Hey everyone, I'm new to the forums. I'm a composer who's worked mainly in film for the past few years, scoring features, documentaries, and short films. As a long-time gamer, however, I want to start getting into game composition.

I've read around and checked up on some first steps, including conferences, contacting independent studios, and working for free on smaller projects. However, my main worry is that, because I don't have any published games to my credit yet, it'll be rather difficult to get a foot in the door.

What I have done is put together a sort of “reel” comprised of footage from existing games, with the disclaimer that none of the games were scored by me and are just for reference. Is this considered okay, or is there a better way to go about things?

The reel is here:

Thanks for reading, and I hope to learn a lot from everyone here!

Hey! Yes doing this is just fine as long as it's made very clear to the viewer that this is a mock up. At the very start of the video, I would consider doing a quick full page slate that says more than “sample footage only” as this is a bit unclear. You could say something like:

Mock Up Demo Reel

Used for Promotional Reasons Only

Not a Part of Any Official Project or Product

And then keep the subtitle “Mock Up Demo Reel” visible during the footage.

Another thing to consider however, is doing so still puts you at risk for copyright claims which can limit the location of viewers if you upload it to Youtube. I had a mock up I did of the Inception trailer that got blocked for that very reason, even with very clear communication that this was just a mock up. So it's still somewhat of a risk.

@nsmadsen That's a great idea about making it more clear that it's a mock-up. As for the actual video, maybe I would avoid the copyright claim if I kept it “unlisted"? I would be okay with it not being publicly visible, and instead only viewable to potential clients who I send the direct link to.

Thanks for the response!

Hey sorry for my delayed response! Keeping a video “unlisted” doesn't always work. For example, I created an unlisted Youtube video for internal use/training in our audio dept at work and it got flagged very soon after uploading. Even though it was unlisted. Then, later, another video was left unlisted and not flagged to this day. So it may or may not work.