5 Mistakes that New A Filmmaker Makes

In this article, we will discuss the six most common mistakes beginning Filmmakers Does. Reverse Tree Media is dedicated to providing useful information to enthusiastic filmmakers and videographers to help them to achieve their career goals.  

Many filmmakers send us the videos to review over the years after checking hundreds of their videos we have seen some common bad habits that have some easy fixes.  

All right readers let us discuss the common mistake a beginner filmmaker might do here is the list. 

01. Wrong Frame Rate 

That’s mistake number one that we see. Often people are shooting and editing at the wrong frame rate. This element is very crucial to understand. The right frame rates will ensure that your video looks professional.  

Too many times we see that instead of shooting in or editing in 24 frames per second most videos come to us that are shot in 30 and 60 frames per second. And then edited in the same frame rate Hollywood- Bollywood films are shot at 24 frames per second so that is what our eyes are used to seeing when we watch professional films.  

Also, the motion blur associated with 24 frames and a shutter speed of double replicates the amount of motion blur that the human eye sees. 

So overall it just looks more natural when you shoot at a frame rate that is higher than 24 frames per second like most beginners usually do 30 frames per second it’s going to end up looking like a soap opera. 

There are times when we use higher frame rates like 30 or 60. But it’s usually only when we plan on slowing down the visuals. Frames more than 24 per second like 60 frames per second are done to create slow-motion effects. Mostly it is done when shooting wedding videos. 

In any video where we want that dreamy look so we’ll use 60 frames per second to achieve that. 30 frames per second also have a place in our workflow and that’s when we fly our drone when we shoot at 30 frames. It is however brought down to 24 in the post to smooth out any of those micro jitters in the shot. For anything that we want to be in real-time like for example this talking head, we always shoot 24 frames per second.

2. Poor Lighting 

It is time to move on to our second biggest mistake that new filmmakers commit in filming the video. What we have seen is poor lighting affecting the overall condition of the video content. 

Proper Lighting for the video is one of the most important elements of great cinematography and probably the least understood topic by most filmmakers. At the same time, it is the least appreciated aspect of filmmaking with beginners. 

Most beginner Filmmakers will assume you can just buy a nice camera and it’ll make everything look great but in reality, I’d say the opposite is true great lighting can make any camera look

good the light will make or break your video content. If you are shooting for a pro

3. Using Wide Angel for all shots 

 Let us now move on to the third biggest mistake that we see and that is bad lens choices during a video shoot is a common mistake. We have noticed that video makers are always putting a wide-angle lens on their gimbal for all their shots be it close-ups shots or mediums and of-course wide. They just move closer and farther away to create some difference. well, actually certain focal lengths will have different effects on your image to

be aware of wide lenses like 16 to 35 are great for wide or medium shots like real estate architecture or landscapes. But wide-angle lenses aren’t great for close-ups on portraits of the human face and they start to distort the facial features.   

it’s been said that between 70 and 100 millimeters are the most flattering focal length on the human face. Anything over a hundred millimeters is usually used when you want to compress a lot of space and make something appear closer than it really is. 

 If you physically can’t get closer to your subject and personally here are the different times that one can use different lenses. one may use my 16 millimeters for real estate and landscapes. One can use the 24 or 35 as the main lens for medium talking headshots. 

A lens with 35 MM to 50 millimeters is a great middle ground lens It can get decently wide shots while also allowing you to get some close-ups and that’s why you’ll see the 50 millimeters being used so widely because they’re super versatile and for close-up shots or detail shots. 

Consider using an 85 MM lens for scenarios where one can’t get very close to the subject like sporting events. If you can only afford to buy one lens it would better to get a zoom lens and we’d suggest picking up something like a 24 to 70 because it has a nice balance of both wide and tight visuals for the video. 

Now obviously what lens you buy depends on what you’ll be shooting so if you’re mostly shooting real estate then obviously, you’re going to want to start out with a wide-angle lens so first determine what type of content you’re going to be shooting then buy the lens that best fits your requirements.  

Another point is to learn to adjust your lens choice to fit the look and feel you want to get and don’t get lazy and just use the same focal length for everything. 

04. Bad Audio 

Now moving on now to our next mistake. A mistake that can totally ruin your project and is called lousy audio. Now first you might be thinking wait what does sound have to do with creating cinematic images? Indeed the definition of cinematic is having qualities characteristic of a motion picture. 

You may think back to the last time you went to the movies you’ll probably remember that the sound and the music and the dialogue all played a massive role in immersing you into the story.  

It is always a principle that audio is half of the viewing experience. What people hear tells half the story creates half the emotion and yet the audio is probably the most neglected part of filmmakers. 

We have found that most beginner filmmakers don’t capture clean dialogue. They don’t capture any sound effects don’t match the levels in the post don’t use good song choices don’t take any time to sound design.  

So here are a couple of quick tips we would recommend that will help you improve your sound today first don’t rely on the in-camera mic invest on an external mic. Whether that’s an on-camera mic a Collar mic or a boom mic. The mic should be right up there with camera

Even if you have a nice mic don’t make the common mistake of the mic being too far away from your subject.  we would recommend placing that mic 6 to 14 inches away from your subject. 

Obviously, you can’t always get that close but where possible keep that mic in that range to capture clean crispy audio.  You always want to make sure that the audio levels in your camera or audio recorder are sitting between negative 18 and negative 6 decibels. Any quieter and you’ll start to hear fuzzy noise in the background and any louder your audio will start to peak and sound nasty and distorted.  

Third, you must take the time in post-production to level out all your audio tracks and beef up your videos with added sound effects and music to help your edits come to the life. 

At reverse tree media, we actually built our own custom full-time filmmaker sound effects pack that comes with over a hundred of our most used sound effects to help spice up your edits Click here to download these sound effects for your projects for free. 

So do not neglect the sound in your next video project is as important as the videos. 

5 The Storytelling 

The fifth-most common mistake is storytelling or the lack thereof most beginning videos or films we see have zero stories or direction or even a general-purpose. With this, we mean that most of the video missed why the video was created in the first place. 

A common video we saw had a compilation of random clips of random subjects pieced together with a piece of random music.  It was having no sound design and there was really no point in the footage. It just looks more like practice footage to test out the camera settings. It is fine to do testing with your camera gear but if you want to do video professionally and want to attract high-paying clients or audiences you have to create videos that serve a real purpose and actually tell a story. 

You can check the showreels available at reverse tree productions which is into the production of corporate videos, corporate films, corporate video making. www.reversetreeproductions.com. This will help you understand how videos are created with the purpose to tell a story. 

Step one to tell a good story is determining what emotion you want your audience to feel. You can tell if you succeeded at telling a great story if by the end of the video you succeeded in

helping your viewer feel that particular emotion. if the emotional viewer feels is confused. Then probably you aren’t doing a very good job at telling your story, Even if you’re just shooting like a travel video when it’s pretty much just a montage of pretty clips you can still do some pre-planning. You can think of the overall emotion you want to convey. 

It always helps to make a shortlist of beginning middle and ending clips and then shoot to edit which means have your edit in mind or your story in mind while you’re shooting so that by the time you

get to the editing room you already have a pretty good idea of which clips are in your intro which clips will be your end.  The Second Step is to create a general idea of how the rest of the clips piece together to keep your audience engaged and interested in watching the entire video.  

On this subject, one of the biggest questions we get is what kind of content should they shoot. The answer to it is that whatever kind of content that you’re passionate about must be created. If you’re passionate about making music videos then find a local musician and go shoot a free music video.  

If you want to shoot weddings then go get a couple who can’t afford a wedding and offer to shoot one for free video. If you want to shoot commercials for local businesses then take any product around your house and come up with a creative idea that would sell somebody wanting to buy that product. 

But don’t do what most beginners do and just go to the park or your backyard and shoot a variety of shots of tables chairs trees and sun flares and then editing them all together to music and sharing that on social media that isn’t relevant to anyone no one cares to spend two minutes of their life watching random boring clips back to back to back.  

Make sure every video you create has a clear purpose and do your best to tell a cohesive story that has a beginning a middle and an ending instead of just loads of middle clips thrown together to music.  

One must keep learning to create engaging concise videos that actually tell a story and have a clear purpose that will make clients want to work with you so make sure to do some pre-planning have a goal. 

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