A well-thought-out metadata structure can mean the difference between landing that big job and aimlessly searching for the right spots to send. Just like a book needs chapters, media files need metadata to help you find exactly what you need, when you need it.Here is a quick guide on how to get your files organized:

1. There is no such thing as too much data

Don’t be afraid to go overboard with categories and tags. Yes, it’s more work in the beginning, but in the long run, you are going to save yourself a lot of time and headache.Setting up a good metadata structure from the start ensures that all your files will be in the right place before you even start adding media. This helps prevent the frustrating task of editing and re-editing files over and over when you later realize that there aren’t enough data points to find what you are looking for, when you need it most.

2. Visualize how you would search for assets

Imagine a giant vault filled with all of your media. Then, think about all the different ways that you organize that media and ask yourself, how do you find exactly what you are looking for?Is it organized by director or year? Do you search by the agency that the job was for? Is it organized by genre? Do you identify media by specificities, like “Cannes 2015 winner” or even, “Talking dog on a jet ski?”How do you, as a media manager, keep tabs on all your work so that you are able to stay on top of things? How would you look for things in a pinch? Spend some time working through this exercise and make note of what people ask for when archives or reels are requested.

3. Map things out

After you have visualized your search process, create a document to organize this information:

• Create a spreadsheet and title the far left column, “category,” and label the column to its immediate right as “tags.”
• Below the category column, write down all of the top level values that you thought of in tip no. 2. This would include categories such as director, editor, production company, year, genre, job code, and so on.
• Under the tags column, start adding the unique values that correspond to the categories to the left.  For example, tags for “director” could include Ang Lee, while tags for “genre” could include comedy.
• Create a “Keyword” column for any data points that do not fit under the main categories that you defined. (More details in the next tip).
• Once this data is structured, you can go into your system, and add the values ahead of time so that everything is in place when you start uploading your files.

4. Use keywords

Keywords are your friend. Think of categories to tags as a parent-to-child or one-to-many relationship. For every bit of identifying data that does not fit under a parent category, (e.g. Cannes Winner, CGI Water Shot, Best of 2015, etc.), you should create as a keyword. This is where you will want to also include the odd identifiers that help you find things when you need them (e.g. summer sales reel, job winner, do not use, or “for reference only”)You’ll be surprised by how often a single, critical asset is identified with a word or phrase that doesn’t fall under a traditional category definition. Keywords are your tool to keep track of these outlier pieces of metadata.

5. Audit when needed

Your data will change over time and chances are, you will think of new and better ways to organize things in your system. Don’t be afraid to try something different, revise or start over. A good metadata structure should make it easy to find and keep track of your work. The process is a journey. Have fun, and try and learn something new along the way!

Want to learn more tips about how to organize your media library? Contact Wiredrive support.

If you’re a freelancer in the creative industries, having an online portfolio is critical. Most designers, art directors, copywriters, and cinematographers — just a few job titles in the creative fields — maintain their own up-to-the-last-good-project site because they know it plays a huge part in getting more work. 

But I’d argue everyone in our industry should have one — from the greenest production assistant all the way up to the A-list editor or commercial director who lets their editorial or production company website do the talking for them.

Here’s why: A website should show the work you’ve been part of creating.

That’s probably obvious. But people interested in hiring you also want to know what you’re like to work with, and your website is your best chance to let them know that — but in your own words.

“People interested in hiring you also want to know what you’re like to work with, and your website is your best chance to let them know that — but in your own words.”

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. 

My old employer Wieden+Kennedy had a screening series where accomplished filmmakers who straddled the line between the film and commercial worlds would come to Portland and give a sneak peek of their latest feature film to a roomful of the agency’s producers and creatives. The hope was that they’d get commercial work down the road based on that screening.

After Yann Damange screened his film ‘71, which won him a British Independent Film Award for Best Director in 2014, a creative director asked how he’d found such great kid actors. Simple, he replied, I go to boxing gyms. The kids are confident, and they’re used to taking direction, Damange explained. 

A few weeks later, W+K sold a Nike football (the non-American kind) commercial that featured a cast of kid actors. They thought of Damange immediately and hired him specifically because of his answer earlier.

This is exactly the kind of outcome a production company roster-style website would never communicate, but a site created by a creative person could and should. Believe me — I reviewed hundreds upon hundreds of portfolio websites every year while I was a co-director of Wieden+Kennedy’s in-house ad school WK12.

So, I’m going to share some key pieces of advice for making a great portfolio site that’ll make clients and recruiters keep looking versus turning away.
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1. Don’t overthink it 

All too often I hear people talk about building their website like they’re building the pyramids, but unless you’re trying to get jobs making websites, don’t build one from scratch. Use any of the easy-to-use, off-the-shelf portfolio site products like Cargo Collective or Squarespace that have tons of well-designed templates to choose from.

I highly recommend a style that has project thumbnail images on the homepage, any one of which you can click on to see the full project. It’s easy on the eyes and the industry standard.

Pick your best projects, choose a homepage image, post a video or still assets of each project, and a write-up that explains it. Then finish it off with an About Me page and your social media links and there you go. 

You should be able to go from no website to a website you can show to friends for feedback in a day. 
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2. Curate it 

Don’t put everything you’ve ever done on your website.

When I was looking at WK12 applicants sites’, I’d look at the first, second, and fifth projects (just to see how deep their experience went). If I liked what I saw, I kept clicking. If I didn’t see anything compelling that made me think or laugh or lean in, I’d move on. If I was on the fence, I’d click on something near the bottom of the homepage that looked intriguing.

Most creative directors, potential clients, and recruiters similarly take a quick scan before deciding if a person is worth a closer look, so show the good stuff. You need at least six good projects but probably no more than fifteen. You can share more, especially if you’re so good you have, like, fans. But if you’re mostly using the site to get work, no one is looking at more than fifteen projects.
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3. Make it personal 

Freelancers tend to lead with their biggest, most corporate work because it makes them seem legit and hirable. 

But here’s the thing: Most corporate work is pretty boring.

And very rarely are you truly able to showcase your voice and creative talents within the confines of a client’s project.

Share the stuff you made because you wanted to make it. The projects that show your true voice and talents. The “personal projects” that you’d show your parents or an old friend from high school are the same ones that are going to interest or excite anyone.

Sure, you need to include some paying work to show you get paid to do what you do. But the only client looking to hire a copywriter who showcases dull corporate blogs they’ve written is a client who wants their corporate blog to stay boring.
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4. Tell the story of each project 

Don’t just say you worked on a project, although being super clear about your role is important. Over the course of a few paragraphs, tell us the story of the project from your perspective. What did you learn? What was your A-ha! moment of inspiration? What particularly thorny problem did you think your way out of? Share a great anecdote or humblebrag about how wildly successful it was.

This is that chance I was talking about to give clients a peek into how you think and work so they feel more confident about hiring you. 

If you cast kids out of boxing gyms because they’re confident and used to taking direction, tell us! If you were the production assistant and your primary contribution to a project was charging walkie talkies and going on coffee runs, be honest about that.

But also talk about the experience in a way that tells producers that you’d make a great production assistant to hire and groom into being a production coordinator on the fast track to producing.
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5. Sharpen your About Me page

All too often people use the About Me section of their website to showcase how hilarious they are or to show off their third-person writing skills.

That’s okay but not at the expense of clarity. Be sure to tell people exactly what you do, what makes you great at it, and the kinds of projects you want to take on.

Anyone looking to hire you — even on a really big, important job — doesn’t have lots of time. The quicker you can communicate these things, the faster they can decide if you’re a potential fit for the job.

So there you go.

If you have already have a site, great. Make sure you’re not making any of the mistakes above. 

If you don’t, and you’re still reading, go for it. If you start right now, I bet you can come up with something to share with friends, your parents, or that old college buddy by tomorrow afternoon.

We’ve all faced it – late night edit sessions, final cut-downs, revisions, revisions and even more revisions. The video spot is almost done, it’s uploaded to your online media-sharing software, and time to deliver a version to your various audiences so they can make decisions and provide feedback (post, VFX, review, approval).

You have the master ProRes file but you need to deliver in various formats to three or more distinct audiences. You need to send the master version to the editor so they can work with the source. You need to send a web-friendly version to the client so they can view it in a specific browser, and you also need to send a version to the producer who only views media on their phone. What to do? Time is of essence and you need to deliver the right version to each person to meet your deadline.

Playing a video on any device is imperative to collaborate effectively and save time

One solution can be to transcode in-house all audio and video files before you upload it for storage to make sure it plays back right on every OS and browser. That’s time-consuming for a couple of reasons.

First: Transcoding is more of an art than a science. Every video is different. Some have fast action scenes. Some have flat dialogue around a dinner table. Each video requires different specifications to make it look as good as possible and to ensure that the file will play on most browsers and devices.

Second: Transcoding is very computer processor intensive and can be complicated. It is possible to make multiple transcoded versions of a file using basic software and a Mac, but this will take time, processing power and available storage on your in-house and cloud systems. Even if you managed to do it, you would create dozens of files, using up precious processing power and memory space on your own system.

Third: Time. Over a week, transcode/upload activity can cost you hours if you don’t have a tool like Wiredrive to automatically transcode files for you so that your audience can view them– time you can’t afford to lose.

Selective transcoding and fast uploads with Wiredrive

Why spend extra time, processing power, and storage when it’s not needed. Wiredrive’s media sharing and production collaboration tool is specifically designed to make it faster and easier for you to share and collaborate with teams, clients and prospects. All you need to do is upload your audio or video files to Wiredrive in their original format – and get on with other creative, exciting work.

Our system scans every video and audio source file to check if it plays back smoothly. Nine out of ten files are generally fine. For files that won’t play in their original format, we create a transcoded version of the file. Our transcoding process is both faster and smoother as we use ‘selective transcoding’ – which means we only transcode the parts that need it. For example, if the video is fine but the audio needs to change, then the video stream remains untouched. This keeps the transcoded version as close to the original version as possible while enabling it to play in a browser without problems.

Let’s say you have a 1GB ProRes file that you want to share from your London office. Transcoding and uploading can take you from 50 minutes to a couple of hours. With Wiredrive you could have it transcoded and ready for playback in under six minutes. From LA, you need just four minutes. The Wiredrive system takes under a minute to transcode a 1GB ProRes file, and just 40 seconds for an H.264 file.

Compare this to how long it takes to transcode a file on your own. What’s more, the transcoding takes place on our processors and is stored on our servers – leaving your in-house systems available for more important tasks. Even very large, high-resolution files like ProRes, will play back with the highest possible resolution (even with high bitrates!).

We also keep your original files so that your team can easily share them, track them, and always download the source file that was uploaded, leading to a collaborative workflow. This is especially important when you are all working from different locations and timezones.

Postproduction is tricky business. With all of the codecs, software options and workflows available to us, it’s hard to know if we’re being as efficient as we can be and any solution that eliminates unproductive tedious tasks for your team is a good thing.

New Mac, an award-winning, Australian-based video production company, uses Wiredrive to produce branded videos, training, and educational content in order to create meaningful connections with audiences. Helmed by founder and managing director James McPherson, New Mac is more than a production company—it’s a think tank for creativity; a resource that brands trust to tell their stories. We sat down with James to hear why they chose Wiredrive to produce high-quality video for corporate Australian brands.

What makes Wiredrive different than the tools you are currently using today?

Wiredrive is a tremendous resource for us when it comes to business development opportunities because we’re able to review, approve, and pitch work in one single platform. We have an entirely cloud-based workflow (except for offline editing work), and Wiredrive is the final piece of the puzzle for us to work in a single system. It’s very exciting when you find a tool you like and it’s easy to use.

What was previously lacking in your workflow that you are now able to achieve with Wiredrive?

We have never had the ability to archive our work before in a way that’s quick and simple. Our previous archive was a dreadful experience, and was a tedious task if you didn’t have all the right info. It is very easy for us to search and find things in Wiredrive Library thanks to the metadata, tags, and keywords we use to categorize our work. As a company that produces as much as 3,000 deliverables per year, it is extremely powerful and valuable for us to see all the work we’ve produced over the years.

“Wiredrive makes us extremely efficient in how we’re able to quickly respond to business opportunities, as well as how we present ourselves to those opportunities.”

How does Wiredrive perform with the current state of Internet bandwidth and speed in Australia?

Wiredrive’s speed has worked great for us; it’s efficient compared to other U.S. services we’ve used in the past—and that is critical. It’s important for our clients to have a great viewing experience so that’s why speed, performance, and upload functionality are the top three reasons why we chose Wiredrive over other tools we were evaluating.

How is Wiredrive going to help your sales team?

It’s a healthy platform that really simplifies communication between our sales team and clients. We’ve significantly cut down the turnaround time for creating and pitching reels. As a result, we’re now able to work faster and this is huge for us.

To learn more about New Mac, visit their site: www.newmac.co

The media and entertainment industries have long been popular targets for piracy and intellectual property theft. In today’s technology-centric environment, where video streaming and cloud sharing are essential parts of day-to-day life, securing video assets throughout production, post-production, and beyond has become more important than ever.

When content is leaked before it has reached its final, release-ready form, not only does the content owner lose out on revenue and future ROI, but your organization risks damage to its reputation from the release of a low-quality product and not prioritizing client security.

Why Watermark Tech is Important in the Media and Entertainment Industries

Video piracy and leaked content cost the entertainment industry billions of dollars every year. In fact, in some countries, pirated content accounts for almost half of all the video content being viewed in those regions.

To help prevent theft and leaks, post-production teams rely on a core group of security tools and cyber hygiene protocols, including security certifications, role-based provisioning, identity and access management, and digital watermarking.

Watermarking is a highly effective way to prevent the unauthorized release and distribution of video content and track who is actually viewing and sharing the content.

In addition to protecting and securing content during the post-production process, watermarking has the added benefit of increasing brand awareness with your centrally placed logo and business name on every video and link.

Why Choose MediaSilo’s SafeStream Watermark Tech for Post-Production

One of MediaSilo’s many enterprise-grade security features is SafeStream, a highly effective, tamper-resistant watermarking tool. SafeStream provides additional layers of protection against asset theft and misuse with two different types of watermarking tech:

1. Visible Watermarking

Visible watermarks are the most overt type of watermarking. These watermarks are placed clearly in a video to provide a traceable, visual deterrent intended to make potential bad actors rethink sharing confidential, proprietary content.

Visual watermarks can be customized to include the authorized viewer’s full name, email address, or custom text.

2. Forensic Watermarking

Forensic watermarks are digitally embedded into a video, so the unique characters that identify the video’s origin are invisible to the viewer. If a video is later leaked, forensic watermarks allow security teams to trace back the source of the leaked footage.

Used alone, forensic watermarks protect content while creating an uninterrupted user experience for viewers. However, many administrators choose to use forensic watermarking in conjunction with visual watermarks for a double layer of security.

Benefits of Securing Your Video Content with SafeStream

In addition to visible and forensic watermarks, SafeStream provides MediaSilo users with several other features and capabilities that make it easy to watermark video content for secure viewing and sharing throughout the post-production workflow:

• SafeStream watermarking can be mandated at the project or admin level by enforcing an embedded watermark template across the organization.
• The watermark template is set as a default by an administrator and cannot be turned off by users.
• SafeStream provides the option to allow both administrator and project owner roles to manage watermarking or limit permissions to just admins to enforce full compliance.
• Authorized users can apply default watermarking templates or create their own custom template using viewer names, emails, or custom text
• Administrators can track who views watermarked videos at any time, which makes it easier to find the source of leaked assets and the unauthorized users who download them.

The MediaSilo cloud collaboration platform is designed to streamline and secure your video management workflow with one integrated solution. SafeStream watermark tech is just one way we achieve this.

Download MediaSilo’s Guide to Post-Production Workflows to learn more about how post-production is evolving in the era of remote work and how you can increase efficiency, productivity, and security no matter where your team is located.

According to Akamai’s report, State of the Internet/Security: Pirates in the Outfield, between January and September 2021, global piracy demand reached 3.7 billion unlicensed streams and downloads.

Leaked and stolen content comes at a huge cost to the owners. By some estimates, the entertainment industry loses upward of $71 billion each year to media piracy. And with our increasing reliance on streaming media for both professional and personal use, there is no reason to think that the demand and subsequent financial impact will decrease anytime soon.

Unlike other types of theft, once a video asset is leaked, there is no real way to get that content back. Since it is almost impossible to stop others from copying, sharing, downloading, and distributing a pirated copy, the best plan of action is to prevent the leak in the first place.

So, from post-production to pre-screening, how do you secure your pre-release environment and prevent assets from being leaked?

After the last piece of footage is shot, a video still has a long way to go before it’s officially ready for distribution. Along the journey from post-production through pre-screening, there are a lot of potential leak points.

Fortunately, with the right technology, policies, and practices in place, your team can mitigate the risk of leaked assets.

1. Access Management

Poor password protocol, including weak, shared, and reused passwords, is a common vulnerability across every organization. In fact, a 2021 study from IBM and the Ponemon Institute found that compromised credentials were the leading cause of data breaches among study participants.

With so much at stake during post-production and pre-screening, it is essential for video management teams to enforce strong identity and access management policies.

To ensure assets are protected from theft and unauthorized viewing, the traditional username/password combo has to go. Instead, organizations need to implement secure access technology, such as multifactor authentication, single sign-on, and passwordless login.

Additionally, enforcing strategies such as controlling user privileges to limit who has access and lifecycle policies that regularly review access and permissions to prevent privilege creep will help prevent data loss and breaches.

2. Role-Based Permissions

Along the same lines as managing how users are granted access, role-based provisioning lets the administrator ensure only the right people have access to the right assets at the right time.

Throughout a project, different users need to have access to certain files and resources in order to do their jobs. However, not every user needs the same level of permissions, and they most likely won’t need the same level of permissions for the entirety of the project.

For example, the marketing team doesn’t need the same access to a video file as the sound editor needs, and the client doesn’t need permission to download and edit the original video file.

By assigning project-based permissions for standard and customized roles on an as-needed basis, the admin has more flexibility and control over what a user can do on a given project.

It’s also important to remember that role-based permissions are project-dependent. That is, a user’s role may be different on each project they are working on. While they may need almost unfettered access to change and share files for one project, they may simply need view-only permissions on another.

Paired with the access management policies above, role-based permissions can stop a hacker from penetrating too deeply into the system where the most valuable content and data are stored.

3. Leak-Tracing Technology

It’s always preferable to prevent a leak from occurring than to clean up after one, but humans make mistakes and, leaks happen.

Watermarking is an effective tool that can both help deter asset leaks and provide traceability back to who is viewing and sharing an asset. This capability helps secure and streamline workflows from post-production to pre-screening by ensuring reviewers have a current, authorized, and secure version of the asset available.

MediaSilo’s watermarking technology, SafeStream, creates multilayer protection against theft and unauthorized sharing with:

Visible Watermarks

As the name implies, visible watermarks are placed clearly within each frame of a video. These watermarks are intended to provide a traceable, visual deterrent against unauthorized sharing and public distribution of confidential, proprietary content.

Visual watermarks can be customized to include the authorized viewer’s full name, email address, or custom text or even used for branding purposes by including the company name or logo.

Forensic Watermarks

Forensic watermarks are digitally embedded into a video, so they are invisible to the viewer. Forensic watermarks contain unique characters that identify the video’s origin, so it is difficult for unauthorized users to pass the asset off as their own.

SafeStream is highly customizable, allowing admins to create watermarking standards for specific projects or for entire workspaces. SafeStream also streamlines and unifies your security efforts with shareable watermark templates for specific teams or user groups.

4. Security Certifications

One way that MediaSilo is keeping assets and workflows secure is by obtaining SOC 2 Type II certification. This high-level certification ensures that our infrastructure, software, personnel, procedures, and data have met rigorous third-party-verified standards for security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy.

In other words, we have official verification that our internal operations at MediaSilo are as secure as yours.

Download MediaSilo’s Guide to Post-Production Workflows to learn more about how post-production is evolving in the era of remote work and how you can increase efficiency, productivity, and security no matter where your team is located.

No matter which creative industry you are in, you likely often hear, “Send me your reel.”

Production companies, directors, creative agencies, post houses, and even marketing and brand teams are expected to have a demo reel to showcase their best work, much like an artist, model, or photographer has a portfolio.

But in different subsets of the creative industry, there can be different meanings or expectations for what the demo reel actually includes.

So what exactly is a reel, and what can you do if you don’t have one?

In this guide, we’ll walk you through the many names, types, and uses for reels as well as some best practices for how to make and share one with your clients and collaborators.
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What is a reel and why do I need one?

Borrowing from the old way of storing film, a reel is an edited video highlighting the best examples of your work.

In creative industries such as film production, media, advertising, and post-production, a reel is a great way to demonstrate your vision or past work to a potential collaborator or client. For an experienced professional, a demo reel can be a great way to highlight the best of the best of your creative portfolio.

Taking inspiration from other creative industries, the concept of reels is beginning to make its way into B2B and B2C marketing and sales, with companies creating a reel of their products and services to give customers an overview of their brand identity and specific offerings. In these situations, this unique video could also be referred to as a highlight reel, promo reel, or brand video.

“No matter your specific use case or industry, think of a reel as a trailer for you and your work.”

No matter your specific use case or industry, think of a reel as a trailer for you and your work. Similar to movie trailers, you don’t need to tell your audience the whole story, but you do need to get them interested in seeing more.

What are some different use cases for reels?

While companies, brands, and creatives can have demo reels, the ultimate finished product can be quite different.

Production Company

Whether working in media and entertainment, advertising, or both, a strong demo reel is a must for any production company.

For a producer, brand, or agency looking to begin a new production, a company’s reel is the first place they will look to make their hiring choice. What these decision makers are looking for is a company that they feel will fit the right creative style and artistic tone for the project at hand.

A challenge for many production companies is how to show a wide range of styles and skills in a single reel. It is not uncommon for a company to produce multiple reels to show different skill sets—a commercial reel, a narrative reel, and a documentary reel, for example.

In any of these cases, be true to your strengths and what your company does better than anyone else.

Advertising Agency

For an advertising agency, the power of your reel comes from the power of your creativity.

What brands are really looking for when hiring an agency is a representation of emotions or ideas that are often hard to articulate quickly and clearly. They are also looking for individuality. Do your spots look the same as everything else they’ve seen so far? What sets you apart from the rest?

Similar to production companies, agencies also often have the issue of choosing which spots to include in their reel. But don’t be intimidated; editing a reel is just another opportunity to flex your creative muscles while showing off your distinct style.

Brand

You might not think of a brand having a “reel,” but with the broad reach of digital and online marketing campaigns, a video reel for your company can give you a competitive edge.

A brand reel allows a potential client or customer to immediately understand not only your company and your product(s) but also your values and vision. For those advertising directly to customers, brands can also choose different levels of focus, such as on a specific product or even a popular marketing campaign that your customers might recognize. For those with specific skills, such as animation or visual effects, reels can showcase the depth and breadth of your capabilities.

For a B2B brand reel, you might want to focus more on the story and identity of your company. In these cases, you want your demo reel to focus on answering questions such as:

• What are the values you serve and the morals you represent?
• Can you align yourself with one of your more recognizable users and tell the story of your success through their success?
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However, a brand reel in these situations often requires more work, where new footage, voiceovers, or specific messaging is often needed in conjunction with clips from existing campaigns.

Commercial Director

For a commercial director, your reel is your calling card.

Whether you work directly with an agent, sales rep, or are a freelancer, you cannot book work with a new client, brand, or company without a reel that stands out. A director’s reel is an incredibly personal representation of your personality, vision, and work. It should show your skill, experience, creativity, and range all in one presentation.

As with other use cases, commercial directors can take different approaches with their demo reels. Some can choose to make a traditional “sizzle reel” made up of a variety of clips cut together with music, while others can create a compilation reel showing longer clips or entire end- to-end spots.

The approach you take depends on your audience and the type of commercial (i.e., automotive) that is your main focus.

Film Director

While there is a lot of overlap between commercial directors and film directors, a main distinction is the end goal of their reel. A commercial reel is all about sales, using creativity to sell a brand. For a film director, you have more flexibility to tell a story; capture a performance; and play with style, color, sound, and emotion.

Director of Photography

Of all of the examples we’ve discussed in this guide, a director of photography is the person who gets to have the most fun with their reel.

For a director of photography, their art is 100 percent visual, and there is no need to worry about the actor’s performance or the scene’s sound design. The main focus is capturing beautiful shots and jaw-dropping camera work. It is also a way to showcase an eye for composition, lighting, and layers of storytelling through exceptional camera work.

Actor

An actor’s demo reel is about creating a collection or montage of your best performances so directors can see your range and abilities.

That means you should work to keep things simple, using copies of the footage from your previous work and weaving them together to show your abilities, beginning with a high-impact scene to grab attention.

In this case, don’t worry about production quality or camera work. A great performance will shine through even if the shot doesn’t look very cinematic.

How do I share my reel?

Once you have created a reel that best represents you, your work, and your audience, your task is still not done. Your approach to sharing it can also reflect your specific tone and style.

It’s important to be thoughtful about how you choose to send your demo reel to show that you understand the best and most effective way for the viewer to engage with your content.

For example, you can host your reel on YouTube or Vimeo and send a link to anyone who requests it. While this is a simple and straightforward option, it does not allow you to tailor the viewer’s experience with your content or customize your presentation. At the same time, the content around your video can be distracting or deflect from the message you want to send about your brand and individual identity. Finally, if your reel contains sensitive or confidential content, these platforms offer limited security features.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are asset management and presentation platforms such as MediaSilo that give artists all the tools they need to organize, update, and beautifully display their reel on a secure and customized page.

MediaSilo’s intuitive presentation tool, Spotlight, allows artists to easily build a custom landing page for their video and include additional links, information, and branding. There are also prebuilt reel templates so you can publish content in a few clicks. Or there’s the option to build something entirely from scratch that suits your specific needs.

You can also choose to share your demo reel with others while it is still in development and use MediaSilo to get time-coded feedback, comments, and on-screen annotation from your collaborators.

When your reel is completed, it can be launched on your Spotlight page and easily shared using a variety of secure and private or public viewing options. Once your reel is shared, MediaSilo’s comprehensive analytics dashboard lets you see exactly which videos are getting the most traction and who is engaging the most with your content.

When should you not to use a reel?

Although there are a lot of use cases for demo reels, they aren’t always the answer to your content-sharing needs.

For example, rather than sharing a reel, many creative professionals will choose to create and share an online portfolio that showcases their best work. Editors, in particular, may benefit from a portfolio over a reel because specific skills with timing, pacing, and tone are really best shown over a full scene, spot, or short film. Many directors, agencies, and brands also prefer a portfolio to show a wider scope of work.

In other cases, you can combine a reel with a portfolio, which can be a good compromise if you do not know the preferences of the audience, but you would still like to prioritize which specific pieces they see.

Whether you are sharing a reel, portfolio, or both you can easily make a branded presentation page for all of your work using Spotlight.

Bring it all together.

Reels represent a creative way of expressing ideas and are a powerful way to communicate an artistic vision.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to making a reel that works for you, your business, and your audience, so take the time to try different options until you find the best way to showcase your work and talents.

If you work in video production or a similar creative field, your media reel is key to getting more clients. You have to make a great impression in a short amount of time. That means carefully curating your own work to make sure the best clips are on display, while also remembering that out of context, they might not have the same effect.

Using a media management app like Wiredrive will make this process much simpler. By having easy access to all your media files, as well as the ability to collaborate with other members of your team while making your selections, you can take the time needed to make the best possible choices.

To make sure your media reel shows off your skills, keep these tips in mind:

Have a Consistent Tone

In terms of tone, your past projects could be all over the map. Some are profound, some are funny, some are professional and informative. You might think that by tossing them all together in your reel, you’ll be able to show off how versatile you are.

What’s more likely, though, is that the rapid shifts in tone will prevent your work from having its intended effect. A funny clip might not be as entertaining if it comes right after an extremely serious one. Instead, try to aim for a consistent emotional feeling throughout your reel. Better yet, organize the reel so that the tone develops gradually into something new. A reel that begins as light and amusing, yet by the end has seemed to naturally grow into something very moving, will work better than one where the amusing and the moving are chaotically thrown together.

Show What Happens Behind the Scenes

Clients aren’t strictly interested in the finished product. While that is what’s most important, they want to see that your process reflects your expertise.

With that in mind, incorporate some behind the scenes elements into your media reel. This will demonstrate to clients that the great work they’re watching was not a fluke, but a natural result of your approach to a project.

Share the Good Stuff First

A demo reel has to have a certain flow to it, and often, the impulse is to build up to your best work. Think of an action movie trailer. Typically, it starts out fairly calm, with the more intense moments reserved for the end.

This works for a trailer, because moviegoers are a captive audience. Clients are not. They might not take the time to watch your entire reel if they’re not impressed with it from the start. As such, while it is important to keep the overall flow in mind, it’s more important to put your best work front and center.

Additionally, give clients the option to view your entire portfolio if the reel was interesting to them. With a media management tool like Wiredrive, you can easily share all your media assets with clients, giving them more reason to consider your team.

No matter what type of content you produce, analytics play a major role in your ability to be successful. This is just as true for a video as it is for a listicle. By understanding what does and does not engage an audience, you can fine-tune your work in the future. As more digital content incorporates multimedia elements, it’s now more important than ever that teams have access to a media management tool that provides this information. That’s why Wiredrive features comprehensive and intuitive analytics reporting. As a collaboration app, it already gives teams the ability to easily organize and provide feedback on their media files. Through analytics, it also offers the kind of insights that provide for greater success.

Monitoring Viewer Trends

Walk through the offices of any major digital publication, and you’ll likely spot screens throughout the hip open-space layout displaying the ever-shifting engagement data. Which articles are getting clicks. When people are reading them. How long they stay on the page.

These screens are there because being able to constantly see how content is performing is the simplest way to perfect it. Audience trends are fairly unpredictable. Teams need to be able to modify their approach quickly if need be. These data allow them to do so as soon as they notice a new trend.

It’s the same for those who work primarily in multimedia as it is for those who focus primarily on prose content.

In that respect, Wiredrive fulfills a key need. Through its analytics feature, it’s possible to see when a file was viewed, how many views it received over a certain period of time, and how long viewers watched it.

Unlike other analytics services, which often do not provide their own collaboration tool, Wiredrive allows users to share comments and feedback on files via the same system they used to monitor engagement. When media companies notice that content is not performing as expected, they typically convene meetings or send emails to address the issue. While this isn’t an entirely flawed approach, it also isn’t perfect. Ensuring that everyone on an email chain has reviewed the analytics data can be cumbersome. Meetings can occur days after a trend is spotted; in the meantime, little can be done to make the right changes.

Wiredrive’s analytics tools are built directly into its other features. As such, when teams see that a piece of content is failing, they can immediately begin collaborating to address the issue. If they notice it is succeeding, they can communicate their ideas on what made it work.

The result is stronger engagement. Analytics are only helpful when used to make the needed changes to a strategy or approach. On its own, this information is merely numbers on a screen. With Wiredrive’s media management features, you can use that information to get started on a new approach right away.

Collaborating with a team can mean a fount of new ideas, creative solutions, and brilliant plans. It can also mean a perfect recipe for miscommunication and technological frustration, but team collaboration is inevitable – as is the need to share files online.

Working with other professionals in your field isn’t quite as nightmarish as a high school group project, but it’s still fraught with potential dangers. Sometimes files don’t send, or videos don’t play. One person wants to use Google Drive, but the other is all about Dropbox. People lose track of what’s been done already. There’s no consistent branding across all platforms. Chaos ensues.

The only guaranteed way to save yourself and your team from a world of broken links and malfunctioning fax machines is to find a trustworthy team collaboration app.

Programs like Wiredrive remove the roadblocks from team collaboration. Everyone has experienced the acute frustration of a failed video upload, but Wiredrive’s selective transcoding ensures crystal-clear playback every time. Wiredrive’s digital library means that all of your work-in-progress and final media assets are safely stored in one central, searchable hub. You won’t have to stress over creating a branded experience because Wiredrive allows you to feature your brand on every email, reel, and presentation you send.

Now that we’re all past disorganized group projects, it’s time to ditch the rudimentary methods of file sharing. Glitchy videos are fine for sharing Youtube clips, but not ideal for presenting the professional face of your company. To upload larger files without a hitch, you need a fast, commercial-grade collaboration app.

With Wiredrive, there’s no need to download software for instant playback on uploaded videos and all major formats are supported with no lagging.

Sometimes the challenge of collaborating goes beyond the chaos of uploading, though. Collaboration is all about communication. There’s the issue of keeping track of multiple moving parts, making sure that every media asset is reviewed and approved before it heads out into the world, and remembering who did what when. Luckily, programs like Wiredrive are prepared to keep your team up to date with time stamps and comment tracking. Reviewers get an email alert with one-click access to a preview, so they can respond as soon as a new piece of media is shared. Leaving feedback and comments is easy and organized.

With an app to take care of the filing, comment tracking, and data protection, the team is free to concentrate on the important stuff. No one wants to spend precious hours of work time watching a video buffer or waiting for a folder to upload. A team collaboration app streamlines work and keeps track of every step along the way, so no one’s left out of the loop. A good  team collaboration app goes the extra mile to make sure that your final product is easy to share and consistent with your branding. Finding a reliable app that can handle your video uploads is essential to taking your team from frustrating to functional.

There’s no need to suffer through miscommunications and multiple fuzzy videos on multiple platforms. If you and your team want to skip the headache and start sharing files and feedback with ease, you need an app that’s designed with the sole purpose of making your collaborations hassle-free.