Building Credibility in the Video Industry

There are hundreds of thousands of people that create visual effects and short films.  They all showcase their work on the internet, but about 95 percent of those people you never actually see or hear about their work.  Do you know why?  Because they don’t have any credibility for what they do.  Credibility is what sets you apart from the AE fanboy to the person that people ask advice from, watch the new demo reel every time it is updated, and when they see the name they stop for a second and look a little closer.  People in the After Effects community for example, are John Dickinson, Aharon Rabinowitz, Harry Frank, and of course Andrew Kramer among tons of others.  The thing all these people have in common, are they are knowledgable about what the do, are published in numerous different areas, and all contribute to our niche area of production.  I am going to outline a few easy things that you can do yourself to give your name or company a sense of credibility and to possibly standout in the sea of onlookers and artists alike.

Get Your Name Out There

The first thing obviously to do, is get yourself a demo reel.  But just posting that on your site that gets maybe a hundred visitors a month isn’t going to do anything to help you unless you are directing people there.  You can comment on blogs, join discussions in forums and set up a link back to your site in your signature, submit your reel to reel contests like over at Poptent, or submit to demo reel threads like this one at VFXTalk.  There are so many people I talk to on Twitter and email me every once in a while, their name clicks in my brain, and I remember “oh you’re the one that commented on my article on VideoHive!  How’s it going?”, that in turn leads to a click over to joeblow.com to see his demo reel, and I might tell someone I know that is hiring in his town to check him out if it’s good.  Another thing is don’t use a name like AEguru2709 to post on forums or blogs.  No one is going to associate “Jason Marquardt”  with a name like that.

Bring The Goods

Producing content, good content, and producing it regularly helps a lot too.  Even works in progress (WIPs) to show your readers, friends, or twitter followers what you are up to, helps them clicking through and remembering your name and website.  Some of the best content to produce though, are tutorials on how you do what you do.  Everyone loves After Effects tutorials, obviously, but even if you work in Premiere, Pro Tools, Final Cut, Avid, Motion, or whatever… if you find out a cool trick that is worth making a five minute video for, do it!  Once people realize that you are full of useful information, they will bookmark you, and come back wanting more… which leads me into my next topic.

Socialize

Blogs can be a great addition to a portfolio website, you can vent your frustrations about a ridiculous client, a looming deadline, or just a project that will not give you the correct results.  Not only is it more content for your site, but you are giving your readers, subscribers, and virtually anyone that visits your site a taste of your personality.  This can make or break you, but if someone likes the way you write or VLOG (video blog) for that matter, you can guarantee they are going to visit the next time you post that you have a new entry on twitter.

Make Friends

Lastly, networking is such a huge part of getting yourself out there that it is probably one of the strongest skills that you should have aside from your area of expertise.  Anyone who is anyone will tell you that it is all about who you know.  You can be the best compositor or camera operator in the world, but if no one knows who you are, you will never get hired on for a job, or recommended for that matter.  Introducing yourself to professionals or other people in your scene can help out a lot to get your site, reel, and name out there.  This day in age social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter can be a huge factor in putting yourself out there.  The more relative contacts in your industry the better, and being able to have them all basically right on your desktop is pretty handy as well.  That mixed in with twitter updates and bulletins about new stuff in the industry can really help to become noticed as well as possibly meeting and chatting with the right people.

Credibility is an invaluable aspect of your career.  If you have none, then you won’t go very far, but if you can play your cards right and learn how the game works, you can become a superstar.  It’s all about identity, and establishing a good name, great work, impressive reel, and an overall sense of credibility, whether you are a business, individual, website or whatnot is what’s going to get you far in your endeavors.  Keep in mind, everything that you do impacts the way someone can see you, and in turn form an opinion.  You’re overall goal is to mold those opinions to form into what you want, not just what the observer sees.  Make them see that you are awesome, make them see that you are a rock star of your expertise, and most importantly make them see that you know what you are doing and that you are an absolute professional at it.

Topher Welsh

Topher Welsh is a post production artist working mainly in the fields of motion graphics and visual effects. He is a freelancer out of Tacoma, Washington, and also runs www.VisualFXtuts.com, which provides a daily fix of tutorials from any and all applications in the visual effects industry. His personal website is found here: www.Toe-Fur.com.

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