Reel Roulette
by Trevor Turk
Reel Roulette — an easy way to find motion designers — has just been launched. I’m really pleased with this one because it took so little time from concept to launch.
It’s based on an idea hatched with my buddy Nick during the plane ride to SXSW Interactive a couple of weeks ago.
He’s been running around the world talking to students about how to be creative and get paid… but how do you get your work in front of the people that can hire you?
After pondering this over a couple of beers at the Ginger Man and spending some time on Chat Roulette looking for Piano Improve Guy, we decided that we should put something together. Something small. Something quick.
We recruited Nick’s main man Joshua and got down to work!
It started with a two-hour iChat session where we sorted out the details. This resulted in a lot of ideas, some tough decision making, and a pruned-down set of of to-do items that made it into our Basecamp.
Before we’d even started, we decided to use an idea from Seth Godin’s Linchpin and set some hard deadlines. An idea is one thing, a promise is another, but the prospect of paying your buddy $100 for missing a deadline is the real deal — so we signed a makeshift contract. It turns out that embracing constraints is actually really powerful. Thanks for the advice, Rework! 
So, once we’d sorted out our to-dos, Nick and Joshua worked up a design while I hacked out the backend using some of my favorite web tools like Rails, Devise, and Heroku.
Once I was done Nick and Josh applied the design, and we had a site up within about 30 hours of work between us.
I’d say it’s the fastest I’ve ever seen a site come together, and I’m really proud of what we’ve done in such a small amount of time.
So… go check it out! http://reelroulette.net/
Click “Next Reel” to see a random motion design reel. If you see a reel you like, just hit “Like This Reel”. This will help bring the best reels to the top. Connect with your favorite artists and give them a job, will ya?
Are you a freelancer or someone looking for a job? Add your own reel to the mix by clicking on “Submit Your Reel”. Show off your best work to people that are hiring.
Great article Trevor. I really liked your approach to developing this app.
Those 30hrs – do they include time spent doing TDD/BDD ?
I tried the URL, but the site is down.
(Consider using http://wasitup.com/ to monitor your site – I use it for all my Heroku hosted apps, and its great.)
[...] simplicity was what pushed the entire design of the site from the beginning. Trevor Turk writes on his blog about the design process, “After pondering this over a couple of beers at the Ginger Man and [...]
Yeah, Heroku had a DB problem this morning. Total bummer ;(
The 30 hours include everything aside from the plane ride conversation, and the app is pretty well tested. I'm not a TDD/BDD guy really, but I do have unit/functional tests, and I'm adding tests when I catch bugs, etc.
[...] How We Built ReelRoulette Related posts:Introducing KeyframeTV: Episode 1 [...]
[...] ReelRoulette: An easy way to find motion designers has just been launched. Nick Campbell & Trevor Turk came up with the idea of the site on their flight down to SWSX. Two weeks later after idea swapping and a few long conference calls, we narrowed down some simple features, decided on a design, coded it and launched it. You can read more about the journey here on Trevors blog. [...]
[...] of guys, Joshua Schaible, Nick Campbell and Trevor Turk, who explains just how they got the idea here. The three of them were on a plane to SXSW last month, discussing just how hard it can be for [...]
[...] of guys, Joshua Schaible, Nick Campbell, and Trevor Turk, who explains just how they got the idea here. The three of them were on a plane to SXSW last month, discussing just how hard it can be for [...]