Critique my Demo Reels please

[LuckyStudio 13]

Guys,

Please I need constructive criticism on my new demo reel. Thank you much in advance.

http://www.vimeo.com/1228891

[Weston]

Alot of it looked good to me.. the stuff at the beginning particularly.

Some of it was overlit for my taste ...like the shot of the girl being held at gunpoint near the curtain....but overall I liked it.

[LuckyStudio 13]

thanks Weston. I need to get some scrim and butterfly for sure. SOme of my buddies said the song is too mellow and the pace needs to be sped up.

[thefilmaddict]

I agree with your friends about pacing and music.

This is a DP Demo reel, so your shots need to be long enough so that your potential clients can clearly see your work, but it is always better to make your reel short and sweet. It's better to leave people wanting to see more and make sure that they do not get bored (they may be looking at a bunch of reels at once). I would also only use your absolute best stuff only. In my opinion, it would be nice if you had more of a variety of projects to show. It kind of looks like we keep seeing stuff from just a couple of projects.

I would use music that is more cinematic. You want people to associate your work with high end movie production.

Shots I really liked:

Boy walking up the stairs - nice lighting and movement
Family running into house - good variety and limited depth of field
Kid by car - but needs to be much shorter - just use hand going down
Woman on phone - but use a lot less of it. The best part is when she smiles
The dolly shot with the house pillars - good movement
The kid tied to the tree - nice limited depth of field and intriguing shot
The bedroom dolly shot - nice move and natural lighting look
The wide shot of the tree and the kid in the cage - can we view this short somewhere -- it looks pretty strange and cool.

Shots I did not love:

In the art gallery when the man walks past the woman -- huge ugly shadow.
I liked the limited depth of field shot where the guy points the gun at the camera, but I do not like the blue specks on the screen. Can you fix this? Also, make this shot a lot shorter.
The first shot of the guy on the phone. It's OK, but start off your demo with a stronger shot.
The woman unpacking groceries. It's not great because her hair is blocking her face.

Just my humble opinion. It would be nice if you posted your final reel for us to see.

[LuckyStudio 13]

Ok guys, Thanks to 'thefilmaddict' for the awesome critique and comments. I really appreciated it. I redone the reel last night for a few hours and finally got some more stuff into vimeo.

I have tons of SD stuff on dv tapes but I just want to keep it HD. Ok, ok I am just too lazy to digest the footages.

Anyways, the pacing is a bit faster, and also can you spot a few clips that was shot with the hvx 200 + redrock m2 adapter ?? As usual, nothing is perfect, and I do need more constructive criticism. Thank you all !!

http://www.vimeo.com/1368156