I’ve been meaning to update my showreel for quite a while and yesterday I finally found the time to do it, ahead of a busy week shooting a short in collaboration with the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (Lamda).
Showreels are difficult things to compile for a number of reasons. There will always be clips you reuse, reel to reel, because they’re particular favourites or special to you. That said, each new one cut means dropping older shots to make way for newer work - a showreel can’t run too long because who has time to watch five minute reels when sifting through potential hires? There always have to be sacrifices in how you present yourself, and for this one the longest chunk in my reel comes from the first feature I shot as DP - ‘In Two Weeks’ directed by Andy Amadi. That means I’ve had to lose a little of the corporate and live event jobs I’ve done, so the reel is essentially film and music video work, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The final frustration you’ll hear most often from crew cutting showreels is the inability to use footage that hasn’t been released, or approved, or that you signed your rights to away. I would love to be able to show some of my work on a couple of other projects from this year - not least from my second feature as DP, ‘The Watcher Self’, but I also don’t want to spoil those projects ahead of release. When the time comes, I hope the wait is worth it! So for now, please enjoy my current reel for 2012!
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