Professionalism

Here is some advice to help you achieve a professional-looking result in your video taking and editing activities:

Just as a good cook cannot achieve a good result using poor quality ingredients, so a good video editor cannot make a good video unless the source clips are of high quality. In fact the filming of the original clips is much more important than the editing itself - most amateur videographers do no editing beyond that which is done in camera when the original video was made.

	Choose a good topic! What is the essential purpose or message of your video?
	Decide in advance about how long the finished video should be and bear this in mind when filming.
	Think about who is likely to be the audience of your video
	Use a tripod. The most annoying characteristic of amateur video is the shakiness of the image, often to an extent that the video is barely watchable. This is especially true when the camera is zoomed to a telephoto setting since this exaggerates camera shake. Even cameras with built in image stabilization should be used on a tripod if you want a professional result. For the smoothest panning, get a tripod with a 'fluid head'. If you HAVE to film without a tripod then try very hard to hold the camera steady (use both hands) and get close to the subject so you are not forced to zoom in too much.
	Pay attention to the background. The background should be neither messy nor bright. Video cameras are less good than the human eye at dealing with backlit subjects and you can easily make video where the subject appears only as a dark silhouette against a bright background. The subject should ideally be slightly more brightly lit than the background.
	In addition to a shaky image, the other characteristic that most typically characterizes an amateur video is poor sound. When watching a video, one is more aware of ambient sounds than in real life, so there is always a risk that speech will be hard to comprehend. Don't film the speaker from too far away, and consider using a wired microphone or even radio microphones, if you can afford it.
	Avoid filming continuously for more than a few seconds, if possible. Changing camera angles every few seconds, as on TV, makes the video more visually interesting. Clearly it would be very useful to be able to film the same scene with multiple cameras, but I am assuming this is beyond your budget and even if you were to film with more than one camera simultaneously it would be difficult to synchronize the resulting videos.
	Avoid excessive panning (slowly turning the camera), another characteristic of amateur video.
	Avoid excessive zooming, and zoom slowly rather than fast when possible.
	When editing your video on the computer, use moderation in the use of fancy transitions and special effects. If the viewers of your video comment mainly on how wonderful the special effects were this just indicates that they were distracted away from the video content and its meaning or message - YOU FAILED!