1. Start Strong
A popular comment made in a lot of articles is to start your showreel with your best work as this is the first thing the employer will see so it needs to have a big wow factor to keep them interested.
2. Cut Ruthlessly
As well as starting strong you should also only include your very best work and be ruthless with what you put in, remove any sentimental value that you have to a scene, if it doesn't truly display your best work then it shouldn't be in your showreel.
3. Keep It Short
Studios receive vast amounts of showreels daily so in order not to bore your audience you want your showreel to stay short and snappy. "we would recommend for them to be roughly one-and-a-half to two minutes in length," says Claire Anderson of The Mill.
4. Captions Where Needed
Captions will help the viewer understand what they are looking at. Keep captions simple and use a bare minimum number of words. I recommend captioning a shot with the role you played in creating it; for example ‘Character animation’, ‘Effects animation’ and so on. This will especially help distinguish what you did in the project if it was a group project.
5. Match Your Reel To The Vacancy/studio
This is a very important one because for example if you showing a modelling reel to an animation company not only will you ruin your chances for that job position but also could offend your employer as they will see it as disrespectful due to you not doing you research into the work they provide.
6. Keep Things Simple
Many of the articles have said it is better to show something simple done well than something ambitious done poorly. However I don't think that means you shouldn't challenge yourself and put just a simple bouncing ball animation into the reel as the employer will find this boring and lacking in imagination, it simply means not to try and do a feature length film to yourself.
7. Show Breakdowns
Although you may find them pointless and think they look rubbish the workings out and breakdowns are a valuable thing to see to an employer as it shows your work flow and in general how you like to work whether it be through thumbnails or LAV's. This does not mean however show it for every single clip as this will then become to similar and will bore the employer with the repetitiveness. Instead show the breakdown for a particularly hard shot that took a lot of working out.
Although you may find them pointless and think they look rubbish the workings out and breakdowns are a valuable thing to see to an employer as it shows your work flow and in general how you like to work whether it be through thumbnails or LAV's. This does not mean however show it for every single clip as this will then become to similar and will bore the employer with the repetitiveness. Instead show the breakdown for a particularly hard shot that took a lot of working out.
8. End With A Bang
Finally similar to the beginning you should also finish with one of your best as well, as hopefully your employer has made it to the end of your showreel; you want a good lasting memory of your work.
Cliches To Avoid
"Dragons, robots, cameras endlessly flying round sets and worlds populated by supermodels and manga heroes."
"The work can’t look at all corny. It needs to be quite sophisticated, or at least handled really well."
More tips can be found at http://www.creativebloq.com/audiovisual/perfect-showreel-top-tips-9134570
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