I have not yet quite figured out how to make my videos amazing, but I can quickly view them and see what I don’t like about them. As such, I have figured out 5 things not to do when making a video for my blog.

It takes so long to create a video, processing-wise, that it’s almost too much of a pain to fix it, after it has already been poorly made. I am learning and giving myself a lot of grace…what’s that saying…’Done is better than perfect’?

That is what I am living by right now.

This is the latest video that I created. Give it a watch and then I will discuss my FIVE things NOT to do when making a video.

MY 5 VIDEO FAILS:

1. DON’T MAKE IT TOO LONG:
   • What is too long? I wanted to make one of those cute time lapse videos, but just like how I talk…my video is waaaaay too long! I, personally, lose interest after watching about three minutes of a video. So, I think the sweet spot is a three minute video or less.
2. DON’T REPEAT MUSIC CLIP OVER AND OVER:
   • It makes me absolutely nuts watching this video because the music just repeats over and over for the entire video. I did not buy a long enough music clip and I thought that I could just repeat it since it didn’t have words. Uh-no! I couldn’t.
3. LIGHT YOUR VIDEO TO LESSEN THE CHANCE OF GRAIN: (Unless that is the look that you are going for)
   • It would not have completely benefited me to have lighted my scene as I wanted the tree lights to take front stage, but I don’t like how grainy my video appears.
4. INTERACT MORE WITH THE CAMERA:
   • Allowing the viewer to be more of a voyeur is just fine, but my video lacks some “entertainment” and I wish that we would have had a little bit more engagement with the camera at the beginning as a quick intro and then done the time lapse after that.
5. CUT POINTS OF THE VIDEO WHERE THERE ARE LULLS:
   • I should have cut out sections of the video where we were just standing around or doing repetitive activities: keep one segment and then delete the remaining ‘repeat’ activities.
   • If you are standing around, apparently bored, the viewer will get bored with your video, as well. Or, if you have a lot of repetitive activities, the viewer could get bored, also.
6. BONUS: IF YOU ARE DOING TIME LAPSE, PUT THE CAMERA IN A STATIONARY POSITION.
   • When I pick the camera up and follow my son around, the movement added with the time lapse almost made me nauseous. And, I noticed that when I sat the camera down on the table, that the video was fun to watch. It was nice because everything was stationary except us and the string of lights. So, it enhanced the time lapse experience.

Do you have an opinion about what I did right, or an opinion about an additional ‘fail’ that I did in my video? Do you know more than 5 things NOT to do when making a video for your blog? If so, start a conversation in the comment section.