Getting Showreel Footage

[Pete Wallington]

I'm trying to put together a showreel for my cinematography, a lot of which comes from music videos.

Why is it that all the great-looking shots I really want to use have been cut to death in the edit, and are now only seconds (if that) long!

It's hard enough getting a copy of the finished edit, let alone trying to get copies of some of the rushes so that I can extract longer versions of the shots. How do I get around this? Has anyone else had this problem?

[Adrian Sierkowski]

Beg/bug/plead, or try to get footage beforehand when the editor (if you know him/her) has it all on their computers somewhere.