Tips for Making an Great Showreel

It is very important to create a showreel to show your personal skills to potential clients and although there are no rules to showreels I would like to share with you some tip or maybe you could even call them guidelines that you can follow to help you create a more efficient showreel.

First would obviously be to have enough work to create an interested showreel, and no you should not use work that was produced from tutorials. I agree that when you are first starting to get into motion graphics you need to view some tutorials to help get you the effect you are wanting to produce but using projects that are from tutorials in your showreel will fail to show anybody that you have any creative talents and experience in motion graphics. It will only show that you can copy a certain style or project from somebody else’s talents.

Once you have your work selected and you start to produce your showreel it is important to remember to keep it short. People do not have the attention spans to sit and watch a 10 min showreel of random projects from a random designer. You want to capture the viewer within the first 40 seconds or so of your video and of course this also depends on your experience. If you are just starting out your career in motion graphics just do a short 30 second video that shows your best work, if you are experienced then you are able to show more of your best work and extend your video to about a minute or more.

FInally probable the most important thing to have in your showreel is to express your own style. Remember to be different and that you don’t need to copy what some experienced designer or famous designer has already produced. Its your creativity that will touch people and help you acquire new clients for future projects. So go create something that you love, put it out there for all to see and start watching the opportunities come your way.

A good site for showreel inspiration is http://reelroulette.net/

If you have any showreels you would like to show me just shoot me a link in the comment sections below and I would be happy to check ‘em out!

By – Mitch Myers