5 Filmmaking Mistakes to Avoid

Published on August 8, 2017

Cinematography & Filmmaking

Filmmaking Mistakes, Pre-Production, Tip and Tricks

Making mistakes is human and is necessary to learn. Without trying and failing, it’s impossible to improve and succeed. This is a life lesson that can be used in life but also in filmmaking. When starting with filmmaking, you’ll probably make a lot of mistakes. This is normal, nobody is perfect right from the start. In this tutorial video, we explain the mistakes we made and some tips on how you can prevent them. We hope that you can learn out of our mistakes so you don’t have to make them.

The most common mistake made are with equipment. The are often forgotten at the office when on a shoot or batteries that aren’t charged. When we have a shoot, we always prepare our equipment the day before we leave so we can do an extra check in the morning. Another tip that can always help, it’s better to take to much with you then to little. You can always store your extra equipment in a spot on you shooting location.

Another very crucial mistake are the settings of the camera. These can easily be forgotten when you have to be quick. We made also made these mistakes and gave our-self a very hard post production when we had to fix the white balance of different shots. So always check you settings for every shot and try to match them together as good as possible.

Like we just said, fixing it in post production can be very hard to do. The only thing to prevent this is preparing yourself and the shoot as much as possible. There are of course factors that you can’t control like weather and such. But everything that’s in your own hands, you can plan out to perfection. An example is your camera movement. If you want dynamic shots, it’s wise to bring your gimbal, tripod or jib. Doing everything handheld can create a cool effect, but there will be a possibility you will have to much shake. Of course you can try to fix it with slow-mo or warp stabilizer, but these can’t work miracles. That’s why it can maybe be better to shoot everything on a tripod and add a handheld motion in post with After Effects Expressions.

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