Another Demo Reel Crit

[PC Steiger]

Dear Blogosphere,

This is my demo reel following my first semester at film school. Feedback is greatly appreciated

Thanks
Phil

 

[randomname]

Very nice work for just your first semester, and it's great that you kept it short. Here are a few critiques:

First, I'm assuming that your goal for this is to be proving yourself as a capable professional, so you're going to want to take out anything unprofessional. Take out or deinterlace any footage that is still interlaced. The audio from the guy talking is a little weird, at first I thought you had accidentally left an audio clip on the timeline or something, I kind of liked how you used a little bit of sound from the actual clips after that, though. There are a few scenes that have really interesting compositions, but are ruined by the grading, nearly every highlight is completely blown out and every shadow is completely crushed, and it's a really unattractive look, I would strongly reccomend going back and re-grading these shots.

I really liked the sequence where you followed the characters from under the grates.

Cut the whole sequence from :46-:52 and the sequence of the girls partying. You've got plenty of other nice shots that are only on screen for half a second, reels are about showing your best work, not cramming in as much of it as you can.

Zooms: they have to go, all of them.