The best way to showcase your skills – besides the amazing CV you’ve now written following our last blog, Tips to Make your CV Stand out’, is a showreel.
A showreel should be strategically planned from start to finish. To help you along the way, we’ve shared some tips below.
1. Save the best for first
While your showreel should only include your best work, you should frontload it with the bits you’re most proud of. Realistically, the person watching won’t always make it to the end. You will want to grab their attention at the beginning with the best brands/names/shots you have in your portfolio. First impressions really do matter.
2. Keep it short and sweet
You need to be ruthless in the cutting room. The client wants to see what you can do, but with so much work on their plates, they want to see it as quickly as possible.
You need to find the perfect balance between showing enough of your work and showing too much. It will take a little bit of time and planning, but the reward is so worth it. Somewhere between 1-3 minutes in length is the sweet spot.
3. Simplicity over frills
Keep it simple! You don’t want the edit to outshine the footage. If the edit is distracting, the viewer may lose interest.
Your showreel needs to be clear and concise and shouldn’t create any additional work for the viewer. You aren’t creating a musical montage piece and should avoid losing sight of the footage amongst fancy edits. In saying this, you’re a storyteller so the sequence of your footage can be creatively placed to tell its own story. Just be careful of over-editing!
4. Think of it as a personal ad
Consider yourself as a brand. Your showreel is the commercial which helps to sell your service. Think about who your customer is and what type of work you are looking to get. This will make your showreel’s message clear.
5. Make your role clear
Be specific about your role in each project presented. Were you the animator? Editor? Colourist? Producer? Director?
Include text over the visuals specifying your role. Keep the font, positioning, and fade time consistent throughout so it doesn’t become distracting.
6. Ensure your showreel is easily viewed
We’re getting down to the basics here, but ensure your video can be shared easily. Upload your video to sites such as Vimeo or YouTube and also have a downloaded copy of your video, in case you need to share the file directly.
