Advice for composing my demo reel

S

sonofaresiii

Well-known member
Looking to put together a new demo reel for cinematography. I have four projects with shots I feel are good enough to put in my reel, with 30-40% coming from one project (it's a web series, so doing five episodes of that has given me quite a few good shots). Now the question is, should I split the projects and have the reel be more of a montage of shots, like most of the reels you see, or, since there's so few projects (and you'll quickly be able to tell that they're the same projects) should I just have the reel go by project... first I show all the shots from Project 1, then all the shots from Project 2, etc.

thanks for the help
-soa3
 
Put it together however it looks best. That's really a personal choice and depends on the individual shots, something we can't know. As long as it doesn't get boring.
 
Ive just recut mine - first of all I had it project by project - now I have a kind of timeline moving across projects.. I should probably tie it shut better at the end

I think probably having 10+projects to choose from has enabled this, my earlier reels with 4 projects would not take that treatment

I think with so few projects you are probably better going project by project rather than looking a bit 'fake' when you return to stuff from earlier on..

Good luck with the chop :)

 
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Keep it to the bare minimum. People won't sit through a 5 minute reel. If you want to show your projects, have those on a separate page.
 
CapVideo said:
Keep it to the bare minimum. People won't sit through a 5 minute reel. If you want to show your projects, have those on a separate page.
Click to expand...

This. I recommend 1 minute for a demo reel. 2 minutes absolute max if you have a TON of AMAZING work. People hiring don't have time to sit through 3 minutes of demo reel, keep it short.
 
No doubt, I definitely prefer shorter reels as well. I can't imagine going more than a minute and a half (one big reason I've narrowed it down to just four projects... I've got many others that have good shots, but they're definitely not great shots). Thanks for the advice guys, hope you'll all give me some feedback once I've got it cut.
 
From what I have gathered from other industry guys in different roles, you always have to put your best foot forward. So if you have any broadcasted stuff or clips with name actors in it...put that in FIRST. If you're sending it out to producers and advertising places, you have to impress them with footage in the first few seconds. Actors have around 15 seconds to impress, so I guess that would go for nearly anyone dependent on how busy the person watching it was. If they have seen 100 demo reels in a day, and youre is the 101st...you want to be able to have an individual style and a signature to your work. Embrace your strengths. If you have only done a few smaller things, go out and shoot some more composed shots. Make things visually awesome. If there's a great scene in one of your episodes, use a snippet of that. Make the reel around 3 minutes max and cram all your good stuff in there.
 
Thanks for the advice guys, I made another thread with the demo reel if anyone would care to check it out and give some advice (seriously... I could use the help. I've gotten some good feedback on friends but I want to know what outsiders have to say. It definitely needs work!)

Ironically I do have some shorts with actors that have gotten a little attention since... but it's from back when I was very... VERY new, and the lighting and composition is horrible! And they're not huge names or anything...
 
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