Video Editing
The Story Board
Before you start, it is best to plan your project. Traditionally most production companies will plan the shooting schedule, script and continuity using a story board, which is basically a comic like series of drawings describing the production.

A poorly planned production might lack consistency and timing, which viewers could become quickly bored with.

Music
If you watch any film or television program in detail, you will very quickly realise that music plays a very important part of a convincing production.

You must think very carefully about the music you use, and its timing with video pictures, as that will make the message you are trying to convey much more convincing. Although, you must be aware that most commercial music is copyright protected, and you can probably only use it for your own personal use.

Lighting
Lighting is a critical part of any production, especially with cheaper consumer video cameras. Often, it is best to film outside, as natural light has a wide colour spectrum, and that will look quite natural on video tape.

If shooting inside, tungsten lights generally look very yellow, and even with colour balance correction you are unlikely to make your footage look very convincing. If you must shoot inside consider using Halogen or Florescent lighting, as they have a much wider colour spectrum increasing the blue ranges of light, thus looking more natural.

Quite often video cameras use auto exposure, (automatic sensitively to light) to control brightness, but if switched on this can look rather like a home video. It is best to use manual exposure, and plan your shot so that you are not going to have a great variation of light intensity, and then using the editing processes to balance out light variation in a video sequence.