How To... Screen a Showreel

I often wonder, as I send an email to a producer, an ECD or a creative team, how many emails that person has received that day requesting a moment of their time. Am I sat in an electronic queue, essentially peeling my ticket from the machine whilst 15, 20 or 1,000 other production companies wait their turn?

This is why, when you have that opportunity to physically go in and show your company’s work, the work your director sweated over, the work you sweated over to bring in, it is imperative that the time is well spent.

InSkin Media’s recent research on online viewing habits and how to maximise attention, struck a chord with me for this reason; do I show the work that we all really, really like? The work that people will be impressed by, or do we show the work that is perhaps less glamorous but more abundant? The episodic campaign we produced that made a few quid and looks nice. The Vine’s that were animated and look brilliant but, in all probability, will never result in high budget campaigns but could very well be spot-on for an upcoming brief from a new client.

I recently showed work to an ECD who responded fantastically. He asked question after question and was completely engaged. This isn’t always the case but on this occasion what was most pertinent was that he loved the hero work but actually wanted to see more of the work that was low budget.

No drone shots. No surfers. No big crew, two-day shoots. Definitely no clowns. You can do all that, and it’s great, he said, but what about the briefs which I get by the bucket load?

So whilst InSkin talks about ‘viewability metrics’ and when something has been seen but we're not sure if the audience paid attention, I wonder if, when I show 10-to-12 commercials we have shot, the ones the director likes best, the ones we hope best represent the work we want to shoot, am I receiving the full attention of the group?

The likely answer is; partially. I know what I'm like when I’m sat in front of a screen while a number of content pieces play out in front of me. My attention dips and rises. I do, in fairness, have the attention span of a three-year-old who has taken to mainlining fizzy Haribo after eating them lost its edge.

InSkin talk about ‘ad clutter’, mentioning that three print ads on one page incurs a 37 per cent decrease in ‘gaze time’. This further highlights another challenge; is it better to show three spots and talk about them in a little more depth or 10 spots and let the work speak for itself?

Despite this being a 'How To...' piece, ultimately there is no right answer, as each scenario is unique. If you want viewing engagement then the trick is to research who you are meeting, not that it’s much of a trick. Fail to prepare, prepare to be a chump. Or something like that.

Do you, metaphorically speaking, want to be the director’s cut of Apocalypse Now with an additional 49 minutes of film that failed to enhance the original release, or would you prefer to be the original 153 minutes of near perfection?