Judge My 2008 Demo Reel

WhiteWood

WhiteWood

Carbonite Member
MAN, Last year was crazy! I learned SOOO much about my DVX. Now, 11+ short films later, I bring to you everything I know in the form of a 2:54 second Demo Reel.

For those of you who know me on here, you MAY or may not remember when this site TRASHED my 2007 Demo reel from my '06 work. Even I hated it, but I didn't think that you guys were gonna go all Kamahamaha on me. Anyways, here it goes, my work of 2007. ENJOY!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBKn0l0nqb4

(Please be honest in your critique!, because I'm submitting this to Agencies.)
 
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ok i'll tell you some critiques and some positive. i think it can be shorter. i'll remove the blow up partical near the start. i'll remove the ending scene and i'll remove the crack the egg on your head part. know that in a agency they want only the best footage . they check just the 30 sec sometimes. i know this because a producer told me so. the part with the korean chick i think this is your best movie. who care if it's shorter . it need to be dynamic or very beautiful too look at. a demo should be only your best material . i had some stuff that i thought was good but not THATgood to be send off you know. the music is perfect for your kind of movie. maybe the title fond need to be more serious more professional. maybe choose a different font. i guess for now it'S my advice. but keep it tight, great music , only put your best stuff. when they put the DVD they want the best. think about putting your end credit at the beginning in case they don't look at it until the end
hope that helps
 
I totally agree with the person above's comments. Make sure you only show your very best footage in a demo reel at all costs. I think you should try to avoid showing some of the scenes where there's a lot of the "punching" sound effects because they sound un-convincing and they take away from the professional look. Maybe instead, put a score over them, because some of your fighting scenes do look good!

I also suggest you be careful about footage from your "Kill Will" film (I watched it and it looks like you have some really great shots in there), but at the same time, maybe try to avoid showing shots that have the essential "Kill Bill" look (eg: where she's wearing the yellow jumpsuit) since it is a copyrighted film, and I don't know exactly how that would come across, and how that works.

You've obviously been growing and learning a lot so I encourage you to keep up the good work!
 
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yeah exactly just show your orignal stuff. don'T show kill bill copyrighted stuff. if you show just your main movie than it's not really a demo . just show the movie instead. try to find the best stuff from each movie that you want to put in. if not than shorter your demo
 
Other than the other comments above which i agree with, you should also make your title font more readable. The font at the end was a bit hard to read.
 
bigshinyspoon said:
ok i'll tell you some critiques and some positive. i think it can be shorter. i'll remove the blow up partical near the start. i'll remove the ending scene and i'll remove the crack the egg on your head part. know that in a agency they want only the best footage . they check just the 30 sec sometimes. i know this because a producer told me so. the part with the korean chick i think this is your best movie. who care if it's shorter . it need to be dynamic or very beautiful too look at. a demo should be only your best material . i had some stuff that i thought was good but not THATgood to be send off you know. the music is perfect for your kind of movie. maybe the title fond need to be more serious more professional. maybe choose a different font. i guess for now it'S my advice. but keep it tight, great music , only put your best stuff. when they put the DVD they want the best. think about putting your end credit at the beginning in case they don't look at it until the end
hope that helps
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THANX for your critique. Yeah, I was thinking of taking the egg part out too, but I was trying to try more a variety of things instead of just 'Keygen' all over the place. And if it wasn't Keygen, then it was Kill Will. I like my fighting scenes, and I haven't shot anything ubber-dramatic last year, so there are no dialouge scenes. But My demo reel pretty much is what it is now. I'm not going back on re-editing, I just want to know from the people how well of a job I did, so once again, thanx.
 
Hey whitewood-

I just a couple of comments, I think you effort was good, but for a demo it seems a bit weak, I'm not sure what's missing - but it's missing something. I also agree with bigshinyspoon - try and keep stuff original...copywriter material can get u in trouble...well good luck
 
WhiteWood said:
WHOAH! What'd you mean by that? How does ANY of this remind you of DL?? That was a CRAZILY Surprising comment.
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I wouldn't get too excited. I don't necessarily like the guys work. But thats neither here nor there. About why i asked the question. Well there's a few things. The whole kitchen scene kind of reminded me of a scene from his wannabe-TV-pilot-thing. Then there's your intro with the Whitewood logo is almost identical to one of David Lehre's.
Such as this one:
http://www.davidlehre.com/davidlehre/movie.php?id=youtube-skE_OLf_V4c

Plus I've read many threads by you that reference back to David Lehre and his work.

So i was just curious. You know...
 
Killawa said:
I wouldn't get too excited. I don't necessarily like the guys work. But thats neither here nor there. About why i asked the question. Well there's a few things. The whole kitchen scene kind of reminded me of a scene from his wannabe-TV-pilot-thing. Then there's your intro with the Whitewood logo is almost identical to one of David Lehre's.
Such as this one:
http://www.davidlehre.com/davidlehre/movie.php?id=youtube-skE_OLf_V4c

Plus I've read many threads by you that reference back to David Lehre and his work.

So i was just curious. You know...
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What's funny is that nothing you said had to do with my demo reel.

I thought you were saying that the song and/or editing was something like a Dave Lehre flick.

I don't get off by being compared to him. I'm better than him. HE should get off by being compared to ME.

In order to know the things you know about DL, you must watch ALOT of his stuff, like his behind the scenes videos and what not. So for you to say "I don't necessarily like the guys work." Seems kinda contradictory.
 
WhiteWood said:
In order to know the things you know about DL, you must watch ALOT of his stuff, like his behind the scenes videos and what not. So for you to say "I don't necessarily like the guys work." Seems kinda contradictory.
Click to expand...

So to say that I've seen a wide range of the guys work immediately states that I like his stuff? I've seen a whole lot of movies from a whole lot of directors on and off the internet. Hell, I've watched a good amount of your movies. This doesn't mean I like em.

It just means that light from the screen entered the pupil of my and and was focused on to the retina by the lens. Light-sensitive nerve cells called rods (for brightness) and cones (for color) reacted to this light. They then interacted with each other and sent a message to my brain indicating what the image was.

Thank my good friends at Wikipedia for that one.

This topic isn't fitting for the discussion that you are pushing us into. I was just curious if you liked the guy.
 
anyway guys .... for a demo perspective. if you want to make it . go back to editing because this demo as it is will not pass the test of any big producer out there. they have seen it all already. it needs to be incredible. you have potential but it nothing near incredible. i'm just speaking the thruth so that you can get better.
 
Killawa said:
So to say that I've seen a wide range of the guys work immediately states that I like his stuff? I've seen a whole lot of movies from a whole lot of directors on and off the internet. Hell, I've watched a good amount of your movies. This doesn't mean I like em.

It just means that light from the screen entered the pupil of my and and was focused on to the retina by the lens. Light-sensitive nerve cells called rods (for brightness) and cones (for color) reacted to this light. They then interacted with each other and sent a message to my brain indicating what the image was.

Thank my good friends at Wikipedia for that one.

This topic isn't fitting for the discussion that you are pushing us into. I was just curious if you liked the guy.
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WOW, LMAO @ that level of sarcasim. That was TOTALLY uncalled for! So much so, that it's funny!
 
bigshinyspoon said:
anyway guys .... for a demo perspective. if you want to make it . go back to editing because this demo as it is will not pass the test of any big producer out there. they have seen it all already. it needs to be incredible. you have potential but it nothing near incredible. i'm just speaking the thruth so that you can get better.
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I totally understand and agree. But for a guy with a DVX, no lighting kit and free friend actors, it passes my personal test for 07. This year is gonna kick @ss though! And who knows...someone MAY see potential in it.
 
Not bad, lame effects, and I didn't like your choice of titles.

Some of the fight scenes were cut too much, and were confusing.
 
I agree with bigshinyspoon, and i believe that his comments so far are the most valuable and constructive. He really seems to know his stuff, and if you need proof, his demo reel is an amazing piece of work. I totally believe that 90% of the shots in his reel were shot sans light kit, and any enhancement other than the camera. The fact that some of his footage was shot by a HDR-FX1 (am I right?) is irrelevant since the myspace compression makes the difference more or less unnoticable, and the quality of acting is more or less irrelevant in most demo reels since the dialogue is all cut out. The fact is, having a light kit is not the end all in production value - if you don't know how to use it, it's useless. Also, a beautifully lit scene won't look good if it isn't composed well. At the indie level, since most of us are running around shooting with solely the camera, we've got no choice but to make our compositions shine because of our lack of equipment. (Feeble attempt at pun)

Although I do agree that sometimes all of us get the 'tech fetish', and just want our stuff to look good, etc. Since a demo reel is only to show off the best of your work, you could probably shoot a couple of microshorts for the sole purpose of practising, and adding to your demo reel. Since it's a microshort, you can afford to keep the location contained to a single scene, and thereby you can concentrate solely on directing. Also, I'm sure you can put out a small amount of money for 1 or 2 lights to light it with since the scale of the short is so small. I've been moving in that trend recently, by making small, easy to produce microshorts that are cheap and affordable for me, and thus i can maximise the production value since that's more or less the production values that viewers would expect. The problem with most indie flicks is that they strive to be bigger than they actually are, and while there are some stellar successes (like broken), those generally had a sizeable budget and took alot of time to plan and make. While keygen was a decent effort, I'm sure you yourself will admit that it by no means looks ilke a hollywood standard flick. This isn't a diss, it's reality. Look at the film in my sig - Countdown. It was bigger than it tried to be, and as a result quality suffered. I'm not against 'epic undertakings', as they're great for the experience. However, considering the resources you have to work with, by no means can you expect something that'll wow an audience technically. And if you look around the boards, you'll find that most of the great looking 'cheap' short films either had a really really really long period of time in post production by adding 3D effects, etc, and they tackled a reasonable scale.

In a rather roundabout way, I'm essentially getting to the point that sometimes, smaller is the way to go, and at the independent level, you have to suit your film to your resources, and not the other way around (of course this is a long run tip since everything you've shot you've done already, and it's just a direction to take in future). Your demo reel wasn't too bad, and to be honest I've seen much much worse, but alot of shots were clearly better than the rest that were on your reel. It's better to have a shorter reel with the BEST footage you have than a longer reel trying to show off how much work you've done, yet exhibiting work of a mediocre quality compared to the rest of your reel. Since you're just trying to get your foot into the door of the industry, I'd say you should downsize your reel for now and tighten up the edits, and in the *immediate* future, shoot with your reel in mind. Once you get a good reel, you get good jobs, which'll in turn help with your reel, to get you more good jobs, etc etc the cycle goes on. The quality of your footage need not be limited by your resources or whatever. Why do I think so? Because this is my "company's" (my friend and I combine our work to get jobs together) reel, of which i shot roughly the first 1/3 of the footage: http://fps.carbonmade.com/projects/2001040

And I'm 17. In a high school without a video department. A professional standard reel is very, very possible by anybody.

/end rant/
 
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