

Ask HN: Review my side project - Reel Roulette - trevorturk
http://reelroulette.net/
I've just released a small side project website that came from an idea I had with a buddy during our plan ride to SXSW Interactive. You can see the site here:<p>http://reelroulette.net/<p>It's supposed to be a gimmicky and easy way to find motion designers. Basically, you can upload "reels" and people can view random ones and vote on ones they like. It's kind of like Chat Roulette, except with no penises (so far).<p>You can read more about the making of the site here:<p>http://almosteffortless.com/2010/03/26/reel-roulette/<p>The thing that makes me happy about this site is that it was built in about 30 hours of work between 3 people. I know it's nothing too special and has plenty of room for improvement, but people seem to be enjoying it so far.<p>I'd love to hear any ideas you may have about improving the site, and I'm pondering potential ways to make money from the thing without spoiling it. It's been fun as-is, but it would be nice if we could justify spending more time on it than we already have by way of making some cash.<p>Any feedback more than welcome. Thanks!
======
trevorturk
I've just released a small side project website that came from an idea I had
with a buddy during our plan ride to SXSW Interactive.

It's supposed to be a gimmicky and easy way to find motion designers.
Basically, you can upload "reels" and people can view random ones and vote on
ones they like. It's kind of like Chat Roulette, except with no penises (so
far).

You can read more about the making of the site here:

<http://almosteffortless.com/2010/03/26/reel-roulette/>

The thing that makes me happy about this site is that it was built in about 30
hours of work between 3 people. I know it's nothing too special and has plenty
of room for improvement, but people seem to be enjoying it so far.

I'd love to hear any ideas you may have about improving the site, and I'm
pondering potential ways to make money from the thing without spoiling it.
It's been fun as-is, but it would be nice if we could justify spending more
time on it than we already have by way of making some cash.

Any feedback is more than welcome. Thanks!

~~~
CPops
Reelroulette is attractive and usable and makes sense for the motion design
niche. Good work for a limited time investment. Though, I can think of some
useful features (more voting features, view all submissions, commenting, etc)

PS: If I owned this URL, I might use it to do something chatroulette related
while there's still a thousand and one opportunities. But good on getting
involved in what you enjoy doing. Good luck trevorturk.

------
b14ck
I love the website. The design looks great (don't change it!) and I like the
simple, intuitive interface.

I spent about 10 minutes flipping through reels, and linked a friend. Now he's
going through reels. We probably won't get much work done for the rest of the
afternoon :D

~~~
CoryMathews
same here watched 3 or 4 and had to close it or nothing will get done. Some
very talented people on there.

------
faramarz
If I press _Like this Reel_ , will it actually _like_ the vimeo video? I ask
this, because then it would be syndicated on my action stream both at vimeo
and elsewhere (fb, friendfeed etc)

If that's not currently possible, I suggest looking into it. As user, I would
like the action of Liking this reel be reflected on the source file.

If you do that, it's easy to see vimeo being interested in your
product/feature/mashup or at least you can attract active vimeo users, whom
_discovering_ and _liking_ is a large part of their activity.

~~~
trevorturk
They're separate for now. That's an idea I've thought about, though, but I'm
not sure if it's better to keep Vimeo's "like" and this "like" as separate
things or not...

For the time being, I think our plan is to make a "top 20" page or something
like that which would feature the reels with the most votes.

~~~
gridspy
You could always make a "like in vimeo" link appear after you like it in your
app.

Sweet app. Great portfolios.

------
mkyc
You should track at what times the people click next.

Your like button is too far away from the next button, and neither has
keyboard shortcuts.

~~~
trevorturk
Keyboard shortcuts is an awesome idea. I'll add that to the backlog.

~~~
jsomers
Why not the _front_ log?

Site looks great, by the way. One thing I'll say is that I ran into the same
reel after just two clicks -- this should be pretty easy to avoid, either by
shuffling an array of reels (rather than pulling one out at random), or by
tracking which reels I've seen in a session variable.

Good luck!

------
jasonlbaptiste
it seems the new tagline dejour for side projects is: chat roulette for "x"
with no pensises.

------
coreyrecvlohe
This is a really good idea. It just so happens that I'm in the market for a
motion designer or animator for a TV commercial I want to run.

I didn't know exactly where to search for any talented designers, and eLance,
along with some of the job boards, really don't give you much material to
review. But I like this setup at first glance, and the quality so far seems to
be pretty good.

I might actually find who I'm looking for through this service.

~~~
trevorturk
That's great to hear! Please let me know if you find someone through the site
- that would be awesome.

------
cschneid
Sorry for being disconnected, but is there a 2 line explanation of what I'm
watching? They're visually entertaining, but I don't get much beyond that.

~~~
chriskelley
These are personal animation showreels from animators and designers in the
motion graphics and animation industry. Reel Roulette appears to arrange many
of them in an easily viewable format all in one place, so
people/peers/employers can check them out.

~~~
cschneid
So they are showpieces? My other googling indicates they may contain or be
comprised of their other (paid) work?

The site itself is very cool, was mostly wondering at the underlying item and
why it exists (beyond the fact they look cool).

~~~
chriskelley
Artists in our industry (I'm an animator) create reels of their past work -
paid or unpaid - to act as a collection of their best stuff in order to get
jobs, bookings, etc. We have a lot of freelancers in our industry, and so most
people have a reel that they can send to companies and say "Look at how great
my stuff is, let's work together!"

~~~
trevorturk
Yeah - I'm not big into this industry either (one of the guys I built the site
with is) but I basically think of it as a resume.

------
tapostrophemo
I noticed you're asking your users to enter a vimeo URL by hand. I know that
during signup it's impractical to bounce the user over to vimeo to
authenticate, but once the user is signed up do you give them the option of
picking the video from their albums instead of entering a URL?

~~~
trevorturk
I've definitely thought about that, but decided that it was too much work
relative to the gain it would bring. Maybe I'm wrong, though...

------
raffi
These were a lot of fun to watch. I have no stake in this scene but enjoyed
clicking through and seeing what folks came up with. I get a similar feeling
watching <http://www.demoscene.tv/>

------
BrianHammond
Suggestion: temporarily disable the "next reel" button for a duration of time
proportional to the frequency of my clicks thereupon. Make me watch the reels
instead of trying to satisfy my urge to see "what's next?"

------
coffee
I don't know about the whole "Roulette" theme to it, but the content is gold,
that's what makes this site... Good stuff!

------
revorad
Wow, how did you get those designers on board? There's some real good stuff on
there. I hope this takes off. Good luck.

~~~
trevorturk
Nick, one of the other guys that worked on the site, is into this industry. He
does tutorials and stuff, so a lot of people follow his website and twitter
account.

------
JayTillz
Pretty good idea. Do you offer stats for people with reels coming through your
app?

~~~
trevorturk
No, but Vimeo tracks plays, and I've seen people on Twitter saying that
they're getting more traffic because of the site, so I think it's working... I
think having some kind of stats tracking would be nice, but that'd be more
work ;)

------
milkshakes
i love the colors and clean minimalism. are you planning on feeding the likes
to something like directededge to make it smarter?

along that vein, why are you using likes instead of ratings?

