If you’re looking to pursue a career as a professional videographer, then you should be familiar with a demo reel. If this is new to you, then you should know that a demo reel is the video production version of a videographer’s portfolio.

This serves as a summary of what you’re capable of as a video production professional and what skills you can offer to the team. Because of this, it’s very important that you learn how to create a good demo reel, especially as this is what potential employers are going to be using to determine if you would be a right fit for their video production team.

Whether you’re creating a whole new demo reel, or if you’re updating your already existing demo reel, here are some things that you can keep in mind to guarantee an effective videographer demo reel.

Mind the length

Something you should always keep in mind when creating your demo reel is the length of your demo reel. While it would be tempting to put as much of your work as you can into your demo reel, you have to keep in mind that those who are going to review your demo reel will have plenty others to review, and if your demo reel is too long, they may end up losing interest fairly quickly.

Keep it short enough to maintain their interest, yet substantial enough to tell enough about your skills. Ideally, you would want it to only be about a minute and a half at most.

Show your best work

Your demo reel is not the place for modesty regarding your professional achievements. Don’t tone down how much you’ve accomplished, because this is what your potential future employers are going to be looking into. Make sure you highlight the best work in your demo reel.

Provide a short description for clarification

Of course, being a videographer doesn’t mean going solo, there are plenty of times when you’re going to be working on a team.

If you’re going to include a team project in your demo reel, make sure that you include short descriptions on the reel that describe what your role was during the project. This helps the person reviewing your demo reel understand how you contributed to a specific project.

Make sure you review your demo reel before submission

As excited you might be for your demo reel, make sure that you take the time to review your demo reel before you pass it. There might be certain effects and grammatical errors that you might have not noticed earlier, and it doesn’t look good for mistakes like this to show up in your final demo reel.