What is a Commercial Reel?

“We definitely want to work with you, but could you shoot over your reel so I can shoot it to the CD?”

“Do they have anything similar on their reel?”

“Let’s gather some reels and go from there.”

If you’ve ever heard anything like this, you may be wondering what a reel is and how to get one. In commercial film production, your reel is (one of) your most important assets. It is what shows the work you’ve done before and the level of quality your clients can expect of future work. 

In the commercial world, your reel is treated a little differently than in narrative. For one, everything on your commercial reel should be, well, a commercial. In narrative, the projects are typically much longer, so people use your reel and your credits to determine if you’d be a good fit. Often, narrtive reels are edited montage reels of all of your recent and/or favorite projects. In commercial land, nobody wants to see a montage reel, they want to see 5-6 finished commercials. 

They, meaning Agency producers, creative directors, ACDs, writers, and yes, even clients, want to get a sense for how their spot is going to turn out, so they are typically looking for directors (or DPs, PDs, editors, etc.) who have done similar projects with relevant samples. They are typically watching more reels than just yours, so it’s important to curate the reel to be the most relevant and best work. We typically don’t share more than 6 spots, max :60s each (most of the time :30s or even less). We know that if they like what they see or have questions, we can always share more work later.

So, what does a good reel look like?

Your reel is your reel and sometimes you just don’t have the relevant work and that’s ok! Not every project fits every person creatively, which is why we have the dang things. When building a reel, I put the most relevant, best work first. I am not making anybody dig for anything and I expect the first gatekeeper (i.e. Agency Producers) to skim the first couple spots. Do they see relevant work? It’s going through to the creatives! They don’t see anything similar? The buck stops there. 

Once we’ve got some relevant work to share, the layout of the reel matters! Is it easy to view all of the work? Or did I just share a bunch of random/broken links to YouTube videos? Have you made sure that the thumbnails look good and every video plays smoothly? There are resources like Slate/Extreme Reach and Simian that specialize in making it easy to share a reel. Wiredrive is another popular option. We used the Vimeo showcase feature in our early days and a google drive folder could be used in a pinch. The key features of a good reel showcase are that the videos are easy to watch, easy to download, and make you look like a professional. Analytics (i.e. click rate, view count, view duration etc.) is a bonus. 

How do I get my hands on one? 

Maybe you are just starting out and trying to build your reel. Maybe you think it’s unfair because you know that you can do something, but nobody will let you until you’ve already done it. In these instances, spec work is a good way to break into doing real commercial work. Another avenue is starting small and working your way up. When we were first starting out, doing super cheap projects, we were seldom asked for a reel because our clients understood that we didn’t have much experience. Pro tip - When you’re first starting out (and even if you’ve been at it for a while), make sure to keep everything you’ve ever touched in one place (Google Drive, Dropbox, Vimeo, on a hard drive) and backed up because you never know what will end up getting you the next job!

Morgan, what does your reel look like?

It's here - https://shots.re/el/1be0b6