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Project three Stunning showreels

Adobe After Effects CS4 QuickTime Pro 7

Alex Donne Johnson shares his process for piecing together a proquality showreel, from clip selection to final cut
A good showreel is an essential tool for anybody working in video effects, animation or motion graphics. With only a matter of minutes to impress your potential clients, its important to present a portfolio thats high quality and snappy. On the following pages, I explain how to collate your material and put it together in a showreel format, giving you tips on everything from sourcing music to structuring the reel, as well as how to use it to promote yourself and win new work. Ive used Adobe After Effects here, but if you prefer to use another editing program such as Final Cut or Premiere Pro, the same principles can be applied.

Create a slick motion graphics reel

The first step is to look through your portfolio and decide which work you want to put in. Become your own worst critic really look at your work, and consider which bits should be left in and which should come out. If you are unsure about whether to put something in, thats probably a good sign that it should be left out.

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Alex Donne Johnson A freelancer for clients such as Adidas, Levis and Rolls Royce by day, by night Johnson works as a VJ and has performed at clubs and festivals across Europe. www. vectormeldrew.com

On your disc Youll find the resources you need to work along with this project on your cover disc, in the Resources section

Skills Select good showreel content Edit to music, for a polished finish Export your showreel to ensure glitch-free viewing

As you will be pulling lots of different pieces of media from different projects, its important to keep them in one place on your hard drive. Showreels always need updating, and you dont want to find yourself trying to re-link media after youve moved various folders around your hard drives. Create one folder and stick copies of all your media inside it.

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To tie everything together, its worth thinking about what will go at the start and end of your reel. This is a good opportunity to try out a skill or style that is completely different to anything else on your showreel, and can help to add variety. It also needs to grab viewers attention from the start, so think big. If you know your music, maybe make something tailored towards that. This is the perfect place to put in any branding you already have, as well as your website URL if you have one.

When it comes to music, your first instinct might to be choose your favourite bands new single or the latest heart wrenching dubstep wobbler. However, copyright infringement aside, you also run the risk of alienating a large percentage of your audience whose tastes dont quite match your own. Play it safe and choose some stock audio, or better still, a piece of classical music. This way you dont have to worry about it becoming outdated.

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Go to Composition>New Composition. Ideally you want to be using true widescreen 16:9 (1024x576), however this isnt always possible if most of your pieces are 4:3, and youll most likely have a mixture. These days most TVs, monitors and even YouTube clips are widescreen (16:9) as default, so its good to keep up with the times. However, if most of your clips are 4:3 you should stick to 720x576, unless you can face re-rendering everything. First, start by dragging the audio file onto the timeline so it becomes a layer. Go to Composition> Preview>Audio Preview (Work Area). As you listen to the audio, tap the * key (on the numeric keyboard) to the beat. This will add markers on the timeline to show where you need to make your cuts. Alternatively, the more time-consuming method is to scrub the audio (holding the CMD key) and look at the waveform.

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Now you are ready to start editing, so open up After Effects and go to File>Import. Providing everything is in the same folder (including the audio), you can select the whole folder and choose Import Folder. You should now have all the media you need in your Project Bin.

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Project three Stunning showreels

Now place your intro clip on the timeline, and build it up with layers of clips that coincide with the marker points youve created, so you can cut to the beat. A useful way to find good in and out points is to leave the red marker where it is, drag your layer through it til you find a good clip, then simply drag the end of the layer inwards or outwards to crop to your marker point.

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Less is always more, and ideally you want your showreel to be around 1.5 minutes long. Maintain viewers interest by keeping it varied, not just through the different types of content, but also in the way you edit it together avoid having long sections of the same type of work, for instance.

Promote yourself online

These days, online promotion can be one of your most effective marketing tools. Upload your showreel to sites such as YouTube, Vimeo and MySpace. One of the perks of MySpace is that its also responsible for seeding its video content to AOL and a bunch of other sites, so before you know it, your work could be all over the web. Once its made it onto the internet, its also worth submitting to portfolio sites such as Behance Network and Creattica.

The flow and pace are incredibly important; the idea is to keep the viewer wanting more. Give them just a taster of all the best bits, and leave out anything that could be considered mundane, or thats already been shown. Remember to put your best work first for maximum impact, especially anything with a reputable client attached to it. Continue this same process, and try to pay attention to clips that work well when edited together. If they use the same camera style, then its worth putting them next to each other to help maintain a smooth flow. Try to avoid cutting a clip next to a one with a completely different camera movement one horizontal and one vertical, for example, as itll feel disjointed.

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If some of your clips are 4:3 but the majority are 16:9 and theres nothing you can do about it, such as re-rendering, but you really want to keep them there are methods you can use, although theyre definitely not ideal. For example, this clip is a horizontal pan of some buildings, so I duplicated its layer twice (Ctrl/Cmnd+D) and added one either side of the original with slightly lower opacity to fill in the background.

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Create a slick motion graphics reel

Get aspect ratios right

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Aspect ratios can be tricky if all your projects are mixed. As a rule, if a client asks you to work in 4:3 and its a good portfolio piece, its worth rendering the part you want out in 16:9 just for your showreel. If possible, its easier to do it at the time rather than going back and doing it later.

Pay attention to whats happening in the track. If there is a breakdown or a large dramatic build up, edit accordingly and increase the speed of the edits in your clips. This will help to demonstrate your editing skills, as well as keeping the showreel more involved. If you have collaborative work, add a piece of text explaining which part you were responsible for (using Layer>New>Text). This is in no way a weakness in fact, it can help to demonstrate that youre a good team player.

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Offline promotion
If you really want to make an impact with certain companies, put together a welldesigned DVD. Pay attention to packaging to make it stand out, and find a direct contact at the company that you want to send it to. Its important to keep your reel updated no matter how big or small. If there are some new pieces that will benefit it, add them to your current reel, or if you have a lot of new work maybe you should start a whole new reel. Big studios often do one per year.

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If your showreel still isnt quite beefy enough, or youre not happy with how it looks, this is a perfect opportunity to include some self-initiated work. This will allow you to demonstrate any skill you choose, and get a lot more creative than any client will allow you to be. Chances are you will get clients wanting you to replicate this work for them, which in turn develops your commercial work in directions that you enjoy.

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You should now be ready to render out the showreel by going to Composition>Make Movie. Remember to click Lossless in the Output Module, and tick the checkbox for Audio Output. The best way is to render it out at full resolution, and then open it in QuickTime Pro 7 and go to File>Export. Click Options and go to Settings, and choose H.264 as the codec. This keeps the file size small and the quality high, perfect for uploading to YouTube or Vimeo.

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