Demo Reel Do's and Dont's by Robin Linn (Sony)

Got this off the AM message boards but it was originally posted on facebook so I think it’s fine to put here



Demo Reel Do's and Dont's by Robin Linn (Sony)

Hey guys! Now there are a lot of demo reel do's and dont's floating around and I just cant get enough of em! There was a very interesting discussion over at facebook on Robin Linn's Status Update (of all places ha!) on the Dos and Donts of demo reels that was too good to not share with you guys! Robin is the Chairman of IPAX Career Services(Sony Imageworks). Here is most of the convo, enjoy!

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>Robin is wondering if you all would like me to post Demo Reel Do's and Dont's on here? I could write a new one everyday and not repeat myself for weeks on end....<

**Chris Bailey at 10:19am December 3
When i see reels cut to to a cool piece of music, the first thing I do it turn the sound off. Petty Jedi mindtricks like this don't work on most directors.

And then there's "the more fancy the demo's titles are, the less accomplished the work is" rule.

Wow...this is fun!

**Chris Bailey at 10:46am December 3
Things are good...just finished directing some CG shorts for WB and looking for my next gig.

One thing that I got into it with my animators was how much of their animation from a given project to put on a reel. As a director, I'm looking to see how much work someone can contribute as much as how I like it. For small projects, fast is just as important as good. The animators were concerned about boring directors with too much...that they can tell if one can animate after just a few shots.

What's your view on this?

**Robin A. Linn at 10:54am December 3
As long as the work is good, I don't mind a reel being on the long side - especially if it shows a variety of work (some cartoony and then some more realistic, as an example) but if the work is just okay - nothing is going to help it. Oh, and another thing, dont repeat your animations. If we missed the mistake you made on the first view, odds are we'll catch it on the subsequent one...

**Chris Bailey at 11:18am December 3
A couple of animators on my crew (whom I loved, btw) asked me after the show what I thought of their reel. So I watched it with them and said my thoughts out loud as I recall from watching it the first time. I could tell it was an eyeopener. Some things that they had on their reel meant little to me and then when I got to a meaty bit I'd say, "this is where I decided to hire you."

I'm not sure we're all the best judge of our own reels...I've had editors and agents give me advice that I thought was counter-intuititve, but they turned out to be right.

**Robin A. Linn at 12:23pm December 3
I think students (and professionals) forget that animation is acting. We want to see acting on their reels - their acting should show us they know about physics, posing, timing, etc. BUT the performance should always come first and be at the heart of their reel.

**Thea Eaton at 12:44pm December 3
I think there are different types of reels, for different audiences. I can appreciate an action reel set to good music, from an animation company. A reel set to music does in effect show a sense of timing, composition and dramatic effect. These reels should have a topic, either action, gaming, special effects, emotion, etc.. with matching music. The audience for these reels are comsumers.

But.. if I am screening to hire an animator, I much more prefer to see an animated portfolio. This means that all animations are not 'reeled' together, but are seperated portfolio style, with information on each project, different clips for each project with the original audio or soundtrack. Animation is so tied to the soundtrack or voice over, that it is useless for me to see it without its original track. I like the option of seeing different parts of the same project. I also like to know project background and specifics, who was responsible for what, etc..


**Chris Bailey at 2:01pm December 3
I look at fancy music on a reel as a smokescreen. Also, if the music isn't to the director's taste, you might lose points. A lot of public domain music that people put on their reels sounds like porno music...yipes. Better to let the work speak for itself.


**Robin A. Linn at 11:36am December 4
Morning all, Animation Director (and all around great guy) Chris Bailey and I were just talking about reels and I thought you might like to read what was being discussed

**Robin A. Linn at 11:38am December 4
Chris, what terms would you use to describe the typical Reel Review? For those of you who dont know what a Reel Review is - it is where a recruiter sits down with the supervisors and takes a look at the reels that have been submitted

**Robin A. Linn at 11:40am December 4
Please know that most of the time these take place with one or two supervsiors (lets use anim. sups for this example) and we tend to look at between 25 to 50 reels as fast as possible. Remember these sups are on shows and are very busy ppl

**Robin A. Linn at 11:43am December 4
The reels once they arrive are, sorted, logged into a database and stored in bins. Sometimes the resume and cover letter get separated from the reel case. This is why I say not to send a separate CV - slip it under the clear plastic cover of your DVD's case

**Robin A. Linn at 11:45am December 4
They may sit there for weeks before a reel review can get scheduled - like I said, these supervisors are busy ppl.

**Robin A. Linn at 11:48am December 4
If you are one to put your reel into an elaborate case and send along a portfolio of your life drawings, please know that the packaging will probably get tossed and the life drawing may get looked at but more and more I am seeing that anim sups are not really interested in your drawing skills

**Chris Bailey at 11:49am December 4
Wow, where to start..I wish i saved our chat and could cut and paste what we were talking about.

The first thing people need to know is that director and supes have very little time to review work. If I'm looking at an art portfolio and see life drawings for more than a couple of pages, the next time I'm going to jump a few pages ahead ...if i see still more life drawings, I'm going reach for the back of the book skipping what's inbetween. I can tell if you can draw by just a few drawings...I'd like to see a progression and range from page to page.

**Robin A. Linn at 11:50am December 4
A coordinator will assist in the review - he or she will take the reel and put it into the DVD player. You'd think the artist who sent us the reel would make sure it would play, but all too many times, it wont and the reel gets tossed

**Robin A. Linn at 11:53am December 4
Okay - did you read that? A coordinator sees your reel case. NOT the sup. so why would you spend a lot of time designing a reel case? SPEND THAT TIME ANIMATING

**Chris Bailey at 11:55am December 4
I do like to see drawing skills. The most common thing I find lacking in CG animators work is their staging skills. Poses are weak and don't read as well as those with a background in drawing.

Actors learn how to stage their bodies to direct attention to to what they want the audience to see or not to see...traditional animators were taught the same thing, but I'm not sure that CG people are taught this anymore. There are exceptions, of course.

**Robin A. Linn at 11:56am December 4
Sometimes the sup will ask to see a resume - sometimes. See, your reel is in truth your resume. It not only tells the sup where you worked but also what you did - what shots you were assigned and how well you did them - you reel is a thousand times more important than your resume/cover letter - so, please do not spend valuable time designing logos, etc. Not to be blunt, but we dont care about that stuff

**Robin A. Linn at 11:58am December 4
Chris, what is the most common mistake you see on animator's reels?

**Robin A. Linn at 12:01pm December 4
Here's a lil background on Chris - just to let you know the caliber of his comments....http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0047193/

**Pete Draper at 12:02pm December 4
Don't send reels on those tiny DVD's or the business card ones either for that matter. At the last place I worked at they knackered two players. Also, don't ever send reels as .avi's, .wmv's or anything that requires a computer to play. And it goes without saying to make sure you get the right region format encoded down. NTSC reels don't look very nice on PAL players. Heck I even had one guy who region locked his to region 1...

... oh, and always ALWAYS shove your contact details on the disc itself. I don't care if it's fancy printed or scribbled with pen; I've lost count of how many blank-covered discs I used to get that ended up in the "to sort" pile (that ended up as the "i can't be arsed to sort" pile).

Pete (now back in the freelance trenches so I should listen to my own advice)

**Robin A. Linn at 12:07pm December 4
for me the most common mistake is that they all assume we look at their entire reel all the way through. We dont - we just dont have the time - you'll get 10 seconds or so....


**Chris Bailey at 12:11pm December 4
My kryptonite is that I'm an impatient guy. So if I go to an animators website to look at their work and don't see a big button that says DEMO REEL, I'll search for about 15 seconds and then move on. Likewise if I can't get a demo to play on the site for some reason, I'll simply pass.

On my last project, I did just that and if it wasn't for myAPM going the extra mile to make sure i got a copy of this person's reel, i would have never hired them. That would have been a shame for the both of us as they turned out to be very strong and we became friends.

**Chris Bailey at 12:13pm December 4
Please don't put weak work on your reel. We've all done work that isn't our best, when you put weak animation next to strong, it says that you either can't tell the difference or that your supervisor contributed to the strong work.

Is this too blunt?

**Robin A. Linn at 12:14pm December 4
How do you feel about elaborate menus that require you to push lil tabs to see part of the reel? I HATE THEM.

**Robin A. Linn at 12:15pm December 4
No such thing as being "too honest" on here

**Pete Draper at 12:24pm December 4
nope, that's pretty accurate :)

Which reminds me - breakdowns of each shot. What you did, what it was for, when it was. Helps us determine what you contributed to the shot. Useful if your animation was awesome, but the texturing and lighting by Joey Mc Nugget wasn't so we're not dragged away by the overall aesthetic. The same thing applies to credits; if you didn't do every single thing in the shot, credit the people who did the remaining assets; eg if your reel is environment construction with a scene of a kitchen and the most beautiful element is a toaster that you bought in from a library to populate, credit the library. (and then re-do the scene as your work should be away better than that...)

**Robin A. Linn at 12:29pm December 4
Ive seen reels where the characters that the applicant animated were in color while the rest of the shot was in black/white - that was a great way to break it out

**Chris Bailey at 12:36pm December 4
One last thing before I go out the door to the gym to beat my puny animator body back into some kind of shape. I posted about this earlier, but it bears repeating...

Since I haven't worked on big, multi-year spanning animated features in years, I need to know how fast my animators are. Sometimes, I'll need a shot in a day and while it doesn't have to be the best shot in the world, it needs to look like a shot, meaning that the poses must communicate and there is a sense of timing.

When I see reels from feature films with just a few shots on them, it makes me wonder how fast they are. If I were to look at the shot breakdown from Alvin and the Chipmunks, my guess is that 90% of the shots were animated by 30% of the crew.

I can't count the times I had to go to the animators on my latest project at WB and say, "we need this new insert/fix/whatever, but it has to be done be end of day tomorrow or it won't make it in.

The animators that can do that for me are invaluable.

**Chris Bailey at 12:37pm December 4
The color/BW solution is brilliant!

**Robin A. Linn at 12:39pm December 4
Pete and Chris, I cant thank you enough for your comments this morning - great stuff!

**Chris Bailey at 3:27pm December 4
Just remember, free advice is worth what you pay for it.

**Peter Saumur at 4:04pm December 4
Have any of you guys worked in a motion capture feature or used motion capture in a project?

**Robin A. Linn at 4:05pm December 4
Yep, on Polar Express, Monster House and Beowulf

**Peter Saumur at 4:07pm December 4
Ah HAH! So you know Demian then... :D

I was wondering what you would look for in a demo reel that was only motion capture shots? I've worked with motion capture my whole career, and will likely start AM this year, so I am curious if you hold the same criteria for those types of reels.

**Chris Bailey at 4:11pm December 4
I can tell if the animator knows how to interpret the mocap data.

**Robin A. Linn at 4:14pm December 4
Well, experience has taught me that Mocap only goes a very very very small way to finalling the performance - if these was someway to see the raw feed vs. the final that would be great, but I dont even know if that is possible. How about this - do you have any work that is Mocap free that you could put on your reel as well? That'd help. Look, I know one thing, animators that are Mocap savvy are also very tech savvy - and that is always a bonus

**Peter Saumur at 4:20pm December 4
I have had no animation training, unfortunately. Just learned the technical side (cleanup, camera setup, post-process) on the job. It's because of this, I don't have any pure animation on my demo reel.

**Robin A. Linn at 4:48pm December 4
a lot of the comment still hold true, best stuff up front, no music, no fancy packages, keep it bare bones and basic as possible...

**Jeff Cooperman at 6:07pm December 4
http://spungella.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-should-i-animate_24.html