The Best thing you Can do for your Reel

No matter what stage of your career you are at, you are likely making reels and sending demos to your clients in an attempt to land a gig. Every reel you send has the potential to be a deciding factor on whether or not the director hires you. But are you putting your very best foot forward? We spend a lot of time designing the perfect website or researching tools like reelcrafter. We may curate our reels to a particular taste or audience or take a more “generalist” approach. Many of these demos will be cues we wrote for real projects, which is awesome, but I want to suggest a better method

Enter the spec

In the advertising industry, every so often a production company may do what we call a “spec” ad. These are non-comissioned “broadcast ready” ads made unofficially without a client, but for a real product. Think of it like a portfolio piece: solely existing to demonstrate ability and prove you can work in a particular style even if you haven’t had clients like that before. These can be incredibly powerful assets in an agencies portfolio, often being used strategically to experiment with new techniques, work with new collaborators, or fill a gap in your portfolio. But the other great thing about spec ads? They are unbound by client feedback, offering the ultimate in unrestricted creativity. What you can do in a spec ad may not be approved or liked by the client, but they can demonstrate your artistic vision and offer you a chance to really flex your creative muscles in ways that you might not get to on real projects. Many agencies will even use these spec ads to pitch to the actual company they made the ad for, and may even land work with them!

So what does this mean for the composer?

Far too many times, composers rely solely on what they’ve done already for real projects in their reel rather than crafting something intentional that shows who they are. I’m even guilty of this myself. Taking cues from real projects can be great - especially if there was a budget to hire live players, a mix engineer, etc - but these cues can also have a negative: it may take too long to “Get to the good part”, they are structured to fit a picture, and they may or may not truly capture what you are capable of as you have to write around dialogue and other story telling elements. If you want your reel to show your creative vision and put your absolute best foot forward as a composer, why then are we using tracks where music takes a back seat to story to share that?

Instead, composers should figure out what is best for strategy and optimize their portfolio around that by creating new tracks designed to hook listeners right away, keep them listening, and inspire awe. If we wrote more music “for ourselves”, we’d have the ability to do really cool things we normally wouldn’t get to even try on real projects but might be really awesome to actually do.

Doing spec compositions, or “ghost demos” as I’ve heard a few people call them, can be a great R&D opportunity as well - offering us a chance to explore new styles, work with new collaborators, and try to target gaps in our portfolio that might be helpful to have. And not every piece we write needs to be a banger, but having something ready to go in a style you like to write in but don’t get the opportunity to do often can be the difference between landing that gig and getting passed over!

So yes, I am suggesting composers compose music outside of working projects (wow, crazy idea right?) but the bigger idea is to intentionally craft music for your portfolio rather than relying on tracks from other projects. By intentionally crafting your reel to put your absolute best foot forward, you can have a powerful advantage over your peers. Your reel is no longer “What I have done” but rather, “What I am capable of”.

Demos in Practice

For The Marvels, Composer Pinar Toprak actually employed this strategy when demo-ing for the movie. She hired a 70-piece orchestra, a video crew, and more to demonstrate that she can handle working with this large sized ensemble. Even if she didn’t land the gig, she now had these valuable pieces for her portfolio that she could have used to land other large gigs. Pinar is a super talented composer, but if she had relied on midi-mockups or just tracks from her portfolio there’s a chance she may not have landed the gig. She showed her potential rather than relying on her experience, which I believe is a great model for anyone trying to land more work.

ScoringTech.Net is operated by Joe Chris as a means of trying to give back to the composer community. Consider joining the monthly mailing list to have these articles sent to your inbox on the first of every month! Follow me on instagram @Joe_Chris_ , youtube, or Join our free discord community where we host bi-weekly composition challenges!