Whether you’ve been making home movies, social media videos, or professional films, there is always room for improvement when making films. Here are a few tips to improve your filmmaking skills.
Educate Yourself on the Subject
Understanding film production takes more than watching films all day. It would help if you learned to incorporate each aspect of production. Read articles such as IndieWire or watch online tutorials from sites like Video Copilot. The resources are vast.
Explore Your Filmmaking Gear
Familiarize yourself with cameras, lights, and production equipment. YouTube offers a superabundance of camera reviews. Once you buy your camera and lighting equipment, enlighten yourself with it. Whatever camera you choose to use, familiarize yourself with each component.
Master Each Filmmaking Technique
Don’t jump from genre to genre. For example, make a comedy and stick with it. Learn where to place the actors in congruence to camera and lighting position. Start with a variety of comedy shorts, then follow with a feature. Take a MasterClass online from Ron Howard or Spike Lee if you are new to filmmaking. Learn camera, lighting, and story techniques from the directors themselves.
Master Editing
Editing is crucial to telling your story. Juxtaposing each video segment to create a harmonious final product can be tedious if you are not familiar with editing. Pick an editing software like Adobe Premiere and acquaint yourself with every feature. Organize your sequence history with notes to return to them if needed. Save new versions of the project each time you start a new edit. This way, you can compare previous changes made to the story.
Be Open to Criticism
The best way to master any subject is to learn from mistakes made. Scrutinize each scene for technical, artistic, and storyline errors when watching your final product. Write improvements needed to make your idea more practical. Consider whether the visuals, audio, and combination of both express the emotions you wanted to convey.
These are a few tips that hopefully will help improve your filmmaking process. The more techniques you put to practice, the better filmmaker you will be.