What are the most common mistakes of amateur movie makers?

[RadioFlyerMan]

Along these lines, knowing what makes for a good video is useful. You can get 40 minutes of video but then trying to edit that down to 2-3 minutes is very difficult. It is much easier to know how to get the best video while out getting it rather then trying to edit it all down to the best.

Yes! It seems like I take 99 shots just to get one good shot (exaggeration). My most frequent mistake is jerky, inconsistent gimbal/yaw movement... totally destroys a clip.

 

[tcope]

This is so true and I so suck at it! I’m finding that trying to plan my flight and filming is much harder than I thought

I'm still learning and I think this is something that is never fully learned as many situations are different. I think you really need to already have a plan as to what the video will look like. There are other things that stick out though. Such as action. Need to either have something moving in the frame or the frame itself needs to be fast pace. I lot of people (and I'm guilty of this) think it is a drone so it needs to go way up high. This is good for some quick shots but in a lot of cases you may only need to be 10 or 20 feet off the ground. This makes the frame move much more quickly.

All of this goes into "telling a story". It has been mentioned and I think it is the biggest thing people starting out don't consider. If you want to make a video that is nothing but a lot of far away long shorts, great. However, they are not interesting to watch for a viewer. The viewer needs to have a reason to watch the video. There need to be lead down a path.