ENDA Episode 59 → The time when ENDA shares how important is the selection of a plate (Part 1)

Choosing a plate often gets overlooked. As beginners, we grab the first plate we stumble upon, maybe from a free tutorial or a low-cost VFX site. That’s normal when you’re starting, just trying to practice.

But when it comes to building your reel, the rules change. If you’re using the same plates everyone else does, recruiters and supervisors have already seen those shots solved a hundred times. There’s nothing fresh to show if there’s a straightforward tutorial for it.

Beyond technical complexity, the production values of a plate: its art direction, cinematography, even the acting can influence how your work is perceived. Especially if you are trying to apply to AAA studios, they would expect that you can work with shots similar to what they already work on.

In the end, choosing the right plate is more important than it seems at first. Making a careful selection can elevate your comp from “just another shot” to something genuinely memorable.

But what guidelines can we use to pick a plate to make our work shine? Well…. those tips will be for a future episode.

The journey continues…