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How Often do you Mute Someone's Reel?


Max Field

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Literally the first thing I do every time I click on someone's reel is mute the music. Am I the only one who does this?

Why do we feel the need to cram music in these things? I'm there for the visuals anyway.

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I don't audition reels for other people, so I always leave the music on.  And it's much more fun to watch with the music, unless it's really annoying.

What can't you see with the music on?

And, from my experience, most people watching the reel just want to see who is in the reel and how famous the clips are.  Very very few actually look at the photography...

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14 minutes ago, Bruce Greene said:

What can't you see with the music on?

It's just always normalized to 0db so way too loud

I just do quick skims to see if the person is visually thinking on that level of framing, exposure, and controlled lighting. There's tons of Youtube era people with film study project level cinematography in their visual reels.

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I think it makes sense to add music, it allows you to give your reel a sense of flow and pace.

Its less useful on a drama directors reel, because you need to hear the actors and let short scenes play out without fighting the music.

I've been reviewing DOP's reels this week. I did find myself muting because the audio isn't important to me and often I'm watching the reels with my producing partner we tend to discuss the images as we watch so I mute just to aid clear discussion. 

When I'm working on my own i tend to have a specific music playlist as well, again I would probably mute the reel ahead of muting spotify

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Hahaha, I have such a pet peeve about demo reel music. Most I've seen have way too obtrusive, irritating music. I saw one once that had some really loud, overbearing dixieland jazz that had me immediately reaching for the volume control. I was tempted once to make a demo for myself with no music, but I think something needs to be there. It should really be innocuous, I believe. 

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