Filmmaker and educator Caleb Pike has shot his fair share of video, and he’s put together a list of excellent hacks that he’s accumulated over the years that he is certain will make your life easier. Check out this short video, and harvest a few nuggets of wisdom.
These 10 tips are incredibly varied, from how to find inspiration to practical lighting advice. For me, the most valuable piece of advice among this list is number three: have enough memory cards that you don’t need to format anything until a project is complete. That extra layer of backup could be essential.
One tip that I’d add to that is to make sure ahead of a job that all of the cards that you are shooting with are empty. During one of my first wedding gigs, I filled up a card and switched it out. Finding the newly inserted card full, I immediately formatted it and carried on shooting. After about 10 photos it occurred to me that when I attempted to swap the full card for a fresh one, I’d fumbled stuff and simply reinserted the card that I'd just removed — which I then formatted. Fortunately for me — and the happy couple — I realized in enough time that I only lost a handful of shots as some disk recovery software was able to find pretty much everything. Phew.
What would you add to this list? Leave your ideas in the comments below.
