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Just finished my MFA in Cinematography


Chris Saul

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First, you'll wanna fix your link. You left in a stray punctuation mark which forces to link to direct to an error page. Delete it and it'll work fine.

 

As for the video the main critique I have is that it's way, way, way too long. By three or four orders of magnitude. The best demos I see are nice and tight. With yours, I admit skipping a few times to see how long it is, and you DEFINITELY don't want a prospective client to have to do that. Because they won't. They'll just toss it aside. You want something that'll grab the viewer, something that'll load fast. I have a great internet connection, and it still took a while to load. Your client may not be as lucky, and if he has to sit and wait for the vid to load, he's not gonna. Simple as that.

 

But man do you have a great body of work! Such fantastic imagery encompassing so many forms! The opening shot was gorgeous. They say the first shot should be the best, like a demo for the demo, and you do it! You could easily construct several, excellent, tightly edited videos with all the content you have, and each can be geared to a different purpose. You could have a video just for your music work, another for commercial, another for shorts. You've got a surplus of great stuff to choose from, which is lucky. I've seen demo reels that were utter poop, that maybe had one good shot, which doesn't a demo video make. The only thing I could tell the person was, "You need to go shoot some more, because there's nothing here."

 

But man, this is one of the best demo's I've viewed, including those of seasoned professionals. I've been at this game eight ears and haven't shot anything half as good. I checked your IMDB, and I can't believe how fast you've risen in a few years. Goddamn. I'm envious, truly.

 

Best,

 

BR

Edited by Brian Rose
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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks so much for being honest. I'll definitely cut it down and look for a better compression. I used H264 optimized for streaming with hinted streaming. If you have a good suggestion for compression I would love to hear it. Thanks!!!

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Thanks so much for being honest. I'll definitely cut it down and look for a better compression. I used H264 optimized for streaming with hinted streaming. If you have a good suggestion for compression I would love to hear it. Thanks!!!

 

The compression scheme was just fine. It was simply the length, which would naturally take a little time to fully load. When I view a demo reel, I try to assume the role of a producer or director who's got sixty of these to watch, it can be dispiriting when you see the video has yet to fully load, and many will just move on. Same goes for websites. When I check a DPs website, I like a nice professional, but SIMPLE layout. When i come across one loaded with flash, that I get a loading message before the main page, I tend to skip it.

 

A 1:00 video will load in no time, so I'd say stick with the compression you've got.

 

Best,

 

BR

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