 Welcome back to another FNA and today is part four of my demo reel series and today we're gonna talk about the presentation of your demo reels online and in real life. That sounds so dramatic in real life. In real life meaning that if you go to something like CTN or CTGraph or something, how would you present your reel? What are the things you should look out for as you share your reel and lots of other things but I have a list here so let's start right away. So right off the bat, where should you put your reel online? Probably YouTube or Vimeo. A lot of people put that on Vimeo. Some people put it on YouTube but Vimeo seems to be the dominant platform when it comes to demo reels. That being said you might also have your own website or maybe a blog or there are many many sites where you can sign up for free and post your things on there so there's not really a financial burden to put your reel online. That being said if you have a website make the website easy to find and easy to share and easy to browse just the main thing is easy. So if you can not a crazy long web address with numbers and all kinds of things and that's why something like again like Vimeo or YouTube which just that's your blink there but if you do have a blog just keep that name fairly simple. Now if you have your own domain that costs money or you can have your own name in there I mean it's whatever you want to do whatever works for you financially but at least keep it simple so it's just easy to find and easy to go through. At least nowadays flash websites are not really a thing anymore but if you do have a flash website please make sure that you have another way of getting to your demo reel because flash websites it goes through and has crazy animations and not a direct link it's just very cumbersome to browse and to find something especially to share because the main thing is that if I go online and find a reel well this is really cool want to send that to supervisors or recruiters I need to have a direct link that I can send off. If they have to then go through all kinds of hurdles to get to that reel that's a problem. Those are all hurdles and potential pitfalls and just moments where someone goes ah don't have time for this let me find someone else. So you don't want to do that you want your work to be as easily accessible if that's English to get to without any type of fluff or any type of hurdles that being said you might have a reel on there that is not for public consumption not that you should have things on your reel that are not cleared by the company the client whatever you work for but sometimes it's just something that only the company should see that you're the company you're applying for so Vimeo has a password protection to enter site so if you have a reel behind a Vimeo password that's okay too but I would recommend to keep that password fairly simple like your name or demo reel or whatever but now everybody goes in there and checks out but you know something simple for the recruiter whoever's going to take a look at it to just go okay I get it and remember it at least kind of talked about that before but once you have your reel online and you present that online you should have a title card and then your work and then a longer title card at the end meaning that at the beginning you have your name and title so whoever watches this knows what you're applying for and then presumably it's going to be animation so you might have your card with your name and the title but also responsible for all character animation on this reel this would be the easiest thing so when you watch this you go okay this is all this person now if you do share things as we talked about before you can gray things out you can have subtitles you can kind of point people towards the things that you did but all should be servicing the main goal of make it easy to understand and to see and to share as always so a short card at the beginning because you just want to get straight to your work then you see your working at the end the end card would be longer with your name and then contact of either phone or email whatever you have but i don't keep that card short because if someone goes oh that was really cool let me just take notes if they take notes by hand or whatever you know you don't you're real to suddenly stop and then they got to fumble and restart and whatever you never know just make it as easy as possible so once the reel is done the long long long card 10 15 20 seconds of your title limits maybe 20 seconds a bit long but longer than the beginning so maybe 10 seconds so people can look at it and write it down and remember your name and your contact information and just to throw it out there keep your reel short one minute maybe two minutes don't go long or there's no need to see that much of your work now going back so if you have your reel on a website it's pretended to even on youtube you still have descriptions on youtube where you can put in links or other things so if possible you would have obviously your reel but then you would have a resume you would have a real breakdown it may be even a cover letter then again the cover letter should probably be tailored towards the company that you're applying for to english so cover letters not super sure i would probably just keep that to the application itself so when you apply you can upload your cover letter but at least online i would have your resume and the demo reel breakdown meaning that you can exactly explain what you did in the shot if you did everything just the foreground just the background what was mocap what was keyframe whatever you need to explain you don't want to call it all that stuff on the reel when you watch it so a demo reel breakdown or a shot list or whatever you want to call it that should be there on your site as well so if it's on youtube in the description a link to google doc whatever you have or if you have an actual website or a blog then you can have a link to pdf and so on and if you do have a link to your movie file of the reel so be like mp4 whatever it is just make sure it's a good codec that works on all kinds of machines not something fancy that if you download this on the machine it won't play so again it needs to be tested and be able to be seen by as many people as possible and in the easiest way you don't want someone to go doesn't work for me why i gotta go online find this codec install okay no one's gonna do that no one has the time so these are the basics for me when you are online so website vimeo youtube you know resume shot list everything should be on there accessible for the recruiters whoever needs to have more information about your work now when you are in real life when you go to ctn or fmx or gdc i don't know where you are and you present your work it could be either on a laptop or it could be on an iphone or ipad laptops can be big and cumbersome to hold iphone's could be a bit too small probably ipads or just tablets like that would be ideal in terms of presentation because it's just easy to hold and to present and it just again you don't have to worry about you know just cumbersome thing holding maybe the person watching this can then you're holding this you've been there for 10 hours and you can't hold this i don't just make it as easy as possible and i feel like tablets would be the best thing that being said if you do have it on a phone and you might have a bigger phone and you present that make sure that you turn off notifications you don't want someone to watch your reel and then have text messages come in with hey man yesterday's party was sick and we were so drunk and we did this we did that no or you have some whatever confidential information or your your boyfriend girlfriend wife texting you things that only you should see just make sure that when the person watches your reel he or she is not interrupted by whatever they can just take that and watch your reel and be impressed by your work turn off notifications your reel might also need sound so what i would recommend is to have over the ear headphones you don't want to give earbuds to someone watching your reel because they're going to look at this and go some people don't want to put earbuds into their own ears at all because it's gross even though you might be clean but if you're not clean and someone takes the earbuds and looks at this and just yellow and it's just gross like you don't want to put that in your ear so if you need sound they need someone to really listen to the sound because it's lip sync or whatever and the whatever sigraf or whatever we are it's loud and they can't hear it and you want to provide headphones to at least over the ear headphones even if it's just those small ones you it doesn't have to be the whole big ones but something that's easy to put on and not gross now while the person watches your reel watch the person read the person you're 90 meter you're supposed to pick up on body language stuff like that so watch that person and then you can see are they invested are they interested are they kind of looking and distracted looking at something else and all of that will give you some sort of hopefully enough indication of can I then ask about my reel can I push the person to tell me more about the reel so just if someone is distracted or in a hurry and you feel like that person's not gonna have time to talk to me about the reel and just kind of the kind of just looking at it the worst case scenario like I mentioned last time just ask what is the worst shot on the reel so say hey thanks for looking at it I know you're busy can you just tell me what's the worst shot or what are the worst shots and tell me what I should cut out and then the person gonna say this this and this or maybe this or maybe nothing which would be obviously the perfect thing and then that's it and that person is free to go somewhere else but in the event that the person does have time to talk to you then talk about the shots and you can talk about what needs more improvement or work or something you need to replace and so on but even if the conversation goes well I would not at the end go okay that's cool so can you hire me can you give me a job so just be careful how much you push if the work is really good chances are the person's gonna say okay give me a contact information update your reel and when it's done send it to me I'll send it to the recruiters or your reel is awesome it's great go talk to recruiter or I talk to recruiter whatever it is but if it's good enough chances are the person looking at your reel is gonna tell you that they will initiate some sort of beginning process of talking to HR and the hiring person involved at that company if the reel is not good and you start pushing hey can you give me a job it's just gonna be uncomfortable and weird and who knows how that interaction is going to continue so if the person doesn't ask you for more then maybe you should not push so read the person and maybe you can ask so now that you've seen this do you know maybe when you might be hiring in the future so I can update my reel and send it to your company maybe then you can have a little bit of discussion like that but I wouldn't go immediately and push for hey hire me and give me that job if the person isn't right away telling you this is really cool you should work for us that type of thing but this is a longer discussion all comes down to your expectations too and that is actually going to be part five then real expectations what you should think about what you should expect will you work at a bigger company right away at a smaller company all those expectations that is a big subject for part five so there you go this is my general overview of your demo reel presentation online or in real life if you have any other experiences with that and you want to add something to this or what you did and maybe the pitfalls or negative or positive things that happen to you as you present it you're real be it again online or our other conference or whatever it is comments are open as always let me know share if you can your experiences to other people can learn from that other than that that's it from me and if you're still watching this as always thank you for your patience and watching this if you feel like you want to see more subscribe hit that bell button because I do upload almost every day not on the weekends except today so subscribe and like if you want to if you thought that this was helpful at all to you either way I say thank you and I will see you in my next clip