Zerply Showreel Breakdown — Breakdown.

Let’s be honest, having a PDF breakdown of your demo reel that is separate from your showreel media is so 2008. To think that supervisors and producers have the time to manage your sh!t in the form of an external file or link or physical printout… That’s crazy talk!

James Bennett
3 min readMar 30, 2017

We can do better than that —and guess what? We have! We’re super excited to announce the brand new Zerply showreel breakdown feature!

Demo Reel : Jack Geckler Senior Animator 2017

The basic gist : Your demo reel and showreel breakdown are now one and the same. From here on out your breakdown will travel comfortably on the shoulders of your demo reel - That rushing sound in your ears is your brain exploding…

Each of your shot explanations can now dynamically update and change in unison with your edited media, which means anyone watching your showreel will know exactly what your contribution was to each and every clip on all of your projects.

The thing to remember is, most projects are collaborative so knowing what you did on a project is very important. This does not mean, ‘I animated the main dinosaur’. You wouldn’t describe Michael Jackson’s contribution to Thriller, as, “He was the singer…” Ahh, no. I don’t think so. Your breakdown gives you the opportunity to explain your workflow as well as the challenges you may have overcome. Your thought process says just as much about your hire-ability as your actual work.

Here come the instructions.How do I add a breakdown to my reel?

Step 01.

Add your showreel to Zerply by clicking the “Add Work” button. Note: Zerply pulls reels from either Vimeo or YouTube.

Step 02 (Fig 02).

Go to the specific place on your reel where you would like to add a breakdown, and click in the bottom right of your demo reel “Add breakdown”.

Fig 02.

Step 03 (Fig 03).

Once you click ‘Add breakdown’ a small window with text fields will appear in the right hand column. This is where you’ll add the appropriate information.

Fig 03.

Step 04 (Fig 04).

Make sure you specify the project eg: Mona.

Tip: Select the project from the dropdown menu before pressing enter.

Fig 04.

Step 05 (Fig 05).

Fill in the Project , Role, Description and Tools dialogue boxes, then select the start and end times of your clip.

Once you’re happy with everything. click the green ‘Save button’.

Fig 05.

That’s it. Pretty easy. Your showreel breakdown can be viewed by members inside and outside of Zerply. You’ve worked hard to build a great demo reel, and now with the dynamic breakdown feature you can shine even more light on your talent and share your new showreel breakdown on Twitter & Facebook and all the usual places!

We’ll see you on Zerply!

Cheers,

James Bennett and Team Zerply.

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