Showreel

 Showreel

What is a showreel?: A showreel is a short video showing a person's past work used by many kinds of people in the media industry.

What a showreel should include: A showreel must be short and don't make them too long as people who will mark your showreel, don't have time to look through something very long, you are showing the very best of your work, not everything that you have done. The opening is very important, start off with your best work and end it with a your second best work. Keep your showreel really simple as you don't want to distract your audience if you make your showreel based on edits that you have put, remember that the main focus is your work not showing off your editing skills, Lastly, always make sure that your showreel is easy to access to the examiner; upload your showreel on YouTube and also download a copy of the showreel in case you need to share the file directly.

Importance of a showreel: A showreel is very important because it shows your best work in the past years in college. It also shows your creativeness and editing skills so when your audience or the examiner watches your showreel, they will be impressed by your work that you have done in the past two or three years.

Examples: 

 

This is a showreel on graphic design. It's starts off with the intro and the logo, then it shows the work that this person has done during his/her past years as a graphic designer. The only thing that I didn't like about this showreel is the pacing, the cutaways were really fast and difficult to watch but I did find the edits of this showreel really good. The things that I would take away from this showreel is the edits and the format as I will put my logo in my intro and end it with an outro. I will not use the same pacing as I will slow the cutaways to reasonable pace so when people watch my showreel, they can see some of my best work that I have done in the past 2 years without getting their eyes hurt due to the fast cutaways.

The second example is a lot better than the first example. Just like the previous showreel, it started with an intro and showing the logo to begin the video, this showreel is from university and they show their best shorts they have made over the years. The movies bits that they put on seemed interesting and fun to me and their cutaways were in a regular speed, not like the previous where they rushed their cutaways and was just a pain to watch in my opinion. The only thing that is left from this showreel is the outro, they could have put the credits in and end it that off by showing the logo in the end.

In this final example its almost similar to the second example in terms of format and the pacing of the cutaway. The only difference from the previous two examples is they made the intro bit too long and they made the showreel also a bit too long. The showreel must be at least a minute long but they made it more than more than 2 minutes but never the less, I like how they started with 3-D animations of robots, implying that these students had a tone of skill and they also show their mini films and by the looks of it, seemed pretty well made. The only complaint about this showreel for me is the length of both the intro and the showreel because a 1 minute is an appropriate length for a showreel as it is just the highlights of your best work.

Progression:

This is how I edited my showreel and I have to say that this has been by far one of the best edited videos that I have made during my 2 years as a media student. Ever since I started editing in the very first year of media, I struggled a lot as it happens during the first year and the video style in my opinion wasn't great but I think I have made some progress this year. The feedback's also kinda helped to regain my confidence that I can improve as almost everyone liked my showreel and I'm happy with the end result. When making my showreel, I thought carefully of what clips should go and what clip should be the ending of my showreel etc, something that I didn't do in the previous years which is planning of how to make that video or print advert look better and I think that's one of the reasons why my past videos weren't that great in my opinion.

My Showreel

I started off my showreel with an intro by showing my logo and then skip to what I consider some of the best work that I have done for the past 2 years. The videos that I have included in my showreel are the cowboy video, barbering video, foley sound etc because they are the projects that I enjoyed to be part of and also, showing my editing skills that I have gained during these projects and I feel like that my editing skills has slightly improved . My showreel is a minute long which is an ideal length of a showreel. The tools that I used when making my showreel is the cutting tool to cut the clips that I have downloaded from YouTube and cut the bits from those videos that I have chosen of what I considered the best parts and putting them together by other small clips that I cut by using the cutting tool and I did not use any transitions between clips but. As for the soundtrack, I got it from 'Bensound' this is a website where you can download soundtrack for free, when making my showreel I wanted to have a soundtrack that is happy and enjoyable so I choose the track and dragged it to Premier Pro (which is the green bar) and I had to mute the clips so it won't interfere with soundtrack. After I was done putting on my soundtrack, I exported the video and render it to the format MP4 which saves vast amounts of time in the exporting processes.

Feedback

The feedback that I have received are mostly positive. One of the things that my audience like about my showreel is the way that's put out and I agree with this feedback because I thought so much of what clip should be first and last, for example I took out the scene from the cowboy video of me and a student having a face off as the beginning of the showreel and I end that off when I get shot by him. As for the soundtrack, I got criticism for it because it was too loud, I have to disagree on that feedback because in my opinion, the soundtrack isn't that loud and it is perfect in terms of sound volume. Lastly, I asked my audience if there is any improvements to make my showreel a bit better and some of them said that I need to turn the soundtrack down and I should have added a front cover or introduction. Like I said, I think the soundtrack does not need of improvement and as for the introduction, my introduction is my logo and I think there is no improvements as I'm happy of what I have done.