Mistakes to Avoid Before Pressing Record on Your Camera For Beginners
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In this video Alli shares the top things you need to double checking before pressing record on your camera. Avoid filming mistakes by making sure you do the things shared in this video!
GENERATED CAPTIONS:
Hey what's going on, I'm Alli, and over the years working on projects with people who are new to video and being someone who was once a newbie, I've seen almost every mistake imaginable. Often the mistake isn't caught until the shoots wrapped several days later in the editing room. By the way, if you have a good story of a mistake that's happened while filming let us know in the comments below.
In this video, I'm gonna share several things you need to keep in mind and double-check before pressing record. Some of these may be more obvious than others but because I've seen every single one of them occur, I'd recommend not overlooking any and with that let's get into it.
Here's an example I've seen where the person talking camera is wearing the laugh mic that apparently has been connected and plugged into the camera, and after reviewing the footage the audio sounded pretty terrible this was because the laugh mic receiver wasn't plugged into the camera mic jack all the way. Don't let this happen to you. Always make sure that your audio cables are plugged in all the way and tightened and double-check the signal with headphones to make sure that the audio sounds good. If you're plugging your mic directly into your camera, don't just rely on the audio meters to tell you that. Sounds coming through most newer cameras have headphone jacks built-in, so plug in your headphones and make sure that the audio is clear and professional. Another aspect to check when recording audio before pressing record is your audio levels avoid recording audio too loudly because you may end up peaking your audio and causing a distortion sound at times as a general rule of thumb it's better to record at a lower volume and then raise it later. If you need to you can always improve volume that's too low but you can't remove too started audio that's been peeked. Ask the person on camera to say a few lines at the volume they'll deliver in when recording so you can adjust your audio levels accordingly. There's no perfect level to set it at but in general, try to make the audio level sit between -20 decibels and -6 decibels and no louder than -3 decibels. If you think the person on the camera will randomly speak loudly at times, which I happen to be guilty of. Setting the audio levels a little lower, to let's say between -25 and -10.
Next, make sure you have enough room on your memory card for whatever you're filming, and better yet, have a few formatted and ready to go. Of course, make sure the footage on the cards has been copied off and backed up before formatting. I've also seen a few videographers filming and their cards fill up in the middle of the shoot during the most important part and they scramble around trying to get a new card in causing the person on camera to have to stop and redo the take just like having extra memory cards you want to make sure you have several fully charged batteries ready to go basically if you think a take is going to last long don't risk it by hoping the half-ted battery will make it through you never want to be the person on set that has to announce you need to cut because your card is filled up or your batteries died.
This next mistake is one that I made that I shouldn't have made on a three-week trip to Iceland and it cost us an additional day of exploring. Here's my sad excuse for the mistake that I'm pretty embarrassed to admit I even made. So I was tired because we slept in our SUV the night before and attempts to see the Northern Lights cut to the next day filming and me being super tired while attempting to film some slow-motion shots at the black sand beach, I assumed wrongly that my camera was set to 120 frames per second the problem was I was actually filming in 24 frames per second and it wasn't until nighttime when I was reviewing the footage on my laptop that I realized I shot everything in the wrong frame rate. All of my faster moves just weren't usable. So the next day since the black sand beach is such a beautiful location we gave up going to another awesome place in Iceland to go back and get some actual slow-motion shots. So take it from me, remember my mistake, and don't let it happen to you.
Another thing to do is a test take doing a test take is essential for producing professional results. It allows you to check your audio levels, check for audio interference, you can check for ugly shadows and test takes are awesome where you'll notice distracting elements in the background. The test takes also allows you to check that the person on camera looks good. Sometimes under bright lights, certain things may appear like thin hairs and weird spots things in their teeth or up their nose, you may notice other things like the talent's forehead being shiny in which case you can easily fix that by handing them a paper towel and asking them to dab the oiliness away, and a test shot will allow you to notice and make changes or suggest changes to end up with a higher-end video.
Have you made any of these mistakes or do you know anyone who has they're very common, and I'm sure we've all made some of them at times? Let me know in the comments below. We release weekly filmmaking tutorials. So subscribe and ding the bells to stay notified when our latest videos come out. Thanks so much and we'll see you in another video.
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