One of the things I had really big questions about when I came out was the Editor’s Reel. Obviously I knew it would be a little different than a Director’s/Cinematographer’s Reel for a couple of reasons- first, a quick montage doesn’t really always show that you know what you’re doing in terms of pacing, story, etc. And second, quite simply, is that a lot of your best work as an editor is going to involve salvaging garbage-footage until it’s somewhere between good and mediocre. That’s something that’s hard to convey (though a friend of mine uses wipe transitions to excellent effect to show off his coloring skills here).
So I asked my boss at my internship what he thought- he replied that it probably didn’t matter anyway, honestly since most of your jobs were going to come from someone you knew vouching for you.
But you’re going to have do one eventually, so I pressed him on it. His advice was short clips of your work, captions showing the title and what you did on it, and to keep it between 3-5 minutes.
Which sounds fine. But keep in mind that production-types are going to be watching your reel and hiring, not other editors. And in my experience internship-wise, production types don’t have a very long attention span.
So this is my advice: You need to make an impression in about 30 seconds. Your best work obviously has to be up front. And I’d try to keep the whole thing at or around 2 minutes, not 3-5. Trust me, a producer/hiring guy isn’t going to watch much more than that. My supervisor’s bosses would shred his work sometimes after the first 20 seconds. Then they’d nitpick about things for so long they’d forget to watch the rest.
Bottom line: you don’t have a lot of time to make an impression, so move fast and make it count.
With that in mind: Here’s the prototype reel I came up with for now:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcqNk6VvfmU]
Good luck with your own, and happy editing!