So you want to get into photography/cinematography but have no idea what you’re doing right? Sounds like fun! Let’s assume you have equipment and someone hires you to do a gig such as a sweet sixteen. You have been practicing your shots and are getting pretty good at it but have never been on an actual shoot.
My advice to you is try to have someone take you under their wing so that they can show you the ropes. Not everybody has that luxury so you must make sure you have all of the necessary equipment for the job.
That means extra batteries for your camera and flash. You also want to make sure the batteries for your flash are rechargeable like Eneloop. I once did an event like this and I had regular batteries so the flash wasn’t firing off as fast as I was popping off shots. Another thing is make sure you are shooting RAW and have a large enough memory card for it.
A mistake that I have done before was forgetting to format my cards before the shoot. Before you do this don’t forget to double check if you dumped all of your footage into your hard drive.
I found myself on a shoot once or twice filming while running out of space and having to go back to delete clips from a previous project one by one when I had free time. It puts a lot of pressure on you and you have to stay focused.
Make sure you test your gear at least the night before and have everything ready for the big day. I was once working on a commercial and two of my lights burned out while filming. It was so embarrassing but also completely out of my control because they were new lights. But these lights were also cheap so it goes back to that saying, “You get what you paid for”. Luckily I had some extra softboxes and was able to continue on the shoot while quickly thinking on my feet.
In film you have to be able to problem solve and do it very quickly. Also never voice it in front of the client because it can look very bad for you. Remember there are certain gigs you cannot reschedule such as live events. At least with portraits at a studio or a commercial for a local business you can arrange something to come back on another day if you lost the footage somehow.
Also when rescheduling because of technical difficulties on your behalf don’t charge them extra because its not their fault unless something happens on their end then they have to accomodate you.
There are thousands of other possible mistakes but some of these are more frequent than others. So remember always be prepared with your gear making sure everything works correctly and that you have everything that you need to get the job done.
