The reel first
Nobody is going to scroll down to find your reel. If it's not the first thing they see, it might as well not exist.
This sounds obvious. It isn't, based on the number of filmmaker portfolio sites that open with a paragraph about "passion-driven storytelling" above a small thumbnail buried halfway down the page.
Your reel goes at the top. Full width. Autoplay muted if you can get away with it. No splash screen, no intro animation, no loading bar. Just the footage.
The reel itself: two minutes max. Probably less. Open with your three strongest shots — not your favorite shots, your strongest shots. The ones that make someone think "oh, this person actually knows what they're doing." If you don't know which shots those are, ask another filmmaker. Your emotional attachment to your own work is not useful here.
Cut to music that isn't distracting. Don't sync every cut to a drum hit unless you're going for that specifically. Don't use a song everyone has heard in a thousand other reels. The point is to show your eye, your pacing, your range — not to prove you know how to edit to a beat.
If someone watches your reel and can't tell what you're good at in 30 seconds, the reel is not working.
Specialty reels are more useful than they get credit for. A general reel is fine for a first pass. But if you shoot narrative shorts, a documentary reel, and music videos, those are three different jobs and three different clients. One reel trying to do all of that usually succeeds at none of it. Consider a main reel plus category-specific ones linked below.
Credits and projects
After the reel, they want to know what you've actually made. Not your full IMDB. A curated list of projects that show the work you want more of.
For each project: title, your role, year, and a one-sentence description if it needs context. A still or clip if you have one. A link if it's online. That's it. Don't write essays about each project. Don't explain your process. The work should do that.
Organize by project type if you have enough credits to make that worthwhile. If you don't, chronological is fine. What you want to avoid is a giant undifferentiated list that makes it impossible to understand what you actually specialize in.
Be honest about your role. "Director" means you directed it. If you co-directed, say that. If you directed second unit, say that. People who hire filmmakers talk to each other. Inflated credits get noticed and remembered for the wrong reasons.
The director statement
You need one. It doesn't need to be long. It definitely shouldn't be pretentious.
Three to five sentences about what you make and why. Not your life story. Not your influences (unless they're genuinely unusual and relevant). Not what cinema means to you.
What kinds of stories do you tell? What do you care about when you're on set? What do you want to make more of?
Write it like you're talking to another filmmaker at a bar, not writing a grant application. If you catch yourself using the word "liminal" or "visceral," delete it and try again.
A headshot here is optional but useful. People like knowing what someone looks like before they get on a call. Keep it simple. You don't need a dramatic lighting setup for your own headshot.
Contact
Make it easy. Like, embarrassingly easy.
A contact form works. A direct email address works better because it removes one layer of friction and signals that you're not afraid of your own inbox. Some people do both.
Include your location or the regions you're based in and willing to travel to. A producer in Chicago doesn't want to figure out whether you're local or whether they'd need to fly you in. Just tell them.
Link to your Vimeo or YouTube. Link to your Instagram if you post work there. Don't link to your personal Twitter/X unless it's basically a professional account. Don't link to your Facebook. Don't list your phone number publicly.
Put the contact section at the bottom and also accessible from your navigation. Someone who's watched your reel and liked what they saw should not have to hunt for a way to reach you.
Build it
The actual build is not complicated. You don't need a custom-coded site, and you probably shouldn't try unless you're also a developer. What you need is something that looks clean, loads fast, doesn't fight the footage for attention, and works on a phone because half the people looking at it will be on one.
Dark backgrounds tend to work better for film portfolios than white ones -- footage pops more, the whole thing feels more intentional. But the most important thing is that nothing on the page competes with your work. Minimal navigation, no distracting textures, no auto-playing audio.
- Domain with your name in it
- Reel embedded at the top (Vimeo over YouTube -- no ads)
- Project list with stills
- Short statement
- Contact info
That's the whole thing. It doesn't need to be more complicated than that.
Misfitlinks has an artist portfolio template built exactly for this kind of page -- drag the reel embed to the top, swap in your project stills, write your statement, done. It's built for people who make things, not for people who enjoy configuring websites. If you've been putting off having a proper reel page because setting one up felt like a project in itself, that's the fastest way to stop thinking about it and actually have one live.