how to cast you next. (Tweet it, yo.)
Today’s work: Go through your footage. Rank it inverted pyramid style. Yes, it all needs to still look like you (reasonably; we do understand that hair changes and all that jazz), it all needs to be on-brand so that we fully understand what you bullseye as an actor, and it all needs to be as badass as possible. Be honest with yourself about the quality of your work, because you’re growing as an artist every day.
Rank it all. Then start cutting from the bottom of your list. Make a second list of what you need next, to better inform buyers of where you’re headed. (And if you have no reel yet, this intentional hitlist of what your footage should look like is your homework.)
For my non-actor creatives here, your work is to list off your marketing assets, whatever shape they may take, using the inverted pyramid as well. Yours may not be footage, but is it an online gallery of samples of your wedding photography? Is it a sample of your knitting, on display somewhere physically and represented virtually in your social media? Is it a library of PDFs you’ve assembled for purchase or for free? Which — of all these things you’ve built and continue to keep available online for people to bump into — is your strongest and which is your weakest material? Get to ranking!
Extra credit: Do more than your footage. Go inverted pyramid on anything in your marketing arsenal. Your resume, your bio highlights, your IMDb credits, your stills from set, your target list… anything. Get intentional about what you add next in every area of your life! No more collecting things just because you think proving you’ve worked has value. After you’ve had your first reel-worthy booking, that bit of business has been accomplished and anything not meant to focus the buyers’ attention on your next tier is potentially costing you work.
Be ruthless. Clear the clutter. Then get intentional.
’til tomorrow… stay ninja!
