archived-videos My Director Demo Reel

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fbordez

Please check out my Director Demo Reel and give me your feedback. My focus is Narrative and Advertising and this is all shot with no budget on a 5D MarkII or 7D. I'm looking forward to get paying gigs eventually. If you have tips on how to transition from hobbyist to pro I'm very interested too. Thanks!
http://vimeo.com/47277227
 
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There were a couple of questionable things in there, but in all, not too bad. You're ahead of most of the amateur curve.. Hell you're ahead of a bunch of the professional curve, though some of your action parts seemed to be... well... missing a bit and jump the action without an appropriate cut... if that makes sense?
 
Most of the shots looked pretty good, how many films are compiled into this? I agree with "Sweetie" in that the (mainly the fight scenes) were missing their aggression and maybe realism as such, but action is a hard thing to pull off well. I liked it, will probably check out a little bit of your work.
One question though you said you were into advertising? I didn't think I saw any of that demonstrated in the demo reel.
Try some live events and you'll definitely be able to get some paying gigs :)
 
If you have tips on how to transition from hobbyist to pro I'm very interested too.
Click to expand...

I missed this question before. My tip is very similar to business. Find a niche and make sure these 3 things are fulfilled:

A). That you're good at.
B). There is decent demand.
C). There is either no or little competition or you have a competitive advantage on your competition.

Good luck!
 
fbordez said:
Please check out my Director Demo Reel and give me your feedback. My focus is Narrative and Advertising and this is all shot with no budget on a 5D MarkII or 7D. I'm looking forward to get paying gigs eventually. If you have tips on how to transition from hobbyist to pro I'm very interested too. Thanks!
http://vimeo.com/47277227
Click to expand...

I'm an intern learning.

It caught my interest and held my attention. I may be wrong but I saw 2 basic types of scenes -
(1) Emotions from a Drama film (They really caught my attention).
(2) and Scenes from an Action film ( I thought they were so so).

The music felt appropriate as you flipped through your emotion scenes BUT the music seemed off with the action scenes. I wonder if you moved all of the emotion scenes together with that choice of music and moveed all of the action scenes together and changed the music to a more action oriented score.

Where did the music come from?

Amanda
 
Sweetie said:
There were a couple of questionable things in there, but in all, not too bad. You're ahead of most of the amateur curve.. Hell you're ahead of a bunch of the professional curve, though some of your action parts seemed to be... well... missing a bit and jump the action without an appropriate cut... if that makes sense?
Click to expand...

Hi and thanks for taking the time to comment.

It's nice to hear that you think that my work in general is ahead of the bunch. As far as action part not being convincing you're not the first one to tell me that. I gonna have to work on that since I'm very interested in making action films. So you felt that most of the problem was in the editing. Is that correct?
 
MileCreations said:
Most of the shots looked pretty good, how many films are compiled into this? I agree with "Sweetie" in that the (mainly the fight scenes) were missing their aggression and maybe realism as such, but action is a hard thing to pull off well. I liked it, will probably check out a little bit of your work.
One question though you said you were into advertising? I didn't think I saw any of that demonstrated in the demo reel.
Try some live events and you'll definitely be able to get some paying gigs :)
Click to expand...

Thanks! There are 6 short films and 2 commercials compiled into this. You can watch them here http://vimeo.com/user2271724/videos

I'll work on my action scenes. How do you think I can add aggression to these scenes? Edit, acting, choreography, sound?

What do you mean by live events? Events like NAB?

Thanks!
 
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Sweetie said:
I missed this question before. My tip is very similar to business. Find a niche and make sure these 3 things are fulfilled:

A). That you're good at.
B). There is decent demand.
C). There is either no or little competition or you have a competitive advantage on your competition.

Good luck!
Click to expand...

My edge is in Visual Effects work. I'll try to find a niche to put that to good use.
Thanks for the advice!
 
arains said:
I'm an intern learning.

It caught my interest and held my attention. I may be wrong but I saw 2 basic types of scenes -
(1) Emotions from a Drama film (They really caught my attention).
(2) and Scenes from an Action film ( I thought they were so so).

The music felt appropriate as you flipped through your emotion scenes BUT the music seemed off with the action scenes. I wonder if you moved all of the emotion scenes together with that choice of music and moveed all of the action scenes together and changed the music to a more action oriented score.

Where did the music come from?

Amanda
Click to expand...

I found the music in the Vimeo Music Store. I was looking for a track with emotion and hope. I tried to edit my reel to follow the build up of the music by going from more quiet emotional scenes at the beginning to action driven shots towards the end.

It seems everybody agrees that my action scenes are so so. Can you tell me one or two action scenes you love in feature films? I'll study them to see how I can improve.

Thanks for your feedback.
 
fbordez said:
Hi and thanks for taking the time to comment.

It's nice to hear that you think that my work in general is ahead of the bunch. As far as action part not being convincing you're not the first one to tell me that. I gonna have to work on that since I'm very interested in making action films. So you felt that most of the problem was in the editing. Is that correct?
Click to expand...

It's hard to tell what was the cause without being able to see the raw footage. One of them it looked very stiff, like a robot hitting someone. For all I know it could have been a robot. Another, it either looked like an ordinary choice of angle, not enough footage or an edit that didn't show something. Without the benefit of hearing the sound, we're totally reliant on the images to tell the story so its a lot less tolerant to things missing. If the eyes don't see it, and the ears pick it up, its fine, but if the eyes don't see it and the ears don't hear it, it feel wrong... Make sense?

The shorts they came from might be good. They might make sense. It might be that they just don't belong in the reel. If it doesn't feel right in your directors reel, it shouldn't be in your directors reel.
 
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Part of what makes a fight scene more real is the sounds of body parts hitting each other and the ground. When you take out the sound and just lay music over them, the audience can see that no real forceful contact is being made.
 
Sweetie said:
It's hard to tell what was the cause without being able to see the raw footage. One of them it looked very stiff, like a robot hitting someone. For all I know it could have been a robot. Another, it either looked like an ordinary choice of angle, not enough footage or an edit that didn't show something. Without the benefit of hearing the sound, we're totally reliant on the images to tell the story so its a lot less tolerant to things missing. If the eyes don't see it, and the ears pick it up, its fine, but if the eyes don't see it and the ears don't hear it, it feel wrong... Make sense?

The shorts they came from might be good. They might make sense. It might be that they just don't belong in the reel. If it doesn't feel right in your directors reel, it shouldn't be in your directors reel.
Click to expand...

All your points are very good observations. I didn't notice the stiffness but now that you pointed it I realize it's obvious.

Next step for me is to shoot a bunch of fight scenes until people find them bad ass. :) I'll post my tests here when they're ready. Thanks again!!
 
moonshieldmedia said:
Part of what makes a fight scene more real is the sounds of body parts hitting each other and the ground. When you take out the sound and just lay music over them, the audience can see that no real forceful contact is being made.
Click to expand...

Yes, it's true that without sound a lot of famous fight scenes don't look so great anymore. I guess a fight scene is case where sound is not equal but more important than the image.
 
I thought it was great! The fight scenes were kinda iffy though to be honest. And being a director's reel, you should have some dialog scenes in there as well not just pure visuals. In fact, I think it would be more appropriate if the reel consisted of just uncut scenes from some of your past work. I think that would work perfectly.
 
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