- Okay, throughout my career over the years,
I've given a lot of feedback to a lot of people
on their work, on their videos.
And more recently, I used to do the TF Feedback series
where I would look at your guys' films,
and I would give you some sort of feedback,
and now I've been doing on the members live streams,
I've been kind of taking your videos,
taking your Instagram, giving you feedback
on all of that stuff.
Now when somebody asks me to give feedback
on their work, these are the most common things
that I see that people kind of make mistakes on.
So if you want to supercharge your filmmaking
and just skip all of the mistakes that we all make,
do not do these ten things.
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Number one, by far the most common mistake that I see
everybody when they're starting out make
is filming in 30 frames per second,
or even worse, 50 or 60 frames per second.
I get it, I've done it myself.
You think well the more frame rates the better, right?
Wrong, you wanna stick to 24 frames per second,
this is the most cinematic look there is,
and a lot of you might not even realize
that there's a difference in the look between 24 frames
per second, 30, 50, and 60, and all the gamers,
again, are gonna get angry, I understand for gaming,
it helps to have more frame rates, but when we're talking
about look, when we're talking about the quality
of the image, when you're trying to make something
really cinematic, stick to 24 frames per second,
I cannot stress this more, 24.
Number two is using way too high of an ISO
when you actually don't need to, I see this all the time
and people are like why doesn't my footage look
as good as this other person's footage from the same camera
and it's just because you're using a really high ISO
when you actually don't need to.
The only time you boost your ISO
is if there's literally not enough light,
and on that note, there's actually a base ISO,
which is the best ISO for that camera,
it's different for every camera.
This is the ISO that your camera is gonna perform best at,
the dynamic range, the amount of noise, all that
is gonna be the best so make sure you stick to the base ISO.
Number three, people buy DSLRs and then they just stick it
in auto, and that's it.
That is a massive mistake in my opinion.
Not only does it make you a worse filmmaker
because you don't actually know how to control your camera,
but you're also giving away a lot of the creative choices
to this little robot of a brain in your camera.
That doesn't do the best job.
You're giving away a lot of your creative choices,
especially the F stop, that is probably
the most creative choice that you can make
while you're filming, what F stop you're gonna film at,
so don't film in auto, learn how to use manual controls.
Number four, this one's really common,
is overexposing or underexposing, so you're just making
your image too bright or too dark, and again,
your footage is not gonna look good when you go to post
and you start color grading, it doesn't look good
if you've lost detail in the highlights or lost detail
in the shadows, yeah, you're gonna be really struggling.
Basically just use a histogram or better yet, a waveform
'cause you can't always trust your eyes just looking
at the LCD screen.
If everything is over the left side on your histogram,
that means you're underexposed, and if everything is over
to the right on your histogram,
that means you're overexposing.
You want it kind of in the middle.
Number five is that people don't color grade their footage.
It really hurts me to see footage filmed,
and it might even be filmed nicely,
but then it's just not color graded.
You're missing out on a massive step,
especially if you're filming in log,
you have to color grade.
Yeah, it's just gonna look like junk if you don't.
It's kind of like the equivalent of building a house
and not putting any furniture in it or you get
an ice cream but it's the new flavorless flavor,
yeah just take the time, color grade your footage,
it's gonna look way better, it's gonna make you more unique,
even if it's just using a LUT or something and putting
down no pass, just color grade your footage,
please, just a little bit even.
Number six is not using lights,
lights like this one that I'm using right now,
and I understand it in the begging,
there's a bajillion things that you need to buy
and lights aren't quite so high up on the list,
you wanna buy cameras and lenses
and all that other stuff first, so I understand that,
but at least use natural light.
There's always some sort of light source around you
that you can use whether it's a window
or just a light in your house.
Basically, just look around in your room or in your setting
and find out what's the brightest thing there,
and then just use that.
That's your light, easy as that,
and it's gonna make your footage look again,
way better than just filming in a dark corner,
yeah just use a light.
Number seven is bad audio, and I don't just mean not using
a microphone, I highly recommend investing in a microphone
very early on, it's gonna do way more for your videos
than something like a gimbal but really what I mean
is the audio's peaking or it's way too low.
Basically where you want your audio is about -12 decibels.
That's where you kind of want the audio to be hitting,
you don't want to hit red, that's bad,
and then afterwards, you can tweak it in post,
but -12, that's kind of where you want your audio to hit
while you're recording.
Then we have the classic shaky footage,
and this is something that we all do.
We pick up the camera and we put it into video mode
and we start filming and it's just shaking everywhere,
and it doesn't look good, and don't use the excuse
of saying that you're trying to make it look raw
or something like that, I get it,
there's a time and place for that but most likely,
you weren't using it for that purpose.
Buy a monopod, a GorillaPod, a tripod,
is there a cuadrapod?
A gimbal, anything to stabilize your footage,
it's gonna be way better than that.
Jittery footage.
Number nine, you film some footage, and you go to edit it,
and you just slap on a song, you just oh this song's great,
I like this one, and you just throw it in there,
that is not enough.
First of all, you don't want to just choose a song
that you liked which is really tempting in the beginning.
Choose a song that fits your footage and then edit
to that song.
Don't just edit and then just slap in a song.
It's gonna be way more interesting, more compelling,
just overall better if you actually edit
to the song.
And then lastly, the biggest mistake we all make
as beginners is neglecting story.
We all hear it, story is king, but when you're a beginner,
you're just so caught up in the camera,
in the settings, in the light, everything else going on
that you completely forget about the story so plan out
your story beforehand because the worst thing
is coming home with just a bunch of nice
or semi nice looking footage
but there's no point to your video.
Take your time, plan out the story,
make sure there's something to your video,
more than just nice visuals.
All right, there we have it,
that's my take on the top ten mistakes
that we as beginner filmmakers make.
Again, I've probably done every single one of these
so don't be discouraged, if you've done these,
just learn from them, if you haven't done these,
you're just starting out,
pay attention, don do these mistakes.
That's it for this one, I'm gonna go practice
my surfboard rip stick thing some more.
See ya guys.
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