College student looking for advice for Editor Demo Reel!

[Andrew Rendell]

Yeah, it’s a catch 22 that we all had to go through. I don’t really have much to say about a reel because in 20 years of cutting I still haven’t got around to making one for myself yet, other than: keep it short, to the point and be absolutely clear about what you did to meet the brief. If you sell yourself as “gods gift” then you better be able to deliver amazingly good stuff staggeringly fast, because you won’t be able to hide it if you can’t. It might be better to sell yourself as a team player who’ll fit in with whatever way of working they happen to use and do whatever they need to get done (because, frankly, that’s the kind of person that most places want to have around).

[Mark Suszko]

By definition, interns are not expected to be fully competent editors; otherwise, they’d be applying for full time paid jobs as editors.

That said, you have to show some minimal competence with the tools and especially the concepts as a base to work from. The most typical job an editing intern would get is to do the work others don’t like to do: digitizing clips and logging footage, so the actual editor can walk in and start working. To that end, you need to communicate an ability to organize and BE organized. To know how to set up projects for importign and logging footage, to understand frame rates and resolutions and codecs somewhat.

It’s not about knowing everything about a specific platform; you will be expected to learn whatever the “house” system is, quickly. The good news is, a bin is a bin and a timeline is a timeline in most every editing system: you cut pretty much the same, with minor changes in the keystroke commands and things like that.

The more important thing is to learn and understand when where and how to cut, rather than which button to push. You need to understand and use cut-aways, L-cuts, timing and rythm, Crossing the line of action, setting up establishing scenes and then choosing how and where to go in tighter. How to overlap dialog. How to fix bad audio. How to color-correct. How to composite.

A reel?
Concentrate on one, short piece that showcases the aforementioned skills. It needs to tell a complete story, no matter how short.

[Andrew Migliori]

Thanks for the wise words! I’ll get to work on putting this together—I don’t have one scene that can capture all of those skills, but I do have two! I’ll see what I can do and I’d greatly appreciate your feedback. Thanks again.

[Andrew Migliori]

One more question: when you mention having it short, I can very comfortably do so in about 2 minutes, is that too long?

[Mark Suszko]

No.

[Andrew Migliori]

Hi Mark,

Here is my first stab at this. Thanks for being so generous!

[Mark Suszko]

Shorten the first piece a little bit. Cut out of the first one right at the end of the title: the scene with the guy pulling the suitcase is irrelevant and steals power from the title frame. Take the squish of the knife down a notch, it’s too loud. Also, removing a heart isn’t that easy or fast, you have bone to get around first, unless you come in from lower down.

Magnolia’s audio is poor, try to enhance it. Every damn time, it’s the audio that’s weak in these things. The director couldn’t afford 2 mics!?!? Also, the grading and balance of the lighting could use some work there, where the contrast ratio and backlighting are a problem. Tighten the sequence going out the door and re-thinking something, there’s a few beats that are too long all thru the sequence. Work on the sound design to add some appropriate ambiance underneath everything.

The third piece didn’t do much for me, though it has a TMBG feel to the music. I think the wide shots are up too long without a cut-away, and while I like the 2-box, I’d rather see one box have the side view and another a head-on close-up, or more cut-away stuff, like exteriors of the car or others ont he road reacting to it, stuff like that. But that’s just me. I think overall I’d lose the music video piece altogether and concentrate on improving the first two, which have some decent elements to build from.

What might be a fun alternative presentation, depending on how you’re marketing your skills in a reel, is to do a split-screen of before/after, to show your audio and grading improvement skills. You might tack that onto the end of the fitst two, instead of the music video. A lot of editing work is repairing or enhancing what wasn’t done right or at all in the shoot, and a guy or gal with those skills will get some attention.

[Andrew Migliori]

You’ve got some great points. With regards to the heart, as I understand, it was actually intended to be a liver, creating a pun with the title and somewhat explaining the ease of removal.

Haha, unfortunately the director got stuck using one mic for the Magnolia scene so I will do my best to work that up.

Good guess! It was actually TMBG, and I think you’re right about losing it. I’m a sucker for threes so I felt one more piece was necessary, but a correction split screen is a very nice idea that I will totally look into.

I can’t thank you enough for your advice and I’ll have a new version up soon.

[Mark Suszko]

Good Luck with it, you have a decent foundation to start from, at least. Really massage that audio, though; people forgive lighting and framing errors and bad acting for good content, but they will NOT sit still for crappy sound. Moreover, you WANT to get a rep for being able to fix crappy sound when nobody else seems to be able to figure it out. That’s a very useful skill to have in any editing shop, and a major selling point. AE compositors get all the acclaim, but it’s wasted effort if the audio isn’t rock-solid.

[Andrew Migliori]

Round two! If you still think the Magnolia scene’s audio is still rough (I might agree myself), do you have any advice on sharpening the dialogue? I tried manipulating a Parametric EQ as well as Compression and Noise Reduction but it’s quite a piece of work.

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