OTHER: My first demo reel - please feel free to comment...be gentle, lol (hv40,t2i)

blake2404

blake2404

Well-known member
This is a show reel of my stuff from 2010. Used hv40 and t2i, i've recently replaced the hv40 with the hmc150.

This is the first cut, might do some tweaking.

Enjoy, comment, critique.

Its my first reel so be honest but gentle, ha, ha.

All shot and cut by myself.

featuring Zsuzsanna Miklosy

Music by Justin R. Durban


 
Blake, maybe you can explain what a "show" reel is. As a cinematographer, Cam-op, Colorist, Company reel?

It was good, a little sedate, but good. But I am an action junkie, so I am a bit partial to fast paced stuff. That and my ADD.
 
lol, yeah maybe i'm being a lil ambiguous ha, ha. Demo reel is what i would have gone with, however i see this used all the time (show reel). me trying to be smart, ha, ha. As far as what sort of reel it is?.........well lets just say all the images you see were conceived, shot and cut by myself........zsuzsanna as my actor and justin durban with the music.

Sedate?......hmmmmm, i'll have to stew on that after i can consume an entire coffee ha, ha. But thank you. All i can say is that i come from a different place than "action".
 
I liked the music and some of the later shots, but the editing to the music seemed off.




A few suggestions:
  • make it shorter; even with the title clips, you could easily work this down to 1 minute; for example, the swingset clip was a full 10 seconds long from 1:15 to 1:25
  • the pace of the music at the beginning might work better with the road clip at the 49 second mark. I would actually start with this clip. The begining of the music is really good and pairing that with the traveling road shot could offer a hint to the audience that you are "taking them somewhere" versus showing them random shots (it actually kind of reminded me of the end of T2 with the VO of the road shot).
  • the two lines for each of the title clips - the leading (spacing between lines) seems too far apart from top to bottom; and I could quickly tell that the titles were not vertically centered. It seemed you made whatever the last line/bottom line in each title clip both vertically centered and horizontally centered. That's just a personal preference of mine, but I noticed it immediately.
  • the ground shot at 23 seconds seemed really out of place, but maybe if started with the road shot and then this ground shot, it might work better - sticking to a theme that you are taking us somewhere;
  • the clips of the person huddled over the fire also seemed out of place; you may want to drop this clip from the reel.
Do you have more than the city shots and outdoor shots with the girl walking? This may help if you do, or working in some sort of theme as I suggested above. Even a demo reel can tell a story.
 
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Thanks man, actually that is very helpful. I actually like your points about the road/trail shots. i was thinking the reel could be longer ha, ha........It's good to hear a shorter version might work. I don't think i could take out the "girl by fire" shots though, its a favorite of some - including me lmao.

Anyways i'll wait and see what others might have to say...but its always a priviledge to hear what others here are saying about your work.
 
oh and the titling?.....that is a fairily new thing i am figuring out, i agree its vertically off. Just used a vegas template for that, does it throw you off that much?
 
Sometimes when I'm editing something short like this, I can end up with nearly 30 versions for one reason or another - just trying different scene selections and order, and because it's so quick and easy to do nowadays with technology. Using Premiere, I just copy the sequence and reorg it and export within minutes. Of course, that could just be a bit of OCD or something.
 
blake2404 said:
oh and the titling?.....that is a fairily new thing i am figuring out, i agree its vertically off. Just used a vegas template for that, does it throw you off that much?
Click to expand...

I think part of it is the media player has a lot of black space at the bottom once the controls vanish, making it look more offset than it really is. I could still tell though.
 
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