Evaluation of Showreels/websites

Danny Cooke:

Here is the official website for a film maker named, ‘Danny Cooke’. His showreel is located under, ‘Services’ with a navigation button as you first enter the site.

Throughout the showreel, Danny showcases his cinematography skills. A number of artistically pre-meditated shots of actors or environments.

Cooke seems to have covered a number of different media criteria from sport documentation, as seen below, to drama pieces. With showreels it is always useful to be across a variety of different genres and video-based projects. Often, it is this which showcases your versatility.

Here we have aerial shots of a beach, most likely captured with a drone. This demonstrates his awareness of operating industry equipment and opens up opportunities across a variety of roles, for him. This is something I should take into consideration when creating my own showreel.

Also, there is a soundtrack in the background to keep the audience engaged and taking note of the messages he is trying to get across.

Here he seems to be advertising for the Apple Watch. Of course, you will very rarely find a director who has not produced advertising content along side fictional features. Often music videos will be part of their work at one time or another. Again, this shows versatility and will increase the likelihood of him being offered future jobs directing similar media projects or ones he has been familiarized with beforehand.

---

Philip Bloom:

Here is another showreel from a film maker named Philip Bloom. His showreel has a slightly different approach to Cooke’s. Rather than having a track play in the background and rely on the visuals to tell the audience what each project is about, he incorporates the audio from one of his projects. at the beginning and from there introduces the reel. However, after this the reel does become very similar to Cooke’s with the track being the only audio, present.

Again, there are a number of picture-esc shots, showcasing Bloom’s camera work and eye for aesthetics.

Much like Cooke’s reel, Bloom has incorporated time lapses. This showcasing his technical abilities with manually created effects on-camera, via setting changes.

You can really see how Bloom has covered a range of different aesthetics, from woodland through to open beach resort. Often something people look for when approaching making a film; versatility in adapting to changes in location. The palettes change but never lose their cinematic properties.

---

Ben Aston:

Out of the three reels, Aston’s seems to appeal to me the most. The diverse and yet quirky films he has directed test the boundaries of what is absurd and what is entertaining and blends them together. They also tend to feature elements of comedy and others appear light-hearted fun.

The pure variety of films is enough to attract an audience to Aston’s reel. The colours are often accentuated and there is an element of boldness to the projects.

Also, Ben’s work ranged from live-action to animated features. This variety allows a larger target audience as there is almost something for everyone.

The sub category of animation styles is also a very attractive feature. Versatility is shown again with the different styles which Aston has taken on (Stop motion/Computer animations/etc.)