The brain child of Nick Campbell (GreyScaleGorilla.com, CreamyOrange.com, MakeCoolShit.com) and Trevor Turk (TrevorTurk.com, AlmostEffortless.com) and coded by Joshua Schaible (JoshuaSchaible.com), Reel Roulette follows the idea of Chat Roulette and even some earlier websites such as Hot or Not with simplicity and ease of use. What it has over those other sites is beautiful design and, moreover, great content for the motion graphics designer and an easy way for them to promote themselves and their work.

The idea behind Reel Roulette is a simple one because it was designed with simplicity in mind. In fact, this idea of simplicity was what pushed the entire design of the site from the beginning. Trevor Turk writes on his blog about the design process, “After pondering this over a couple of beers at the Ginger Man and spending some time on Chat Roulette looking for Piano Improve Guy, we decided that we should put something together. Something small. Something quick.” Thirty-two hours later, the three entrepreneurs were looking at Reel Roulette, the culmination of all their hard work which started with a simple idea on the plane ride to SXSW.

Welcome to Reel Roulette

If simplicity is what they went for, simplicity is what they came up with in the end. Right when you enter Reel Roulette you are greeted by a simple welcome page and given two options: upload your own reel and show off your work or spin the reel wheel to discover new great talent. You choose what to do and you are off on your journey of motion graphics discovery.

Spin the Wheel

When you choose to spin the wheel you are shown a random reel, a short creator bio with website and the options to vote for the reel or move on to the next one. No more wondering how to rate it on a five star scale or leaving a detailed comment on what to improve for next time–leave that for the other websites. Here, it’s just love it or leave it. It can’t get any more simple than that.

Simple Sign Up

When you choose to sign up you simply fill out a short form including your name, website and short description; add your Vimeo reel and you are done. Again, it’s as easy as that.

It’s a great, simple and fun idea that allows motion graphics designers another way to get their reel out there and allows them a way to easily see what others in the industry are up to.

All of it, of course, is for free so you don’t have a reason to at least check out ReelRoulette.net if you are a motion graphics designer, want to see some great MoGraph reels or some clean and simple web design.

Update!

Just yesterday (April, 14th), Nick Campbell and the Reel Roulette crew released an update for the website that allows a search of all the reels by location, software or specialty which is a great feature to narrow down what you are looking for; and they also added a top 20 allowing you to see the highest rated videos at that time! You can hear more about it on Nick Campbell’s blog, GreyScaleGorilla.com, or just visit the site and play around with it. These are two more great features adding to an already great website.

The Top 20 Reels

The Simple Search Window

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Martin – 1977

U.S. Dir: George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead). Netflix, Wikipedia.

Sans fangs and bats, Martin put a unique spin on the traditional vampire film. Instead of the monster living next door, we find an average young man living a lonely and depressing life and sadly addicted to blood. His twisted and often pathetic bursts of violence shock you, but you really end up feeling the worst for poor Martin.

The Hunger – 1983

U.K. Dir: Tony Scott (True Romance, Man on Fire). Netflix, Wikipedia.

This film was not liked much by critics who seemed to have a problem with its semi erotic moments and while it’s true that it’s not the greatest film in the world (Scott’s next movie would be Top Gun), it’s well worth seeing. Sultry Catherine Deneuve plays an ageless vampire. David Bowie plays her aging vampire boyfriend and along comes Susan Sarandon unknowingly to take his place.

The Reflecting Skin – 1990

U.K. Dir: Philip Ridley (The Krays, The Passion of Darkly Noon). Wikipedia.

This wonderfully absurd film never really admits it’s a vampire film. Instead, we meet a cast of characters who may or may not be vampires; except for the lady who says she’s a vampire. Seth is sure she’s a vampire. He’s pretty sure everyone’s a vampire. Favorite line: “Why don’t you go play with your friends?” / “I can’t. They’re all dead.”

Near Dark – 1987

U.S. Dir: Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break, Strange Days). Netflix, Wikipedia.

This movie is so much better than From Dusk Till Dawn I can’t believe they even bothered making it. Fast, harsh and bloody as hell. Oh, and it’s even a love story. Sort of. Look for a particularly great scene of a new vampire drinking blood from another vampire’s wrist while a large oil pump pumps away in the background.

Blood for Dracula – 1974 (AKA Andy Warhol’s Dracula)

Germany/U.S. Dir: Paul Morrissey (Flesh, Trash, Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein). Netflix, Wikipedia.

Classic exploitation. Like most of his films it’s completely disgusting. Originally rated X for it’s gratuitous sex and violence, it’s actually less insane than Morrissey and Warhol’s 1973 Flesh for Frankenstein (AKA Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein) which permanently warped my brain.

The Lost Boys – 1987

U.S. Dir: Joel Schumacher (Falling Down, The Number 23). Netflix, Wikipedia.

Loaded with star power, The Lost Boys was more of a romp than a horror film. After all, nothing with the Two Coreys could be scary. The lost boys worked well in the theater because it had the star power, but it also had a strong story which relied on intrigue rather than shock and avoided sex and gore. Probably a good idea because by 1987, horror movies were so common place, there was hardly anything shocking about them.

Fright Night – 1985

U.S. Dir: Tom Holland (Child’s Play, The Stranger Within). Netflix, Wikipedia.

Fright Night was a fun hybrid of horror and 80s comedy — just a little too dark to be funny and too silly to be serious. Full of eccentric characters, it’s fun enough that you don’t even mind the terrible special effects. The plot moves around Charley who is pretty sure his neighbor is a vampire. His parents don’t believe him. The cops don’t believe him. Will a washed up actor who hosts a local late night horror film showcase believe him?

Vampire’s Kiss – 1989

U.S. Dir: Robert Bierman. Written by Joseph Minion (After Hours). Netflix, Wikipedia.

And Finally, one of my all time favorites, Vampire’s Kiss. Nicholas Cage plays power hungry yuppie Peter Loew who is quite possibly going insane. He’s also pretty sure he’s turning into a vampire after a series of meetings with the mysterious Jennifer Beals. And like a character from a Paul Auster novel, we watch on as Loew slowly loses all grasp of reality. Esoteric dialogue, a strong supporting cast and Cages performance all meshed to make Vampire’s Kiss an instant cult classic.

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Canon GL1 on the left; Canon VIXIA HF100 on the right.

About a year ago, I finally sold the GL-1 I’d bought in film school and purchased my first-ever High-Definition Camera, the Canon HF100. “Finally”, I thought, “No more worrying about tapes or real-time digitizing – just a few 16GB Memory Cards and I’ll be golden.” Well, I was right about real-time digitizing being a thing of the past. It turns out that the flavor of AVCHD the HF100 uses is pretty useless in its native format. To be able to edit with the .MTS files it creates (or even view them decently), you need to transcode – which takes much longer than realtime, and gave me humongous files that ate up my external 500GB drive in no time. Additionally, you can’t shoot in SD – your only option is to shoot lower-bitrate HD files. Honestly, I mostly wound up playing the videos directly off the camera, through an A/D converter box, bringing it in as classic (downscaled) DV Video so I could work with it.

Additionally, working with the HF100 was a huge step back from my days with the GL-1. It was smaller and lighter, for sure – the HF100 easily slips into a cargo pocket for on-the-go and stealth shooting – but focusing with a four-way rocker switch just doesn’t cut it.

The DSLR Video Revolution

Reverie - Vincent Laforet

Like many, I was floored by Reverie – Vincent Laforet’s visually stunning short showing off the Canon 5D MKii. After a quick price check on the 5D MKii, I concluded that while the tech was amazing, I just couldn’t justify it as a Motion Graphics artist. I’d often run across beautiful videos shot with the 5D MKii, and simply sigh.

Finally, It’s Affordable

Canon T1i

Enter the Canon T1i. At $800 for Body + Kit Lens, it’s Canon’s first foray into offering DSLR Video at the consumer-level, and there’s a lot they got right. You can record in 720p or 480p (technically, you can do 1080p as well, but only at 20FPS, so I’m not counting it). You get manual focus and zoom rings, since they’re built into the lens, not the camera. On that note, you can use any Canon EF-mount lens, so once you outgrow the 18-55 kit lens, you can invest in a new lens and gain another level of shooting ability with the camera, without having to buy a new body (which is the norm in consumer-level video cameras).

After dealing with the HF100’s .MTS files, the movies that come off the SD Cards in the Canon T1i are a blessing. They are H.264-compressed .MOV files. On my MacBook Pro, that means I can preview and play them directly from the card, or from my drive after a quick drag-and-drop. No longer is it necessary to transcode for hours just to preview the clips on my machine and make my picks. The files load right into After Effects or Motion for quick sketching of ideas. When I edit narrative videos, I do transcode – but it makes such a difference to have the ability for instant playback and manipulation when that’s all I need.

These are stills pulled directly from the original movie file. The image on the left was shot with the kit lens, the one on the right was shot with the Canon 50mm f1.4, about a minute later.

The picture quality is also, I feel, quite a leap beyond the HF100 or your standard consumer camcorder. You’ve got real Depth of Field, and with the right lens you can get an amazing exposure range – shooting footage for my friend’s wedding in a shady grove in the evening was delightful with the help of a 50mm f1.4 lens.

For the full specs, check out DPReview’s in-depth testing of the camera.

The Downsides

The camera is by no means perfect. Some of the areas that could use improvement:

• There is no way to plug in an external Mic, so you’ll need a separate sound recorder if you want decent location sound.
• Autofocus is slow in video mode.
• Low-light prime lenses don’t have built-in Image Stabilization. It’s bad enough that you’ll want to stick to a tripod.
• Exposure controls are automatic in Movie mode. This was fixed on the 5D Mkii with a firmware update, but there’s no word of a similar update to the T1i, probably to keep this as more of a consumer model.
• Shooting time – the camera leaves the shutter open during movie recording, and the manual (and the camera) warns that leaving the camera in this state for too long could cause image degradation.

Conclusion

We’ve come a long, long way with consumer-level video. The T1i offers amazing video quality and latitude for its price. I don’t feel I could recommend it to indie filmmakers – they’d be better off renting a 5D Mkii (or RED or some other beautiful high-end camera), but for Motionographers who want to capture textures, close-ups, portraits and other short visuals, it’s an amazing tool to have in your arsenal.

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