Showreels
Georgia Dodsworth

What is a showreel?
A showreel is short video that showcases a persons best and previous work that they may want
to show to new clients. When making a showreel there are key features that should be included
such as:
• The length- a showreel should be no longer than 2 minutes and 3 minutes at most, this allows
the creator to really think about the clips that they put in.
• Target Audience- when creating your showreel, your audience should be taken into
consideration as you would need to think about what work would you like them to see.
• Create drafts/ feedback- When making any create product it is important to create an initial
draft to allows yourself to see how you want it to be structured. By gaining feedback from
peers or your audience it will allow you to make changes to the product that will be seen not
only that audience but potential future employers.
• A story- A showreel should show your audience and potential employers your journey within
the industry from start to what you produce now, A clear growth in confidence and skill
should be represented in the showreel.

Existing Showreels
When looking at this showreel I believe that this is a great example of a
showreel, as well as showing their past and best work it also shows a
story which is what is helpful within a showreel. This showreel also looks
very professional with different camera angles as well as the lighting that
is specifically targeted towards the specific scene to allow the audience
feel amerced within the story. As well as showing the cinematographer
work through a story it also shows the journey of how camera have
developed over the years. For example the first opening scene shows a
woman pulling a old film camera out of the cupboard and shows how the
camera works and how the film would be developed. In the next few
scenes it focuses on a relationship and a group of friends growing up
together. It then cuts to a image of a polaroid camera, what I like about
this as it not only shows the journey of how cameras have developed but it
also shows how the kids have group up along side cameras and seen their
development. At the end of the reel we see the latest technology being
used to make a photoshoot/ video for some clothing. One thing I noticed
about the showreel that there was the video just consisted of videos and
there was no photography involved, when taking into consideration that
this is a cinematography reel just including videos is normal. However,
when creating my showreel I will ensure to add both videos and photos to
add variation to my showreel. Link to showreel -Student showreel

Existing Showreel
Link to showreel- Student showreel
In this example of the student showreel, although it is many separate pieces
of different projects they have been edited carefully to still tell somewhat of
a story. Another part of the video that I like is the fact that the video both
starts and ends at the beach which allows the audience to see the
‘bookending’ technique which is where a movie ends with the same opening
scene or within the same location that was used at the start of the movie. I
also like how it has a variation of dramas within the showreel such as the
dance scene on the beach which is artistic and the police scene which is
more true crime drama which shows variation in the work. Although there
is variation within the different video genres, like the previous video no
photography images were shown and only videos. As said previously I will
be including both images and videos to my show reel. Another good thing
that I noticed was all the videos were the same size and no black lines
appeared throughout the video which allows the audience to have a
consistent view without having any interruptions or distractions. When
making my showreel I have taken the black lines into consideration as
within certain videos and images I have taken them in portrait which
makes it difficult to portray them within a landscape setting. I also like how
at the end she has included her full name and the year of her showreel as
she is then able to get her name out in the public and expand on her
showreels over the years.

My showreel Draft 1
When creating my first draft, I wanted to see what order I needed to put
my footage in to get a better understanding on how I wanted my
showreel to flow. When making my first draft I also created it on a app
called ‘Cap Cut’ which allowed me to easily insert clips, however once I
finished making this draft I decided that it didn’t look or feel very
professional, from this is decided that I wanted to use Premier pro to
edit my showreel as I feel as though this would make a large
improvement on both the quality and professionalism within my
showreel. When looking for clips I wanted to include my most recent
work but I also wanted to add old work to show my progression over the
past 2 years. However with editing this draft on my phone I was unable
to add specific parts of my college work as they wouldn’t download onto
the app.
After editing my showreel I instantly knew what clips I wanted to
include and what I wanted to take out to make sure I had the best
product. Another problem I ran into was having black bars appearing in
my showreel as I included both portrait and landscape videos and
images. When taking this into consideration I can see that it makes my
show reel lack consistency and could make my audience feel distracted
by the sudden change in view. Another issue I had seen was this draft
lasted around 45 seconds, however the average showreel should be
around 1 minute to minutes. One I looked through my show reel I went
straight into fixing some of the errors I had made in this draft in my
second draft.
Draft 1

My showreel Draft 2
When creating my second draft I felt as though it was a large
improvement from the first, I believe this because I edited the footage
on premier pro which means I was able to be more accurate with my
cuts. In this edit I also added a sound called ‘all that’ off Bensounds as
I believe that it fitted the feeling I was going for with my video. With
now using a professional editing software I was able to see where I
was cutting my videos to with the music more accurately. This was
another element that I liked about this draft as all of my clips were
timed to the beat of the music which allowed my video to seem more
smooth compared to my first draft. In this draft I was also able to add
my first project that I completed in my Level 3 Media course which
then will allow the audience to see the improvements and skills that I
have learned over the 2 years that I have been studying my course.
However, this showreel only ran for a total of 33 seconds which is
below the average time of a showreel, taking this into consideration
when creating my final draft is very important as I previously said, a
showreel should last around 1-2 minutes. Another issue I ran into
once again was the black lines and the inconsistency with my variety
of portrait and landscape images. To gain a better understanding of
what I need to improve on and what I did well I created a google
forms survey to gain some feedback
Draft 2

Feedback on draft 2 When creating my second draft I wanted to get other
peoples opinions on my work and how I can improve it
for my final draft for it to be the best product that I
can make. For my survey I asked the questions:
What did you like about my showreel?
• The variety of images
• Clips match the beat of the song
• Kept my attention with the images and videos
• Music is very upbeat
What can I improve on?
• The black lines
• Proportions of the images
• Make the video longer
• Reduce the black lines
When looking at these responses I can see the
majority of what I can improve on is about the black
lines and how they need to be reduced which I will
take into consideration when creating my final draft.
When looking at what people like I'm glad to see that
the images and the music was mentioned a lot.
Overall I took into consideration my improvements
and started to edit my final draft.

Editing Process
When editing my drafts of my showreel I
added the clips in and named them to allow it
to be easier to see what clips I have. I edited 2
of my drafts on premier pro as this is the
industry standard software that is used in
professional settings. When adding clips to my
showreel I added work that I had took in my
spare time for experimentation reasons and I
had also included work from previous projects
at college. When changing the music of my
showreel I had to remove the previous sounds
that were on the original video as they
wouldn’t fit the theme I was going for within
the video. To do this I highlighted the video
and unlinked the sound from the video which
allowed me to delete the sound and leave the
video behind with no sound.

Editing Process
A key element of a showreel is music, with uploading
my showreel to YouTube I had to find and ensure that
the music I used was copyright free. For this I used a
website called Bensound. When looking through the
different music that they offer I decided to use the
music called ‘All That’ as I believed that it went with
the idea that I had for my showreel the best, by using
the razor tool on premier pro it allowed me to ensure
that the sound finished when my showreel did and to
not make it too long of a showreel. This music also
allowed me to make effective cuts to the beats of my
showreel, as I included both videos and pictures. I also
had to rearrange some of my photos as they didn’t fit
the frame of the showreel.

Editing Process
As I had more to add to my showreel in the upcoming months I
needed to add a title at the end of my showreel to explain that
more will be added. For this I added a black video into my
timeline and used the text tool to add a text box to the black
video. Once I believe that I had finished my showreel I watched it
back to ensure that I was happy with the final product, when
watching it back I notice that one of my images was very zoomed
in after I had tried to fit it within the frame. Once I decided that I
was going to have one image that would not fit the frame and
stay in the original portrait frame. Although this would break the
consistency of the video it looked better when in portrait rather
than landscape.

Final draft- Final draft
When creating my final draft I took all of my feedback into
consideration, I edited my final draft once again on premier pro to
keep the same professional standard. One key thing that I needed
to improve on was the black lines on my images and videos. I spent
a lot of time ensuring that all my videos were consistent for the
viewer and to make sure no black lines were present. I also made
sure that my video lasted over a minute to get within the average
showreel time frames. Overall I am happy with my showreel design
as it shows my best work and show the improvement and skills
that I have gained throughout my 2 years on my course. My show
reel includes the smile campaign, my trip to Scotland, the Antarctic
Monkeys concert and other personal projects/ images that I have
done. At the end I included a screen that says to be continued, as in
April I am attending and filming a gig for the promotion of a solo
artist.