Reel craft
What to put in a cinematographer reel.
And how to make sure the producer sees the grade.
Put in your strongest images first, a range of lighting conditions, camera movement that serves the scene, and clear credits that name the director. Leave out anything you did not light or shoot, anything you would not want to be hired to repeat, and anything that hides the photography. Then export it well and host it where nothing re-encodes it, because a reel is judged on grain and shadow detail.
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By uncompressed.io · Updated September 2026
Shot selection
A reel is an argument,
not a list of every job.
The reel answers one question for a director or producer: can this person make my film look the way I imagine it. Every shot either helps that answer or slows it down.
Open with your best frame
Lead with the image you would most like to be hired for. The first shots set the viewer's judgment of everything after them, and a busy viewer may stop before the end.
One shot per setup
Pick the strongest angle from each scene rather than three angles of the same moment. Repetition reads as a thin body of work.
Show intent, not just beauty
Choose shots where the light and the frame are doing story work: a reveal, a shift in mood, a face finding the light. Pretty but empty images blur together.
Hold the shot
Let a shot run long enough for the viewer to read the light and the move. A two-frame flash of a great image proves nothing.
Lighting range
Different conditions,
with the same eye.
Range is what separates a cinematographer from someone who shoots well in one situation. Cover the conditions a producer is most likely to worry about.
A guide, not a checklist. Cover the rows that match the work you want next, and leave out a row rather than fill it with a weak shot.
Camera movement
Show why the camera moves,
and when to hold still.
Composed static frames
A locked-off frame is where composition and light have nowhere to hide. Include some, because a reel of constant motion can look like it is covering for the frame.
Dolly, track and slider
Show a move that reveals something or changes the relationship between the character and the space, and let it finish.
Handheld
Show handheld that is controlled and motivated by the scene, not handheld as the default.
Gimbal, Steadicam, crane and drone
One or two shots are enough. Aerials in particular should earn their place, since a producer can buy drone footage without hiring a DP.
Formats
Mixed sources,
one clean delivery.
Reels usually mix aspect ratios, frame rates and cameras. Keep each shot in the aspect ratio it was framed for, letterboxed inside one consistent delivery frame, rather than cropping a scope frame to fill 16:9. Conform everything to one timeline frame rate. If a shot was captured for slow motion, let it play as the slow motion the film used.
Export in a web codec the viewer’s browser can decode: H.264, HEVC or AV1 in MP4 or MOV. Browser support for those codecs differs by browser and platform, so H.264 is the safest choice when you do not know who will open the link, and HEVC or AV1 are worth testing with a real viewer first. A 10-bit HEVC export helps gradients such as skies and smoke stay smooth, when the viewer’s device decodes it. A ProRes master is for download, not for browser playback.
Check the colour tagging before you upload. A grade that looks right in your suite and wrong in a browser is often an export setting, not the host.
Credits
Label every project,
and name the director.
Open and close with your name
Name, role (Director of Photography or Cinematographer) and a way to reach you, on a plain card. Keep the opening card short; the pictures should start fast.
Credit each project
A small, consistent lower-third or end card: project title, director, and the production company or brand. The director's name matters to the people watching, and leaving it off reads badly.
Be exact about your role
If you were the operator, second unit DP or additional photography on a shot, say so or leave the shot out. Anyone who worked on the job can check the credit.
Credit the colourist when it matters
If a grade you are showing was a collaboration, naming the colourist is accurate and costs you nothing.
What to leave out
What you cut
is also part of the reel.
Work you did not shoot
Stock, B-roll from another DP, or footage you only graded. If it is not your photography, it does not belong.
Work you do not want again
A reel attracts more of what it shows. Leave out the kind of job you are trying to stop taking.
Weak shots that fill a slot
One weak shot lowers the viewer's read of the strong shots around it. Shorter is better than padded.
Long intros and logo animations
The viewer came for the pictures. Put a name card up and start.
Effects that hide the photography
Heavy speed ramps, glitch transitions, text over the image and flashy cuts make it hard to judge the light.
Unreleased or unlicensed material
Work under embargo without permission, and music you have no right to use.
After the edit
The reel should play
at the bitrate you graded it for.
Everything above is decided in the edit. The last decision is where the file plays, and it matters more for a cinematography reel than for almost any other video.
A DP reel is judged on the detail that costs the most bits to describe: grain, halation, lens character, and the separation between dark tones. When a platform re-encodes the export, those are the first things a rate-limited encoder gives up. The producer ends up judging the platform’s version of your grade, and you never see it happen. The mechanism is explained in why film grain is smoothed out after uploading.
So export at a bitrate that holds your grain and shadows, then host the reel where that export is the file the viewer streams. On uncompressed.io the player streams the file you uploaded with no transcode and no quality ladder, and it shows no ads, related videos or platform logo. The honest trade: there is one file, so a viewer on a slow connection buffers instead of dropping to a lower quality, and playback depends on their browser and hardware. Test the link on the kind of device a producer will use.
The full hosting comparison, including when YouTube or Vimeo is the better choice, is in the best way to host a cinematography reel. How the reel sits on a page with your other work is in portfolio website for cinematographers.
Small settings that help the reel
Pick the poster frame yourself, from the film or as an uploaded image, so the first thing a producer sees is a shot you chose. If you want the reel to start on its own when the page opens, the profile’s muted autoplay setting plays the Hero film silently; browsers generally only allow autoplay when the sound is muted. When you recut, replace the file on the same film and the link, embed and settings stay the same (see updating a showreel without changing the link). Only Public films appear on your profile page; use a per-film password for a cut you only want one producer to see.
Questions
Frequently asked
Should a cinematography reel be a montage or full scenes?
Both, kept apart. A short montage shows range quickly and is the easiest thing to open first. A few scene excerpts, each a separate film, show that you can hold a look across coverage and cut to cut. On a portfolio page the montage can run as the Hero and the scenes can sit beside it as Featured films.
Should I list the camera and lenses on the reel?
Optional, and never in place of the director and the project. A small line under the project credit (camera, lenses, format) helps a DP-literate viewer. Leave it off if it crowds the frame or turns the reel into a spec sheet.
Can I put unreleased work in my reel?
Only with permission from the production. If the work is under embargo or an NDA, leave it out of the public reel, or put that film behind its own password and send the code to one producer at a time. A password-protected film does not play in an embed, so it stays off a public page.
What music should a cinematography reel use?
A track you have the right to use, cut quietly under the pictures. The music sets the pace but the viewer is judging the images, so avoid a track that forces a cutting rhythm your shots cannot hold.
Do I need more than one reel?
If you work in clearly different markets, yes. A commercial reel and a narrative reel ask different questions, and a producer hiring for one should not have to wait through the other. Keep each as its own film with its own readable link.
Put the reel up at the bitrate you exported
Upload one browser-compatible export, tag it Hero and send the link. The free plan holds 5 GB, one film at a time, with no card, and the player carries no platform branding on any plan.
Sources
- 1.MDN Web Docs: Autoplay guide for media and Web Audio APIs (fetched 17 September 2026; muted media is among the conditions under which browsers generally allow autoplay)
- 2.MDN Web Docs: Web video codec guide (fetched 17 September 2026; support for AVC (H.264), HEVC and AV1 differs by browser and platform; below 10-bit colour, gradients can show banding)