Things to Keep in Mind while Shooting

While shooting your opus, there are things you should keep in mind. Footage that isn't shot correctly or isn't usable is footage that you're going to be forced to use, especially if you don't have time to do reshoots. These will not only save you frustration in post but also will help you every time you shoot.

WARP STABILIZER 

Warp stabilizer is an effect that can be found in most common editing software. What it does is analyze the footage and corrects the shakiness of the footage to make it smooth.
"Wow that amazing so I can have shaky footage and have it corrected in post!?"
Calm down, eager beaver, it's not that easy. Warp stabilizer(at least to my experience) corrects the footage by "warping" the footage and correcting the positioning and crops into the image. This, when done right, can give you really nice fluid motion. However, when it's done wrong, it can look more jiggly than Jabba the Hut. If you plan on using warp stabilizer in post, keep that in mind while shooting. It isn't some magical correction tool, it still requires some work before hand. Make sure the footage doesn't have crazy handheld movements like whips and pans. Those types of moves are what makes warp stabilizer either give you garbage or not work at all. It's also important for you to remember to shoot a little further away, knowing that the effect will crop into the footage.

COLOR TEMPERATURE 

Color temperature or white balance is the way the camera sees white. This can range from a warm orange(2000 Kelvin) to a cool blue(6500 Kelvin). Modern cameras such as DSLRs have the function to adjust the white balance manually. But what happens when you forget to change the white balance while shooting? Unlike warp stabilizer, this can be 100% fixed in post. Color correction is one of the main components to post production. However, if you don't have the knowledge of how to color correct and to change what values, you'll be in that crumbling office chair for a while. Always try and get the right settings first.

EXPOSURE

This is one of the bigger things. Exposure is how dark and/or how light your image is. The exposure is key, especially if you are shooting on a DSLR without the capability of shooting RAW video. There is barely any room to fix exposures in post. When you over expose the images, all the highlights become white. Now you may think "I'll just lower the brightness in post". WRONG! Once that exposure is white, there is no going back. All that data in the highlights are gone. What about shadowy areas? The closer you get to complete black, the harder it will to salvage the image. If you were to bring up the brightness, you'll see that you have an incredibly noisy(grainy) image. "But I was at the lowest ISO". While yes you should shoot a low ISO, that still doesn't mean there isn't any grain. Noise exist in all ISOs, even in complete darkness. Take a picture of darkness with the lowest ISO (ISO 100), leave the camera's body cap on the camera if you have to. You'll see that there is grain. When you bring those black values up you expose more of that grain. So it's very important to keep in mind that exposure is crucial in order to not make post production a living digital hell.