Demo Reel I am about to send out. Please comment!

Ryan Patrick O'Hara

Ryan Patrick O'Hara

Veteran
So... I just graduated from film school and soon will be off to California! As I was leaving college I made my first demo reel, as part of my career development materials (resume, etc).

I have not sent this out to any prospectives yet, and I would really appreciate everyones opinion. This demo reel montage is going to autoplay on my Demo DVD which will lead into a menu filled with selected scenes from some of these films.

What do you guys think of my demo reel intro?

http://ryanpatrickohara.com/demoreel.html

or

http://studentpages.scad.edu/~rohara20/good5.mov

PS this site is hosted by my college with unlimited bandwidth, so please feel free and stream it over and over. Gotta use those tuition dollars! :beer:

Thanks!
 
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Different films I've worked on have been different aspect ratios. Do you find it a negative? There is really nothing I can do about that one. Grouping them together would just cause creatively unjustified segregation. No?
 
I think the different aspect ratios look good on a reel, it shows the potential client that you have worked with a variety of formats and cameras
good job
 
Totally agree with the aspect ratios changing. I have experimented with distortion to make them all the same on my reel but it just doesnt look good.
 
It seems that you have worked on a lot of dark stuff; both thematically and lighting wise. I felt like it could use some bright scenes with a blue sky and a green tree, ya know?. That whole side of the color pallet was missing for me.

Other than that- Fantastic.
 
Did you do the cinematography for that short called "Red." I love that short. Your reel is amazing, extremely professional and overall impressive. Do you work witrh dan dowding? or escape entertainment?
 
renegadewill said:
Did you do the cinematography for that short called "Red." I love that short. Your reel is amazing, extremely professional and overall impressive. Do you work witrh dan dowding? or escape entertainment?
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Ah! You know Dan?!

Hell ya, friend. Dan is a great director. I should hope I know him considering two of his films are on my reel! :)

Yes, Alex Winter (also Escape Entertainment) and I were cinematographers on a couple of those films! He is usually on the project first, and then I join up. We've worked together on many projects and have been a really good team.

Unfortunately, I was not apart of the Escape Entertainment film, Red. That was shot in Rhode Island (if I recall) during one of our breaks. I was interning at a Cleveland Production company at the time. Red has some really cool stuff. I'm not sure who the DP was on Red.

As for Escape Entertainment, I'm pretty sure I'm in the fold. I expressed interest in joining, and they asked me to, but the website isn't updated with me on the roster :(

How do you know Dan? BTW his film Reflection (the car exploding) was in the Action On Film Festival, and was nominated for best sound, if ya didn't know.

Best, :beer:
- Ryan
 
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yeehaanow said:
It seems that you have worked on a lot of dark stuff; both thematically and lighting wise. I felt like it could use some bright scenes with a blue sky and a green tree, ya know?. That whole side of the color pallet was missing for me.

Other than that- Fantastic.
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Ah yes! I agree, but sadly many student films just aren't bright or upbeat. I blame the hormones. I'd love to shoot more stuff in the day, although I must admit, I love the complete control of all lighting when at night. No worries about the moving sun, etc.

You'll see more 'bright' scenes' from me in the future. Just not now. Thanks for the response! :beer:
 
Very professional! Your all set. Yes, add your name back in there at the end.

I'm an advocate of short and sweet and I like to move on once the idea has been thoroughly presented. What if you avoided returning to shots/scenes you already addressed and grouped them all together? I bet you'll see redundancy by doing so and this might shave off 10-20 seconds in total along with emphasizing that particular look or scene. Returning to the same scenes later in the reel seems like someone is running out of stuff to show - and that's obviously not your case.

And right, do not mess around and change any aspect ratios to fill the screen - that suggestion does not make any sense to me. It's a reel, not a movie, of course you'll have a number of different aspect ratios.

Awesome stuff. Your going to have a fantastic career in La La Land.
 
I don't know him at all. I saw "red" on the "On the Lot" website and loved it so much that i researched it like a crazy person. It all finally led me to escape entertainment, and I just check out their new shorts every so often. Their stuff is so, well you know, just different from most independant films. I loved your work on reflections, ur reel is making me extremely envious.
 
Thanks for the replies. It's good to hear lots of positivity from peers! :beer:

Zak Forsman said:
perhaps add a card at the end that reiterates your name and contact info?
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Yes, I afforded for that when the explosion stops and the fire is rumbling on. I will eventually get the contact info back on, but since this is a lead-in for my DVD-reel, and will otherwise only be on my website, I'm curious if I really need it. What do you think? Should I have contact info (at the end of the reel intro), if it's on a DVD with contact info and a website with contact info?

jonnyh1968 said:
I'm an advocate of short and sweet and I like to move on once the idea has been thoroughly presented. What if you avoided returning to shots/scenes you already addressed and grouped them all together? I bet you'll see redundancy by doing so and this might shave off 10-20 seconds in total along with emphasizing that particular look or scene. Returning to the same scenes later in the reel seems like someone is running out of stuff to show - and that's obviously not your case.
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Ah yes. Choosing shots is like choosing children. It was painful to get it to 2:30! I completely agree with some of the redundancy of the reel. I would love to get it to 2:10 or 2:00. I'll be working on that in the near future. Good advice, although I deliberately chose to mix and mash it up, because coming soon on my website and on my Demo-DVD is going to have selected scenes to watch from those films. I think I'm going to leave the demo intro (what you watched) as a crazy mixed up experience.

Andrew Brinkhaus said:
Great work Ryan, what was the format for the majority of the material?
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HVX! :thumbup: I've shot 16mm, 35mm, Cinealta f900, Varicam, etc.... but my reel is mostly HVX. I am a big film guy, but you can't find many students who want to shell out the money for 35mm, understandably. Therefore, I went with HVX many times because its small, portable, moves fast and can just look fantastic. The supreme camera for those with a budget. In the right hands just about any camera can look great. The Redrock adapter was also used in conjunction with the HVX on many of the works.

renegadewill said:
I don't know him at all. I saw "red" on the "On the Lot" website and loved it so much that i researched it like a crazy person. It all finally led me to escape entertainment, and I just check out their new shorts every so often. Their stuff is so, well you know, just different from most independant films. I loved your work on reflections, ur reel is making me extremely envious.
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Haha, I completely forgot about Dan's almost 'On the Lot' days. I believe he made it to one of the last rounds before not making it onto the show. Pretty funny. It's probably for the best, that show was mostly a joke... entertaining but not real film making.
 
yea, it seemed like everyone was making really camp stuff. like it was a camp for super camp. there was one horro short and a few funny one's that i liked.
 
So does this mean you won't be our friendly neighborhood film student anymore :(

I'm halfway through college, and I can only hope I get half as much good stuff on my reel by the time I graduate. Good stuff! You're gonna have a nice stay in CA with stuff like that on your reel

Which shots were on the F900? I'm shooting with it this coming week, and from playing with it in tests and reading the manual it seems like a very nice system. It's no F35, but it sure beats the HVX...
 
SeanEmer said:
So does this mean you won't be our friendly neighborhood film student anymore :(
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Haha! Ah yes, I dropped that signature when I graduated. But cinematography is a lifelong learning process, so who knows. :beer:


SeanEmer said:
Which shots were on the F900? I'm shooting with it this coming week, and from playing with it in tests and reading the manual it seems like a very nice system. It's no F35, but it sure beats the HVX...
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Off the top of my head, I can't think if any of the F-900 stuff made the reel... It's a good camera but we only have two at my college, (one only allowed to leave the building without a professor), so it is usually booked up. We have 11 Hvx's (10 allowed out of building w/o professor) so those are available much of the time. Plus I've bought an HVX, which allows freedom of not having to be accountable to the schools schedule.

The last project I used it (F-900) on, was a short called 'Gameshow'. The first half was shot with HVX.Redrock to depict a very 'normal' yet desaturated and kind of undesirable reality. The second half is when the main character enters the gameshow to win some money so she can go to college. When she enters the world of the 'Gameshow' we shot with the F-900 to give a sharper, more colorful, and studio like looking effect. It's a slightly creepy and expressionistic over the top gameshow. Like a different dimension with just crazy characters.

The F-900 is a great camera but make sure you clear the scene file and reset the camera to factory settings before starting to paint the scene file. I think the camera I was using may have had a defect because I could not paint the reds out of the shadows for the life of me. If the camera was not defective, I simply just couldn't find what setting was causing the redness in that hard to navigate ocean which is the f-900 menu. Read up as much as you can before you shoot.

It's a good camera, but I'd take the simpler film camera anyday and get my look with filtes, etc. I'm simply not an engineer or technition. Cameras are becoming more and more complicated as we move away from film. Red cam, and Phantom cameras require qualified technitians and so on. Best of luck!

Anyway here is a link to some screen grabs from the production. I just uploaded them yesterday, after the Director sent them to me. The set was crazy, and we had hundreds of shots, so I didn't get to spend the time on lighting that I wanted. Look closely at the shadows, you can see the horrible red tint which haunts my dreams to this day. :) All and all, the F-900 and I are on a bit of a break right now. I'll pick it up again in a week or so and find my white whale redness setting.

(the second half of the photos are the f900, the first half of the film was hvx)

See it here: http://www.RyanPatrickOHara.com/gameshow.html
 
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