SHOWREELS

[*veers*]

I've got a feeling that I could do a lot more with my showreel, does anyone have any advice how to improve this kind of thing.

[Tuukka]

What kind of showreel are you talking about? Could you give some more precise information of your current showreel?

[*veers*]

I made a ten minute showreel of the best of the stuff I have directed.(all on DV). I just cut some stuff together with titles about what it was. I'm going to try and get some funding for something soon and they want to see a showreel, how could I jazz mine up? I was thinking about some cool music but there must be a better way to do it.

[Phydeault]

I'd suggest you to watch as many showreel as possible. (to see what not to do ...)

People can add theirs to http://www.crewnet.com/. I don't know if you have to pay to view them.

Phydeault

[Elixir]

what is a showreel?

[Tuukka]

Showreel is a combination of the (video)stuff you have done. I also have a showreel running about 30 minutes. It has a few dozen commercials and program trailers plus five music videos.

Veers, a good way to pump up your showreel is to put a cool looking graphics behind your titles. It also helps to have some sort of animation. In my showreel i photoshopped a pretty cool looking background using a dirty wall texture and some old, clunky industrial machines. I also work as a graphic designer so it was pretty easy for me to do. Then I added simple calculator running from nine seconds to zero. Then I asked my sound designer friend to make a 10 second audio world with distant machines making noises etc.

[Crynot]

Hey Tuukka - or anyone else who has done one,

I'm getting ready to start working on a music video for some friends of mine that are in a band. I've never done one before - are their any good books on the subject or do you have any advice?

I don't even know how to match up the final voicing over the video. Any ideas or advice would be appreciated!!!

Thanks,

Crynot

[Tuukka]

I have made six music videos during the last two years and they have been received quite well. I have made them to my friend's bands and one rap video I made actually made it to number one in Finnish charts. Finland has only 5 million people so you can make it to number one with sales of only 10 000 singles...

I have made all of the videos under 200$ with digital video cameras and then they were edited on computer. I used different kind of film filters to make them look like 8mm and 16mm film. For example Premiere and especially Adobe After Effects have lots of cool film filters. They make grain, scratches, dirt etc. It's a good idea to blur your picture from 0,5 pixels to 1 pixels before you put the film filter. It makes for softer, more film-like picture quality.

It's always a good idea to avoid cliches. For example every second music video shows a band playing on a stage. I prefer to not to show band playing. But if you do show it, try to make it original.

Use a lot of time on lighting. If you don't know how to light well, then shoot outdoors. Put a cool looking color filter to your outdoors stuff to avoid it looking too cheap and realistic in a dull way. If you can't edit with a computer, you can put a colored filter in front of you lense, or simply put a wrong color balance to your camera.

Use quick cuts. One shot should run from 1-3 seconds, or even faster. If your video has really strong pictures, you can show them longer, but strong pictures are hard to make. Longest pictures in my videos have been about 10 seconds, but I have really put time and effort to them.

The lip-sync can be achieved easily. When you are shooting the singer, you are playing the song on the background and he sings with it. You record the sound to your camera and when you edit the video, just sync the beginning of the audio of the video with the song. If you are editing on computer, the waveform of the audio is visible and synchronizing is extremely easy. It takes only few seconds to do it.

If you are editing on a manual edit, then you are in trouble. Since music videos generally require lots of fast cuts, they are hard to make on manual edit. Also, when you make a cut with manual edit, it can do it to wrong place. The error marginal is usually from 1-5 frames. When you are editing a TV program or something like that, 1-5 frames doesn't matter much, but on a music video it's important.

I'll write more later on, if something comes to mind. Ask me, if you have more questions.




[This message has been edited by Tuukka (edited 12-09-2000).]

[Tuukka]

I will make a new topic of Crynot's music video question. Please write there, if someone has comments.