As this is a show reel for a college rather than a personal show reel, it takes work from a wide variety of students, including special effects, done and vehicle cinematographers and work done outside of the UK. It looks very professional and showcases the best of what they have to offer. It also matches the music that goes alongside it for example cutting on beats. As well as this, inspirational wording is also included as it matches the uplifting power of the backing track.
One thing I did notice is that it is very focused on video projects and lacks in showing photoshop and sound design projects. Towards the end there is a short montage of some smaller projects but it is unclear as to whether they are print ads or moving image due to the time they appear on screen being around a second. This is something I will need to avoid in my showreel as I need to show the audience my projects clearly and for a more appropriate amount of time where viewers can process what is happening in each clip that I show. These small projects also had 4 on screen at the same time and so it was hard to focus on each one to see exactly what it was. Even then, the amount of time they were on screen was not enough to process it.
In this example, I noticed that the aspect ratios kept changing- a small detail to pick up but I do think it would look better if all the videos were the same size and not have the black bars appear and reappear. This is something I think I could improve in my own work as I'm facing the same problem with videos being different sizes. I also noticed that the creator of this video didn't include a personal logo- but used the college logo instead.
For this time, I changed the music and also cropped all videos down to 16:9 so that the black boarders don't change every few clips. I am now awaiting feedback for some further improvements.
Improvements after feedback:
Context:
One of the more lengthy improvements I took on was the music change. I also agreed with the comment that the non-copyright music was quite boring over the top of work that is supposed to excite and show off skills to viewers. Therefore, to make the music better I edited it using Adobe Audition.
In the original soundtrack, part 2 of the song (the part that would've appeared after my Coraline segment) was unappealing due to the voices that were added originally. To counteract this, I duplicated part 1 of the song and simply used this again to replace half of the song with the voices.
I used an online bass drum metronome at 130 bpm and stretched the track so that it would match the bpm of the non copyright music (around 131/132 bpm but this wasn't given online and so I had to work it out as best I could by ear). The bass drum (which is now in the second half of the music after my Coraline segment) features this bass drum track in the background as a sort of metronome. It add's depth to the track and makes it more exciting to listen to.
I also took a risk and added a key change to the track. After 8 bars of part 2 of the song, there is a two semitone key change which I believe totally transforms the song for the better and makes a much nicer listen. I then exported this project from Audition and added it to my showreel on premiere pro and I believe it is now significantly stronger with this edited soundtrack.
Responding to suggested improvements:
Top half of the comment section below is what viewers liked.
The bottom half is what people thought I could improve on.
I have conformed and acted on the first comment that thought the music could be more upbeat.
Another comment that appeared several times was about adding or changing the captions on the video to explain each project. I did want to try to stay away from this as on the show reels I have watched, captions distracted me from actually watching the content (hence why I also made the Coraline foley sound project so small in writing). I also think this could be a problem due to the amount of projects that are in the montage- i.e. some projects only last a second before moving onto the next one in the montage and so there probably wouldn't be enough time to read writing and watch the video that is playing. However, I do want to act on these comments because it is reoccurring. Therefore, the writing that is on the video (Coraline clip) I could make slightly bigger so that viewers can read it easier.
The text on the Coraline clip now stands out more and is in a slightly bigger font but does not take away from the video its self.
I am happy with my end product and I believe it shows my best work over the last year and a half. It features several projects from induction projects, additional projects to major units of work. I have also included work from this unit such as my logo.
I have cleared up any outstanding mistakes such as the aspect ratio issue and made the video look more professional. My feedback has definitely helped too and the mix of suggested improvements has really stabilised the whole product from several different angles. For example, I have changed multiple aspects because of the feedback such as the text on screen and music. All in all, I do think that it was well worth getting feedback and acting on it as I am now much happier with my show reel than I was with my first draft. Though I was not able to accommodate every single suggested improvement, I believe that working on two of them were well worth doing. I received some very complimentary remarks on my feedback form and so am satisfied that my show reel is good enough as it is.
This has also been used in a real life setting for my university interview at the Northern School of Art and has definitely paid off as they offered me an unconditional space on their course for TV Film and Theatre Production. My interviewer was able to ask me to elaborate on several projects such as the Halloween event, to which I was able to tell him more about the night of filming and how it was an extra project outside of college. Being a lecturer that specialises in sound, he was also interested in my Coraline foley project to which I told him about the process of layering sounds together and choosing a clip for them to go with. There was definitely lots to talk about with the show reel and a two minute clip of my works was able to compliment my interview nicely and transitioned into a conversation about many of the works that were featured.
This post shows my first and final draft of my personal statement. This is a document used when applying to university through UCAS and may also be required in apprenticeships or jobs. I used class resources which showed me how to structure my statement and what should go into each paragraphs content. I attended two UCAS workshops in college in which my work was checked by three lecturers and I made adaptions according to their advice. The final version is currently with UCAS and I am happy with the outcome and believe I have included all necessary information about myself and my works. One occurring issue that did crop up several times was the 4000 character limit and line limit. I was under the character count but it remained over the maximum amount of lines. I didn't want to strip down the statement anymore and so removed a paragraph line between the 3rd and 4th paragraph which allowed me to submit it according to both the word and line count. First draft before lecturer ...
Existing portfolio research into 2 websites, showcasing the individual artists work with clients and campaigns. They each have more than one particular skills, and list at least 4 each that they are confident doing and have enough evidence of. For example they aren't just digital artists, they may do photography, video production, animation etc alongside it. This was helpful in allowing me to decide what I was going to include on my own website. The profiles I looked at had an effective layout and navigation of the website so this is something I'd like to adopt when creating my own.
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