Avoid These Mistakes! 5 Filmmaking Tips You Need to Know

We see a lot of videos on YouTube about mistakes beginner directors make when starting out, but not many on the mistakes beginner cinematographers make. In today's episode of Ask Aputure, Nerris from the A-Team walks us through 5 common mistakes many cinematographers make when starting out in the industry. Knowing these 5 cinematography mistakes will help you grow as a director of photography not only technically, but creatively as well!

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Summary:
Filmmaker Nerris Nassiri talks about mistakes made by rookie cinematographers, and how to overcome them. Knowing these mistakes will help you become a more advanced cinematographer both technically and creatively. Aputure's YouTube channel provides free high quality cinematography, lighting, and filmmaking educational content to help you take your film projects to the next level.

#cinematography #filmmistakes #filmmaking

[aputurelighting]

Hey all! Make sure to hit the BELL next to the Subscribe button so you can always stay up to date with our free filmmaking lessons!

[marquincasborba]

When I was starting out (like.. some weeks ago), I shot all the "character walking takes" in correct perfect as-beautiful-as-I-could slow-motion. But at the final ones I didn't care a thing about continuity and instinctively choose the wrong direction for the walk (And as he was carrying some papers in one hand, I coudn't mirror that in post). The result is that the character had left home in a heroic assertive mood to give up at the middle of the way and come back with the same heroic assertive mood.

[luboyanev]

A pretty bad one is pressing record and recording in between takes, and not recording when actually wanting to...

[msutherlandj]

Honestly, my biggest mistake starting out was always feeling inferior to other filmmakers who had been creating longer (even if that was just by a month or so). It’s good to know your limitations and work to exceed them, but it can be psychologically limiting to stifle your own ability by constantly comparing yourself to people leagues beyond yourself, when you should take inspiration from them but create your own, unique work.

[rubenrodriguez]

Big mistake: Chasing the cinematic look instead of loving and worrying about the story... a good story told through good visuals will trump getting that cinematic look all the time.

[HankChenTennis]

Worst mistakes that happens to me was running out of batteries and forgot to format the SD card... EVEN UNTIL NOW!

[birchrockproductions]

Driving to the shoot, setting everything up, realizing you forgot your camera battery, driving all the way back to your house, grabbing the battery, driving all the way back, lol! That, and I’ve shot an entire movie in 60fps before!😂

[GauravKumar-dgqy]

Worst mistake I’ve made is not reviewing he shot until the shoot is over. Whereas in the shoot I’d committed mistakes of under lighting the subject, wrong angles and sometimes stability of the shot

[MilesDouglasGarrett]

I once heard that there is good cinematography, there's bad cinematography, then there's the cinematography that's right for your movie. And that really speaks to me

*Great tips!*
My biggest mistake at the beginning was thinking about the camera gear! All the time!!!
Couple months ago I figure out that the *light and composition is the key to the beautiful footage.*

[tonygarcia]

Biggest mistake I made was NOT being a good communicator with my Keys and delegating work when we were in a time crunch. A new DP might want to instead scramble and do the work himself/herself which might solve the immediate issue but if you’re on a feature or a multi-day shoot it creates a mood in which your Key Grip or Gaffer might feel underused or more importantly undervalued. To this point, a new DP feels that they should stick to the director most of the time but again, that dynamic, although important, can also create an appearance that the DP-Director clique is the end all, be all and could create isolation. Everyone must remember that a film crew is a team effort resembling the Henry Ford assembly line model for maximum effect. If every person is a good communicator and the work is equally split per department the you have a well-running filmmaking machine!!!

[AlexMilanese]

When I first started, I’d always put people up against plain white walls to interview them, haha. It makes a big difference to pick an interesting background, separate your subject from it, and throw a little bit of beautiful Aputure light on them! As always, thanks for these awesome videos!

[tebs]

My biggest mistake was not properly light the scene thinking that the ambient light is enough

[ScottTakai]

My biggest mistake was overshooting a setup on a low budget music video. I was too busy making sure that the camera moves were flawless and the lighting was flawless to the point where at the end of the day we didn't have a lot of footage to work with. It was just multiple takes of the same thing. Since I edited the video I learned that the hard way. It's important to make sure that you do a good job shooting it, but also be respectful of the productions time and money. They're not gonna wanna bring you back if you can't get all the shots they need within the timeframe they give you, no matter how pretty it looks

[shiznuts]

Avoid shooting with the lens cap on, I'd say.

[simon_patterson]

I spent way too much time *thinking* of video ideas, and not enough time actually *making* videos. This limited my opportunities to make any other mistakes, so it meant I learned very very slowly.

[MIRAJADESIGN]

Misplacing those tiny little SD cards! I like to use the small coin pocket in a pair of jeans when I am on the go. Remembering to pull the SD card out before the pants go into the washing machine is key to not being a total noob.

[isaiahkazarovich]

A few big mistakes I make are 1) Insisting I must add some kind of motion to the shot—not every shot needs to move—2) rushing my shot instead of taking time to think it through or set it up, and 3) failing to fill my frame with my subject (or filling the frame with extraneous, unnecessary details). Those are only three of several! :)

[Space_Gaucho]

I set up a tiny "photo booth" at a comic book convention, i had with like zero budget for equipment so i slapped together some lighting with a couple of wooden planks + fluorescent lamps and some shop lights. Photographed like upwards of a hundred cosplayers in two days. Lighting was shoddy and missmatched, most shots were out of focus because i tried to compensate the bad llighting by opening up the aperture. I learned a bunch that weekend and of course didn't charge anybody for their pictures.
Still have them fluorecent lights, budget hasnt increased much hehe.

[felixkoch]

Got my first camera, had that awesome take of a scene, thought I pressed rec, . no rec was pressed before the scene. After the scene I pressed rec again. I thought I had 2 hours of awesome footage I could watch after 5 hours of shooting instead a had awesome footage of the breaks between the takes. FML