Every week I get raw footage that should sing — interviews with founders who light up the room, B-roll with real texture, audio you can practically taste. And every week I watch brands sabotage that material in the edit. Here are the five mistakes I see most often, with the fix that takes ten minutes to apply.
1. The first three seconds are wasted
Logo stings. Slow zooms into title cards. Drone shots that build for eight seconds before the human appears. By the time the actual story starts, half your audience has scrolled. Open on a face. Open on a question. Open on the moment that hooked you when you watched the footage the first time.
2. The music is doing too much work
If you take the music out and the cut falls apart, the cut is the problem, not the music. Build the edit to picture first, then let the track support — not the other way around.
3. Color that flattens everything
A LUT is a starting point, not the answer. Your hero shots deserve a real grade — secondary color on skin tones, contrast that holds in highlights, blacks with depth. Five minutes per hero shot is the difference between “corporate” and “cinematic.”
4. Captions as an afterthought
85% of social video plays muted. Captions are the script. Treat them like brand typography — readable size, consistent placement, on-brand color.
5. One video, one length
The same story deserves a 60s, a 30s, and a 15s. Built from the same master, with intentional cutdown logic. If you’re only exporting one length, you’re leaving distribution on the table.
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