Reel Life (ha!)

Photo credit: Hunter Curry.  A nice representation of my weird struggle; also a still from some of the footage that has been making things...'difficult.'

For the past, oh, 15 years or so, I've been wanting to put together a reel.  Not in that "hmm, someday I'd like to..." sense, but in the active, "I'm doing this now" sense.  And yet...and yet there is always SOMETHING.  At first, it was simply a matter of obtaining footage.  Then my focus shifted slightly, and I needed different footage.  Then, it became a technology issue.  Formats have changed so rapidly over the years that by the time I had collated everything, the formats were incompatible with the hardware.  Then, it became all about the software.  These days, it is usually something comical, like "sorry, your version of final cut pro isn't compatible with the fancy schmancy new format this feature was shot in, so you need to upgrade.  But oh, you need to increase your RAM, and by the way, you have to upgrade your OS first.  And did I mention that this will render your encoding software obsolete?  And how about we throw in some hardware malfunctions while we're at it, and now you don't have access to decent quality versions of any of the footage you do have...Great! now that you've done all that, hey look-this codec isn't editable, so you need that encoding software. Oh look!  switching to premiere is now cheaper than upgrading final cut!  Now you get to migrate the entire project...Rinse, repeat..." (don't worry, that wasn't really supposed to make sense.  It's not a literal list of what happened.  That would be so very much longer...)
Anyway, between technical glitches, endless bouts of waiting on footage, life changes, format/program/hardware changes and general craziness...well, I have nothing to show for all of that work.

So, I've had enough.  I'm tired of the endless drama that has constantly delayed getting even a tiny glimpse of my work together, and I want to try to be more proactive about my career, and so I have done the unthinkable.  I have taken those bits of terribly degraded footage, those copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy bits of blurry motion and smushed a few of them together and didn't even bother to tweak it so the titles don't blur.  It's messy.  It's unprofessional.  It doesn't land anywhere near my standards, but it is fun, and it is at least something I can share with my friends.

Don't worry, I am still working on getting an actual, substantial, truly well done reel...but in the meantime, here is my cobbled-together-with-chewing-gum-and-a-prayer sizzle reel (focused on my action work, which - as I learned during the process of making this - I have depressingly little footage of).  Take it as it were; at least I had fun editing it to the music.  Enjoy.



Kat Stroot Sizzle Reel from Kat Stroot on Vimeo.