Kirk Smith Media

I’ d like to pay my respects to the loss of a very good man and friend of mine, Clive Hornby aka, Jack Sugden from Emmerdale, or Emmerdale Farm as the program was known for many many years.

Clive sadly died from an illness a short while ago and was 63 years of age. I had the great priviledge and honour of working with Clive on Emmerdale for a number of years and can honestly say that he was one of the kindest people you could ever wish to meet.

After joining the cast of Emmerdale, Clive was one of the first people to approach me and make me feel very welcome on the show.

As like myself, Clive was a scouser (Native from Liverpool for those of you not from the UK) and had an amazing sense of humour.

It saddens me to have to broadcast this post as I feel that a great man has been taken away from us.

Clive Hornby

RIP

XXX

OK, So you’ve got the talent, the ambition and your ready to start getting out there and making the dream a reality.

As already mentioned in one of my articles some time ago; you will need to consider getting an agent to start putting you up for different roles etc.

Easier said than done though perhaps! To get a good acting agent you will need to show them what you can do. This may be by showcasing, inviting them to watch you perform live at a theatre or even sending them a show reel with some carefully selected work to display your talent.

I have to say that out of the above examples, most agents will prefer to watch you perform live but unless you have any live gigs or showcases lined up, a show reel on CD or DVD may be your only option to try and secure an agreement.

Making Your Show reel

Firstly you will want to select some scenes that really show off your talent. You want to choose different genres to show how versatile you are as a performer. I won’t be focusing too much in this post about your material choice as I will cover this much more thoroughly in a later post.

Your Options

You could always get a pro in to do the whole thing for you from start to finish. There are many companies offering this service and rates vary. Some of these companies will even provide a workshop type of service whereby you attend a day at a studio and act in a selection of scenes with other actors. The end result is that you get a great show reel but the prices will be higher and you may need to pay extra money should you need subsequent editing later on down the line.

You could go get yourself a cheap camcorder, stick it in front of yourself and just read a few monologues and hope for the best!!

You use clips from shows you’ve been in from previous performances and get a professional video editor to put the whole thing together for you. This is fine if you have some prior work but also the quality of the recording will need to be half decent. Remember, video editors are not miracle workers.

If your just starting out, chances are you won’t have any previous work so you will need to rely on performing a script camera specifically for your show reel.

Heres a tip!

If you’re in an acting group or college, consider getting a few people together from there and putting a short script together. If you all learn different parts in the script, and let’s say you find 5 or 6 actors to join you; then you will have cut your cost down considerably. Now you go and your cameraman. If your at an acting college then there will more than likely be a media dept there equipped with broadcast standard cameras ,etc.

Go and speak to somebody from that dept and make them a deal they can’t resist to turn down. It may well be that you find an aspiring young film maker who will be only too happy to add more work to his portfolio.

The point is simply to keep your costs at a minimum until you are in a position to splash out on using a professional show reel service or building up a collection of your work over the course of time.

This can be like a catch 22 situation though and I remember something very similar around 20 or something years ago when I wanted to perform professionally.

To perform professionally you needed to have an Equity Card. But get this, to get an Equity Card, you needed to be performing professionally somewhere…Aaaahhh!!!! Talk about banging your head against a brick wall.

I’ll be adding further to this for those of you who are interested in doing their own video editing.

As well as looking at different DV cameras we will also look into NLE editing software and see how each compares against each other. I also want to show you some clever tips and tricks on editing principals and even special effects.

All this to come and more

Stay tuned

Kirk

Just got wind of a casting.

A white caucasian male actor is required to play a tewenty seven year old American with a NY accent. Actor should be tall, great looks and charasmatic.

Shoot me an email guys. I have a producer waiting for CV’s now!!