On the first episode of the new series aired on the 27th April 2012, Tricking was the featured weekend download and used members from Genetrics to help explain and demonstrate what tricking was all about.

As Genetrics is formed from some of the most talented trickers in the UK and all share the same passion to develop the rapidly growing activity, it’s likely you’ll be seeing them again soon.

The feature is available to view on iPlayer until the 27th July 2012.  To view the video online visit the BBC iPlayer website or click here to go straight to the video.

The 30 second ad shows Andy kicking and punching Easter Eggs to pieces in a way only a tricker knows how.

To see the advert click here or check it out below.

“To experience the 360 degree promo for the new series, first download the free GADGET SHOW 360 app for your iPhone or iPad from the App Store.

Download the app here

Just open the app before 9pm, hold your device to the screen, and you’ll be able to extend your viewing experience beyond the TV simply by moving your phone or tablet around 360 degrees with the action. The illusion is of being there yourself. Try it once, and you’ll wish all shows were in 360!

If you don’t have an iPhone or iPad, fear not, as you’ll still be able to experience this exciting world’s first right here on The Gadget Show website on 16th April at 9pm!”

The complex, one-take shoot had to be executed perfectly by all involved to fit within tight advertising timings.  This meant ninja Hadyn could not afford to make any mistakes and had to perform within the tight space perfectly every time.

We’re yet to see the advert, although we have all downloaded our Gadget Show apps and will be sitting comfortably around the TV watching Channel 5 when it airs.

Thank you to the very talented production team, who from what we saw on the day, executed everything perfectly and as always, were very kind to our ninja!

To find out more visit The Gadget Show’s website.

Hayley Martin took the role of a cheerleader, whilst Sam Parham was there to assist with the choreography of the tumble which unlike usually, wasn’t planned to end perfectly.

You can see exactly what happened by clicking here or watching the video below:

The new online feature has been set up due to increasing demand of people joining our agency books.  This process aims to make it simpler for both artists and our agents in dealing with agency requests.

When filling out the form, please provide all of the details including your CV (even if it’s a short one), and a headshot, as this enables us to build your profile within our database quickly and easily.

Once submitted, one of our agents will be in touch with you to confirm your entry to our agency list.  To maintain the high quality of our agency listings, we can not guarantee your acceptance, although we will inform you if it is not accepted along with reasons why.

We will contact you once a year to ensure your details are up to date.  If any of your details do change and you remember, please get in touch with the agent who got in touch with you when confirming your entry.

If there are any issues with the form or you would like more information on our agency please get in touch.

If you’re involved in an acrobatic sport (and we really do include everything with an element of acrobatics here), we’ll assume you are of a good standard and for the sake of this article, do not need any advice regarding training, skills or assistance with improving your ability (wouldn’t that be nice!)

With more participation in acrobatic sports, especially those that are not governed and have a competition structure (such as parkour, freerunning and tricking), it has become harder for directors, producers, casting directors and even some agents to know who the best and most suitable people are, and that’s only if you’ve done everything right and ended up in front of their eyes in the first place – far too often the best aren’t found, and therefore aren’t used.

We should also say that we strongly believe those who get involved in an acrobatic sport solely to make a career from it almost always fail (we’re yet to discover one anyway).  Do you think that the stunning performances seen in places such as Cirque du Soleil are made up of artists who started out with that as their goal?  No, they loved what they did, more often than not they were introduced to it involuntarily by their parents and at the time of their training, their focus was solely on becoming better and winning competitions, not how they could create a career.  Of course, as they develop and opportunities are revealed, goals and motivations change, but at least they have the support of a solid foundation.

Getting seen by the right people is the key, and that is definitely easier said than done!  Although we regularly scout talent, even we can’t be everywhere all of the time and therefore if you have a talent and an ambition to enter the entertainment world you need to start looking around and get some materials ready.

What you need…

At the very least, a well written CV is a must, especially if you were a competitive sportsperson. Alongside all of the other regular advice that goes with CVs, the key thing is to detail competition and performance experience – don’t go crazy though, just put your very top achievements down – we’ve received CVs that are pages long, including county level competitions and club trophies – people only need some evidence of the level you achieved.

CVs can sometimes be enough to get an audition, especially if you’re going through a reputable agent who knows you as that alone can carry some weight.  It is becoming less and less common though, as realistically and understandably, media such as photos and video is what you really need.

If you haven’t seen our tips and advice for creating a showreel, you really should check it out – it’s the most common thing that makes us and everyone else think ‘yes’, or ‘no’, and the biggest mistake people make.

Photos are also essential.  A good CV with 4-5 photos can often be more than enough if you have competitive credentials in place.  We won’t go in to detail here about what your photos should be, but as a golden rule, make sure they’re up to date, not 6 months ago when you were 10Kg lighter (or heavier), or before you got your hair cut – it really needs to represent you.  Include head shots, some full body shots and some action ones if available.  Also, don’t go sending huge files – some emails reject them.

Websites…

You may be surprised to hear, especially if you’re familiar with what we do, that getting a website isn’t exactly top of our recommendations.  It’s a fantastic tool and we set up the majority of our managed artists with one, but unless you have the budget to get one set up and designed for you, it can backfire.

Seeing a tacky, hard to read website results in people leaving it very quickly and that happens far too often.  Bear in mind agents are often on the road.  Can you really afford to spend the time, effort and money ensuring everything on your site looks great not only on a computer screen, but on mobile devices too?

If you can present a CV, photos and a video in a clear and simple way without doing it online, stick to that.  If you’re a part time web developer or have the cash to get one, go for it, otherwise, don’t worry, it’s not the end of the world.

Social media…

We don’t really need to say too much about social media, it’s quite obvious and is an incredibly powerful tool when used correctly.  Just be careful those photos of you having a great night out don’t make their way around too much either!

Getting seen…

Well, here we are, at the really critical point.  We should emphasise that any materials you have prepared to a good standard, otherwise everything from here could be in vain.

The hardest part is getting your foot in the door, a door, any door.  Don’t blanket email all of the time, we see blanket and generic emails every day.  Get in touch directly and if you can send over a couple of things, your chance of someone actually looking at it goes up.  Look around online at directories, speak to some agents, speak to friends or people you know who are already in the entertainment world.

If your materials are of a good standard and of course, you are too, getting that first foot through the door is the hardest bit (although don’t think it’s all plain sailing after that!).

What it really comes down to…

This last section really is at risk of making everything we’ve just written redundant, but it would be wrong of us not to write it.  We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again - content is king.

If you’re of an exceptional standard, a talented, hardworking individual who can take direction, gets on with people well, the chances are someone like us would have found you already (hopefully), and if we hadn’t, a short video from your mate’s camera phone will be enough for us to spot the talent and get in touch.

Of course, there are ways to improve your chances, increase your visibility and get yourself seen.  That’s what this whole article is about, but at the end of the day, your ability, personality and potential is what counts and will be what means you make it.

It is coming at a time of very exciting change for us, with our movement to becoming part of the Zeal Group (more information about that coming soon), as well as our full scale review of what we offer – we’ve decided to provide more resources and operate a dedicated service to live entertainment alongside our existing agency, management and consultancy roots.

The decision also comes at a time with the London 2012 Olympics only around the corner, and the demand for the best related entertainment growing stronger – we know this has put us in a unique position to provide it.

To those of you that know us already, this may not come as much of a surprise, as we already provide performers, as well as our managed acts for all purposes, but never before have we had a dedicated section to ensure events involving this sort of entertainment are formally catered for.

Although this change will not have an impact on our general operations, we are better equipped than ever before to serve the acrobatic and circus live entertainment world.

Are you an acrobatic or circus act?  Looking for some unique entertainment for your event?  Get in touch.

If we were going to get really picky about things, we should start by saying  an actual showreel should be made up of professional work.  9 times out of 10, the ‘showreels’ we see are infact just promotional videos and contain no professional work at all.

Anyway – that’s not too important, we’re certainly not going to refuse to watch a video just because of what you call it and we doubt anyone else would either.

Putting aside what you may or may not call your video, these tips are here for the videos used to promote yourself as an artist or performer, the videos showing what you can do, containing clips from training and that give companies like us an insight in to your ability, style and looks.  It should be said that sometimes you will be requested for specific parts of a video, to demonstrate absolutely everything – but these tips are for more generic purposes and the types that we see every day.

Our top 6 tips for creating a personal video are:

1. Length

Don’t make it too long.  2 – 3 minutes is plenty.  We love acrobatics, we love sports, we love videos, but we often don’t have time to watch something even 2 minutes long, especially if it isn’t sensational!  If that’s us – imagine a director having a huge list to watch!

2. Get the action going – leave video descriptions to do the rest

Sure, put your name at the beginning if you like, but the truth is you need to have sold it to the audience that it’s worth sitting through the rest of the video after 30 seconds – get the action in, do it quickly.

3.  Quality

OK this may be us being picky again and a bad quality video packed with great content is always going to trump a video containing bad content, even if it’s shot in 8K and going to be screened in the iMax .  But better quality = professionalism, and it’s easier to watch!  So make it as good as you can.

4. Slow motion

Every time you go to slow something down, ask yourself if you really need to.  If you think the answer is yes, think again to make sure.  Bear in mind you have those 2 – 3 minutes, slow even half of that down to 50%, you’ve got a video on your hands that is 3 – 5 minutes long – too much!  There are times slow motion is good, but no one is going to miss it if you don’t bother.

5. Cut, cut, cut

You’re demonstrating your physical ability here, not how good you are (or not) in an edit suite.  Clean and simple wins.  The first thing anyone who has any experience thinks when they see a cut is that something went wrong or you didn’t land it – people want to see the whole skill, if they know you can do it, they’ll be the ones making it look fancy and cutting between angles.

6.  Remember your audience

Think about who you’re aiming your video at.  You need demonstrate your versatility and fit in with what others are looking for.  That’s much easier said than done of course, especially when you only have a couple of minutes.  It’s easy to forget some people watching won’t know you – look at it from their point of view and make sure your strengths are highlighted!

Take what must be the most successful video involving acrobatics out there, or at least the one we hear about the most and from what we can see, has the most views, currently standing at 16.3m hits – Damien Walters 2010.  It’s less than 3 minutes (and it’s not exactly like he’s going to be short of footage), action starts in less than 15 seconds, no overuse of slow motion and we can see every skill.  Alright, that’s not what has caused 16 million people to watch it, it’s the fact the content is awesome and Damien is incredibly creative, but it’s a great example that more people should take a lead from:

What really counts…

Although this is our first blog post, you’ll notice our future posts will come down to this same point – content is king.  You can follow our tips to make a showreel perfectly – but at the end of the day it’s the content that really matters!

]]> http://www.everythingacrobatic.co.uk/tips-on-making-a-showreel/feed/ 1 http://www.everythingacrobatic.co.uk/kesali-acrobatic-performance-act/ http://www.everythingacrobatic.co.uk/kesali-acrobatic-performance-act/#comments Sun, 05 Feb 2012 15:26:54 +0000 EA http://www.everythingacrobatic.co.uk/?p=3896 We have been working with Chris McGreevy and Jack Atherton for some time now and if you follow us on Twitter and Facebook you will have already seen they have formed Kesali – an act dedicated to acrobatic performance, capable of creating bespoke performances or packaged routines.

This year, we have launched their own dedicated website, as well as as Facebook page, Twitter account and YouTube channel.  We’re very excited to see what the future holds for Kesali as we are confident that they are one of the most unique and talented acts currently performing in the UK.

Check out the lastest video, giving you an quick insight in to the sort of performance Chris and Jack are capable of:

The idea of blogging has floated around many times before, it was even thought about when we first started back in 2010.  We never took it foreward as we weren’t sure if anyone would actually care, having said that, we still don’t!

The issue then turns to what we will actually write about?!  Well, some of you will be happy to hear it’s not going to be all about us – hopefully you already know who we are and the rest of our site can explain what we do.  The blog will be about more than that, contain some advice, share some thoughts that we as a company believe to be true.

It will most certainly not be a day to day diary of Steve’s (MD) life, he can keep his own one of those private, and therefore it will not be instantly cluttered up with all sorts of irrelevant information.  We won’t post for the sake of posting – the only time a new entry will appear, is when we want to share something that isn’t necessarily news!

If you’d like to keep up to date, the blog will be posted to our Facebook and Twitter accounts as well so if you’re not already – like or follow us now.