Reel Talk At Nowadays

As we hurtle bravely into 2025 and release our latest showreel, we take a moment to ask - what makes a showreel worth showing?

In 18 years of producing films, we’ve only made 6 distinct showreels, with minor iterations between these. Showreels are big endeavours for us, they always take waaay longer than we expect them to, and we have a track-record of driving our editors to distraction with endless failed experiments, changes of heart and differences of opinion.

But we make no apology, we think showreels really matter. And whenever we create one we know we’re potentially going to be sat in front of it for hundreds of meetings, so we want to get it right.

At our Ask Away Thursday events we’ve often been asked what we think constitutes a “good” showreel, what elevates it from a cheap and easy ‘best-of’ collection, to a lovingly curated compilation tape you can be really proud of.

STRIKE A POSE

We start thinking about a showreel by asking ourselves what we want to say about the company - what’s our point of difference and how do we communicate that? Think of the most important people who will see your showreel, and ask yourself what you want them to think about you as the last few frames fade to black. And that shouldn’t just be “wow, these guys make a variety of high quality work”.

In a world where it is increasingly easy to capture a great looking, high quality shot (not to mention the looming possibility that we’ll be able to generate them out of thin air via AI) - you need to express what sets you apart as a filmmaker.

In our previous showreel we wanted to emphasise that we tell stories with nuance and sensitivity at their heart. We intentionally shifted away from doing anything too in-yer-face or bombastic, preferring to highlight longer, subtler moments and use a music track that had a gentle, ethereal quality. And time and again that showreel set us up so well to talk about the things we really care about as a company.

SET LIMITATIONS

One big debate we’ll always have is how far into the archives we will allow ourselves to reach for shots. It might be that you’ve had a dry couple of years since you last cut a reel so there can be a very real temptation to go back to those tried and tested shots you loved way back when. We tend to set ourselves the target of only working with shots from the past 3 years for example.

This is a great way to start, it will give you a backbone of an edit that necessarily feels new.

If you’re us, you will find it hard to stick to this rule. But remember this is your showreel, most people won’t compare it to an old one - and if you’re happy sitting in front of a few of those older shots then knock yourself out, you’re probably attached to them for good reason.

The other age-old question is how long your showreel should be. The truth is it doesn’t matter that much, or rather it can be as long as it makes sense for the shots you use. Even so, it can be helpful to give yourself an arbitrary target, 60 seconds for example, and do your best to stick to it. This forces you to make tough decisions and kill a few darlings. In the end if you want to break your self-imposed restriction then of course you can, you make the rules here.

We think this is the oldest surviving shot in the reel

AVOID SHOWREEL MUSIC

The first task we set our editors is to go looking for music. In a first round we usually plop a bunch of tracks on a timeline with a mess of shots that we’ve just chucked down with very little thought (sometimes we just use the old showreel). This way you can quite quickly get a sense of what might work with your shots and, perhaps more importantly, what definitely won’t.

One thing we actively avoid is anything too showreel-y sounding, anything so neutral and non-committal that any production company could slap atop their work. These are easy options and again, they don’t say anything about you, so using them is to miss an opportunity.

For us, it’s about digging deeper and trying genres that you wouldn’t usually go hunting through. How many showreels have you seen that feature minimal or acoustic or traditional instrumentation? Or rap, or any lyrics for that matter? Very few I’m guessing. Why not steer away from the same old middle-of-the-road inoffensive electronica and see what your work feels like when set to jazz?

VARIATION, VARIATION, VARIATION

This sounds obvious - it’s a showreel, of course you’re going to want to include a variety of shots. But that is not where the variation should end, you also want your edit to vary. You should look to shift the pace and tone of your showreel, so that it undulates and feels like several distinct parts of a story, not just a one-note tipping-out of one shot after another after another.

Why do this? Well for starters it makes the showreel a whole lot less dull. But more importantly it subtly shows off your (or your company’s) ability to edit like a true storyteller. So try intentionally crafting some contrast - some peaks and valleys, some strikes and some gutters, along the way.

In our latest showreel we wanted to highlight emotional performance over action. So at about the minute mark there is a very simple but affecting close-up on an actor doing next to nothing, and we let that shot sit for a whole 5 seconds before we ramp up the pace again for an energetic run-in to the climax of the reel. There are 86 shots in the showreel in total, averaging about 1 second each - to hand over five times that much to one shot says something to the viewer.

GENERATE YOUR OWN SHIT

Way, way, way back in the day (possibly even showreel #1), we faced the ultimate challenge - we didn’t have nearly enough footage to put together a credible showreel. Like, not even close. But being the little scamps we were back then, we didn’t let that get in the way.

Instead we invented our very own shoot and spent a week shooting a bunch of shots around London. We then got a mate to create some custom animation to layer over the top. In truth, these were probably the best bits of that showreel, which should be no surprise because we had complete control and therefore no excuses.

So if you’re a little light on material, don’t sit around getting frustrated with your lot, go out and create some of your own content - it doesn’t need to take long or cost much. And, dare we say it, you could even use AI to generate some shots if that’s something you’re interested in. (Btw, if you do go down that route, please make sure you mark it as AI generated - not only is that ethically the right thing to do, it’s a potential selling point - it shows clients another skillset that you possess).

A couple of clips we created (with a lot of help - shout out to Lukas) for our very first showreel

DON’T JUST SET IT AND FORGET IT

Unlike much of your client work, your showreel is allowed to be a living edit that evolves over time. So even after you’ve released it don’t miss the opportunity to make alterations after you’ve seen it playing in the big bad world of public opinion.

If you get the opportunity to have it play out, in creds meetings, or with your industry pals in the pub, or on the family telly at Christmas, pay close attention to how the mood in the room shifts as your reel plays out. It’s an exposing, vulnerable moment, and this time you can’t blame the bum-notes and poor choices on a client’s decision making (as if we ever would!).

So if there’s something not quite perfect, if there’s a perceptible lull, or a missed opportunity to generate armfuls of goosebumps, you can just go back into the edit, move things about, re-export and replace the file on Vimeo - jobs a good’un. And nobody will know (or care) that you’ve been tinkering, it will just be a little more effective for the next set of eyes to land on it.

That’s probably plenty to ponder. Now, dig out those archive drives and get started on your next masterpiece.

Oh, and here’s our brand new showreel, hope you like it!