Professional Practice (Week 9)

Showreel and Portfolio Design

This week we are coming closer to finishing off our semester and with that our professional practice assignment. Coming into these final weeks, our lesson today was Alec and Darryl helping everyone out on blackboard with their portfolios and showreels.

We were told how important showreels are and how most, if not all employers will request one along with our CV and cover letter. They told us how it is also helpful to have a portfolio/image sequence of all your previous work on hand, just to show the employer if they requested it and to show variant in our skills and work.

To begin with my portfolio and the fact that my showreel is not going towards my assignment and that my portfolio would just be to showcase my work. I just updated my portfolio from which I had made on PowerPoint and added in some of my best and newer pieces of work from my first year in university and added some descriptions and notes on what work I produced, my materials used and the ideas which I had in development of my work. My portfolio began with the work I had created within my A level class, which was drawings of wild animals and a final piece highlighting animal cruelty within the circus. I showed a number of different materials such as, pen, pencils, acrylics and pastel and showed skills of development, photoshop and creating a final piece project start to finish.

The work I produced in my art and design course in the college in Derry was next and was some of my proudest work I have created so far. This is because I showed two projects, one focusing on illustration and a journey of characters traveling around in illustration, pictured in front of my favourite spots within Derry and a stop motion piece. Both of these projects I was able to show my ability to character design, finding locations, photography, editing and develop my entire project. I was able to show my individual thinking skills and problem solving.

The next material I created was a my showreel and this was going to take some more time to create and finalise, as it will include most of my updated university work, but I will have to edit this showreel on adobe premiere, something I am not quite used to doing. In my showreel I decided to just keep the work I created in university, as it is my best work to date and something that I would like to be considered for by my employer.

In my showreel I first added in the group work I had done with the nightmare group, the first group project I had done within university and a project that really opened my eyes to the animation pipeline and working within a group to produce a final outcome. The nightmare project showed my ability to work together with others when creating a character design, taking a concept, personalising this and animating this all in a 2D format. My next animation which I included was a mix of my 3D work and 2D work, for another nightmare themed group project I worked on in my semester two, first year of university. This group project I had more of a say when creating my scenes for the animation and had presented myself for animating different 2D and 3D scenes, as well have creating textures on photoshop for the 3D characters face, outfit and duvet covers. I was a bit unsure to add this group project within my showreel, as my showreel was not going to have any text to describe which work I had created within the scene and given the animation to be a group project. There were some components with the scene that I did not create entirely by myself and did not want to give false promises of my abilities and work to my employer.

I worked round this however by adding in the animation and being ready to explain to my employer what I had related within the animation, such as the 2D animations of the monsters and the textures for the 3D characters facial expressions. How I can improve this when I go back and update my showreel to my more recent work, is I can add in notes onto each slide of what work within the scene I have created or add a list of notes attached the document I will send my link or file on for the showreel.

The editing of my showreel as instructed by my lectures to what set up would work best for being hired and what employers would like to see, is to constantly update your showreel of your best work and keeping it relevant to what you can do and a maximum time limit of 60 seconds. This is because the employer will want to see the work you are most proud of, is the work you are happiest at doing, but also what variety you can add to their team. It is also best to keep the showreel at a time limit, to give yourself the best chance to be noticed and considered by the employers, as a long and tedious showreel may result in them quickly passing on your film, as they have no time.

With this information in hand, I edited my showreel just under minute and presented by best work in my option best to last. This is why of my last two scenes of my showreel I added the 3D modelling work I had done within both semesters of my first year and a scene within the stop motion video I edited.

I added these two last components to show the employer my modelling techniques which I am proud off, showcasing the skills I have developed within a number of software’s and also my main passion which is stop motion and the film I created. I think overall my showreel is very basic in it contents and editing, but it is what it’s supposed to be and shows my best work which I am proud. I hope in the next coming years and months that I will regularly update my showreel, making multiple drafts so that I can look back and feel how far I have come with developing my software skills, animations and model making.

Creating a showreel was something new for me and I found that the best software for me was adobe premiere, as I had a number of my classmates use the same software and it seemed that it was a good choice to go for, giving my lack of knowledge in editing videos and shots. This was probably the most difficult thing I completed for my assignment and after watching a number of YouTube tutorials and spending time on my work, I still had no idea on what I was doing. I was able to spend a day or two trying the software, making many trials and errors but was able to edit together a very basic showreel. This showreel is okay, however not the proudest work I have presented for an assignment and I am eager to get back to work adding in shots and finalising the editing, with maybe timed music, text and just overall a better final video.

I hope that my disappointment in the final video I created, allows me the kick start I need to learn how to edit on a couple of software’s until I find what editing software, I like best. I hope to produce better work and to develop my skills overall within editing, as this is another skill that I am sure I would be grateful to learn, not just for myself and other university assignment that may need to be edited.