To make my showreel, I began by collecting together tapes of the work I have produced over the past three years of Uni. I found that I had a broad range of filming genres that would look good on my showreel as it shows that I have varied experience. From the tapes, I had footage of interviews, news stories, music gigs, CCI Live, nature, and documentary among others.
To make my showreel, I used Avid Media Composer, an industry standard software. Although I primarily want to be a camera operator, I also know how to use editing software, which is useful as multi skilled people can appeal more to employers.
The music I used on my showreel was a piece made by myself and Jamie Gazard. The track, entitled ‘Morning Glory Theme’, is an upbeat song which I cut the clips of my work to. By doing this, I think that it makes the showreel more entertaining to watch and will (hopefully) not bore the viewer. The showreel I have made has a variety of my work on it, including camera work, editing and music. I feel that by making the music myself, it shows the employer that I am committed to making work of a high quality. It also shows that I have made an effort to produce my own work, and not use music by an outside source.
I decided to make my showreel fairly short. This was so that the viewer could get a taster of my work. I also included other full pieces made by me so that if the employer likes the showreel, they can go on and watch the other clips in their entirety.
After finishing editing my showreel in Avid, I exported it as a QuickTime file. I then put it into iDVD to produce a DVD to send employers. When choosing a menu for my DVD, I selected one of the pre made templates that comes with the software. However, the theme that I chose is a style that would be associated with me. The theme is pink and black, with an image of myself in the background.
I have three sections to my DVD, Showreel, other work, and about me. The showreel section is the minute long montage of my work which showcases my work. It can be viewed quickly by the employer.
The next section on my DVD is the other work section. This is for the employer to view two pieces of my work in full. If they like my showreel, they then have the option to view full pieces of my work.
The two pieces of work that I chose to put on my DVD were my final year project, a documentary looking at the historic aspect of Southsea as a seaside resort, and a piece I made for the CCI Channel about the International Office at the University of Portsmouth. I chose these pieces as I feel they are my best work.
The final part of my DVD is the about me section. This is just a little reminder to the employer of who I am, my interests and my role. This section also has a link to my blog on it.
Once all of this had been designed, I burned the project onto DVD, ready to be sent out to employers.
