Archive for the ‘Features’ Category

Build a Better Demo Reel: Part One

Posted by Mark Schoneveld on May 24th, 2012. Categories: Features, Resources | Comments Off

How to build a better Demo Reel

Your demo reel might showcase your best work, but if you’re not paying attention to these three critical elements, your demo reel might be not be doing all it can for you. Here are the three most critical things that will make or break your demo reel.

1. Keep it Short n’ Snappy

Even though it might feel cinematic to lead into your demo reel with a long, sexy reveal set to swoon music, you’re wasting valuable time. The best demo reels grab your attention by the throat.

You only have ten seconds to pique your audience’s interest. Once you’ve captured it, you have to work hard to keep it. By the one minute mark, your viewer has probably stopped watching. The best demo reels we’ve seen clock in at under 45 seconds.

If you feel that one 45 second demo reel doesn’t showcase all the kinds of work you can do, create multiple demo reels that you can use in different situations.

2. Identify Yourself + Your Work

Including your name and contact information is one critical piece that so many creators neglect to remember.
• Open with your name and titles
• Close with a long freeze-frame of your contact information
• Bonus! Lower third text identifying the project and your work you created with other people shows your respect for your collaborators and identifies you as a professional.

3. Edit to Great Music

Snagging that perfect clip to soundtrack your showreel is critical. The tone of the music should match your work — It doesn’t always have to be a fast-paced electro banger. Generally upbeat music is going to grab attention, but if you’re an introspective cinematographer that romantic strings piece is great. And make sure you’re editing on the beat – matching visual and audio rhythm makes things feel much snappier and fluid. People’s eyes and ears dance together.

Don’t forget: once you’ve got a demo reel wrapped, get it up on Poptent! We pick our favorite demo reels uploaded each month and award it $500!

Are you a Poptent Pro?

Poptent Pro

Between Open Assignments, Invite Assignments, and Poptent Productions, we’ve cultivated more great opportunities for independent filmmakers to create video for major brands than ever. While everyone can get into the Open Assignments, some opportunities are offered to an exclusive group of producers, our Poptent Pros.

Are you a Poptent Pro?

A Poptent Pro is a producer who has had an assignment submission purchased by one of our brand or agency clients. A purchase in any assignment, whether it’s open or invite, will make you a Poptent Pro. Poptent Pros get first access to Invite Assignment and direct-paying Poptent Productions opportunities because their creative work is inspired, well-produced, and impresses our clients.

Plenty of Poptent members haven’t yet been purchased by our brand or agency clients, but many of you are also producing well-thought out, technically solid videos. That’s great! We see a clear path to success for you here – a way to break into professional commercial filmmaking. For instance, we do invite members of our community with skill sets we need for specific assignments, but haven’t yet been purchased, to participate in Invite Assignments.

How do I become a Pro?

We want to cultivate as many Poptent Pros as possible, and we’re committed to helping you succeed and join this elite group. With a little hard work and creative prowess, you’ll become a top member of Poptent in no time.

First, make sure you’re regularly participating in our Open Assignments. Again, if your video gets purchased by one of our clients, you’re a Pro.

Demonstrating that you can consistently craft great creative and technically-solid videos on a deadline will also earn you Invites to selective assignments that increase your opportunities to get that first purchase. Some producers get an Invite slot after their very first video submission, while others need a few assignments get comfortable with the process and start producing videos that our clients will purchase.

The main criteria we use to select participants for each Invite Assignment is our belief that a producer can write scripts and create video that impresses and is good enough to be purchased by a major brand. Often, we do some match-making between what the brand is looking for and the producers’ skill sets, but there are some specific traits that most of our Pros share, and we look for from all producers:

– The ability to sell subtly
- Tight editing
- Avoidance of common sense mistakes
- Strong technical skills
- Following privacy guidelines, including not posting submissions anywhere except Poptent.net

Conclusion

We’re working hard at refining this process to make sure everyone who’s talented and motivated enough gets allocated good, fun work. If you’d like feedback on what you can do to be invited to participate in Invite Assignments, don’t be afraid to ask. Our Community Managers are more than happy to give you feedback on any of the videos you’ve created.

Have more questions? Head over to our Invite Assignment discussion, and ask away.

New Feature: More from this Assignment & Icon Updates

Posted by Jessica Scarane on April 26th, 2012. Categories: Features | Comments Off

I’m back on the blog with some updates from the world of Poptent technology! It’s a beautiful land with cascading falls of HTML and wondrous caves of server racks. Anyway, this time around we have just a quick update from the media page.

More from this Assignment

More from this Assignment Spotlight

If you’re a seasoned Poptent veteran, you’ll remember our old media page had a related media widget. It served up more videos from the related assignment or the creator, but it wasn’t particularly easy to use. There wasn’t much of an order to things and it was a challenge to navigate assignment submissions.

Now we’ve replaced it with the More from this assignment widget. This nifty tool builds an ordered list of all assignment submissions and allows you to click through each of them, watching, commenting, and liking as you go!

Have you had a chance to check it out? We’d love to hear what you think!

New Icons

Media Page Icons Spotlight

Have you noticed the text buttons on the media page are no more? Don’t worry these simple icon buttons do the same things! From left to right they are – like, share, and download. Clicking that like button fills the heart with cheer and adds you to the liker list. Share will open up our fancy sharing panel where you can copy a link, email, or create a custom embed code. Finally the download button, where available, opens a panel where you can choose to download the original file or any available encodes with a single click.

If you have any feedback for us, we’d love to hear it. Just start up a discussion!

New Feature: Killer Additions to Poptent Media Pages

Posted by Jessica Scarane on March 27th, 2012. Categories: Features | Comments Off

Hey all of you out in Poptentlandia! Today we’re excited to introduce some sweet new additions to our media pages. Check out the screenshots below or if you’re a self-starter type, feel free to test ‘em out for yourself on a media page.

Embed Customization

You wanted more control over your embeds from Poptent, so we’re giving it to you! Now you can change text, background, and scrubber colors or opt to hide meta details like title, username, and avatar. With a few simple clicks you can skin the Poptent player to fit the theme of your website or blog.

Customize Embeds

To access the customization tools open the share panel on any media page. Click the embed button below the video link to expand your options. Where we previously we offered a standard embed code without the ability to customize, we now have color and opacity selection. You’ll also see three check boxes, which allow you to show or hide the title, username, and avatar that appear in the standard embed. With just these easy-to-use options, you can create an embed that fits anywhere. The options are endless!

Revision Selection

Back in the day (before this morning), we didn’t make viewing different revisions of media easy. Well, those days are over! Now switching from one revision to another can be easily done through the revision selection menu.

Revision Selector

On your own media, you’ll now see a line of text, which indicates the revision you’re currently viewing. Click into that menu to view a list of all other revisions, descriptions, and upload dates. Simply click the revision number button to view any other revision. The player will reload and display the selected revision. You’ll only have access to this feature on media you own. Don’t worry; viewing another revision will not make any changes to the default revision seen by any other user!

Embed Code Updates

While this is more of a behind the scenes update, it does pave the way for some great things in the future! We released the first of those great things today. Now devices which don’t support Flash will be served native HTML5 Video. Translation: users on Android, iPhone, iPad, and iPod can now view Poptent videos using the device’s native player for seamless and faster playback.

Be sure to check out these new features and feel free to let us know what you think!

New Feature: Title/Action Safe Zones & Aspect Ratio Preview

Posted by Jessica Scarane on February 28th, 2012. Categories: Features | Comments Off

Comin’ atchya with some new player features!

In the past week we’ve added two new options to our video player we can’t wait to share. We now offer safe zone guides and overlays. Plus, you can preview videos in a 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratio. Both of these features can be accessed from the right-click menu on any video player. Check out the walk-through below for the details.

Right-Click Menu

Right click on any video player to bring up the menu. Select the aspect ratio preview. If your video is 4:3, it will offer a 16:9 preview. If your video is 16:9, it will offer a 4:3 preview.

4:3 Aspect Ratio

This selection brings up black overlays, which offer a preview of the video with (in this case) a 4:3 aspect ratio. Using this feature gives you a quick look at what content you’d lose if converting the aspect ratio of the video.

4:3 Aspect Ratio and Safe Zone Guides

This preview also interacts with the title and action safe zones. Right-click again to turn on the safe zone guides. When you’re viewing a video in 4:3 preview you can also check out the safe zone at that aspect ratio.

4:3 Aspect Ratio and Safe Zone Overlays

Right-click one more time and turn on the safe zone overlays for another view of title and action safe zones. Of course, both the aspect ratio and safe zone features work independently as well!

Give it a spin and let us know what you think!

New Poptent Profile, Portfolio Design

Posted by Mark Schoneveld on April 23rd, 2010. Categories: Features | 2 Comments »

We just launched a newly updated design for your Poptent profile with an eye to making it a better portfolio for you to showcase your commercial-creating prowess. Here’s a little walk-through of what’s new.

Let’s start at the top of the page. You’ll see several tweaks here, including one of the coolest new components, the Featured Media widget (pictured here, David Shamban‘s profile). Basically you tell Poptent what you’d like to show the world when they first visit your profile. Is it your award winning demo reel? Or perhaps the commercial you had purchased by a Fortune 100 brand? Simple to do.

screenshot-1

Next, check out the sweet new Brands widget in your sidebar. This will basically tell the world all the great brands you’ve done work for here on Poptent. Submit a video to an assignment, have that brand’s logo pop up on your page. Simple as that. Seen here, GreenSkyMedia‘s profile.

screenshot-3

We’ve added a more prominent Network widgets to show who you like working with, or who you like to follow. Also, the new activity wall is far more robust than our last version and should add some useful tools for you.

screenshot-2

On your private view of your profile, you’ll see another super handy tool, Calendar Export. Simply click on the link of the corresponding calendar app you use and all the Poptent deadlines will be added dynamically to your personal calendar system. Easy!

screenshot-4

And finally – one of the features we’re most excited about, Medals. There’s a tab on everyone’s profile for the Medals page where you’ll see a variety of awards you can earn – from being a Featured Creator to having been first to submit to an assignment. We’ll be rolling out more Medals soon, so keep an eye out!

screenshot-5

Don’t see a feature you were hoping for? Why not Request it!

The Poptent Tour Part 5: Using Search

Posted by Mark Schoneveld on November 14th, 2008. Categories: Features | Comments Off

The main architecture of Poptent is built upon Search. Whenever you want to see something new, or find something old, chances are you’ll start with Search.

Say, for example, you’re working on a video project for an Assignment on Poptent and you’d like to find an editor in your area to collaborate with you. Search for ‘Creators‘ then refine your search to your area:

The search results will bring up a list of Creators in your geographic location.

Look at the summary of information in each listing. Below, you will see my listing. I come up in that search because I’ve told Poptent I live in Philadelphia and that one of my skills is Editing.

If you’re curious to see what kind of work I do as an editor, there’s a drawer on my summary that shows quick links to my media. Hover over any of those thumbnails and you’ll get even more information. Click them to go watch them.

Now, say you’re really needing some good music for your video, but you’re not much of a musician. No problem, there are lots of musicians here on Poptent. First click ‘Media‘ in the drop-down menu, then click Search.

After you get results, filter them down by Media Type and you’ll pull up all the audio files on Poptent. (By the way, check out our awesome new music player!)

Lastly, if you’d like to check back on a particular search result you can create a ‘permalink‘ by clicking that cool orange thumbtack. Use that link on your blog or to send those results to a friend.

Be sure to read the rest of the Poptent Tour posts here on our blog! We’re rolling out new tools and features all the time so stay tuned here and we’ll keep you up to date.

The Poptent Tour Part 3: Assignments

Posted by Mark Schoneveld on October 14th, 2008. Categories: Features | Comments Off

So you’d like to make some money on Poptent and join up a commercial assignment. Great! Let me walk you through how to do that.

First, from the homepage, you’ll see a button called “Show Me”:

When you click it, you’ll see a range of different things you can jump to. Click on ‘Assignments’:

That will bring you to a page with all current assignments. Browse through them until you’ve found one you want to check out. When you’re on the Assignment’s landing page, you’ll see a button at the top of the yellow box that says “Accept”. [Important: accepting an assignment does not mean you actually must enter it, it just means you've accepted the Terms and Conditions and can browse the material in depth as well as join the assignment's discussion thread.]

Once you’ve accepted the assignment, watch the introduction video, then download the Creative Brief which will give you all the details of what the brand is looking for in your videos. People who read the Creative Brief most carefully have their videos purchased far more often than those who don’t, so be sure to go over it closely.

When you’re ready to start making your video, you can download the assets you’ll need by clicking the Download link of each asset, or by downloading the asset directly from the asset page. Want a still image? Just need video? You can filter the assets by type by choosing an option in the drop down menu in the lower left. Or, click on the “See all…” link to view a list of all the assets in the tray.

If you’re looking for more information or you’d like to check out who else is working on an assignment, click the Creators tab. That bin will show you everyone who’s accepted so far.

And finally, if you have further questions or you’d like to discuss ideas or problems, follow the link to the Town Hall discussion and see what’s being talked about there.

The Poptent Tour Part 2: Video Controls

Posted by Mark Schoneveld on October 13th, 2008. Categories: Features | Comments Off

When you upload media to Poptent, you’ll notice several buttons just below the video when you’re signed in. We’re hoping you find them useful. Let me explain what each of them do.


The first button you see from left to right is the ‘Share’ button. Simply, this allows you to send this media to another Poptent community member directly, email it to someone outside of Poptent, or grab the permalink to the media’s page. Remember, if you want to embed a Poptent video to your About Me section or your blog for example, all you have to do is hit play, then click the “< / >” button to copy the code to your clipboard.


The ‘Submit’ button is an important one as it allows you to enter an assignment with that piece of media. If you don’t see any items in that drop down menu, it probably means you haven’t Accepted the assignment, which you’ll need to do before you can submit to it.


The little mountains icon is where you can choose the thumbnail for your video. This is the image that will appear before a video gets played. Obviously, videos with catchy thumbnails are more likely to get watched. You can pick one from the video, or you can always upload your own as well. Your choice. But be sure it’s something eye-grabbing.


The ‘Versions’ button is perhaps one of my favorite features. This allows you to upload a different version of the same video without having to redo all the meta data like tags and titles.

This will be a powerful tool for you to use when working on projects. Imagine uploading a rough cut of a video to send to your friend. Once you work out some changes, just upload your new version. Then, by clicking the check mark, you can watch either version, giving you the ability to compare and contrast your work.


The wrench icon allows you to change the privacy settings for your media. You can also allow or block downloading of your original source file which can be handy if you’re collaborating on a project with friends in distant places. In the example above, you might not want the world to see your rough cut. Keep your video private, and change the setting to public when you’re happy with the version you have uploaded. Or, you can simply share a video with your followers to keep it limited from the outside world, but not completely hidden.

The last two icons should be self-explanatory. The red X button deletes your media. And the down arrow on the right side of the toolbar allows you to download the source video, if its allowed by the media owner.

As always, let me know if you have further questions about these icons and how they can help improve your workflow.