View source for The Seven Deadly Sins of Video Production

''Projects marred by any of these serious problems will drop a whole letter grade per instance.''
# '''Bad sound quality.''' If you always use a voice recorder and headphones, you should be able to avoid this Deadly Sin. Make sure that your audio levels match; that interviews/VOs/nats are audible and nothing else is; and that the voice recorder isn’t making horrible scratching/popping/malfunctioning sounds. Pace your voiceover carefully and speak clearly; rapidly mumbled VO is unacceptable.
# '''Bad editing.''' No duplicate shots. No flash frames. No jump cuts. No shots too long or too short.
# '''Bad shooting.''' Never, ever use shaky video in your story. This is why we have tripods available. Don’t shoot interviews in front of a row of lockers or in front of a major light source. Shoot on location whenever possible. Interview people in relevant locations. 
# '''Bad formatting.''' Always shoot in widescreen and always export your files in H264 NTSC DV widescreen. I will not accept files with black frames around the edges.
# '''Bad reporting.''' A story is more than just a stand-up and closing tied together with a bunch of interviews; there should be actual reporting by YOU in the story. Quotes help to illustrate a story and they depict the people involved; they do NOT replace good reporting. Also, remember the 9 principles & 7 yardsticks: you shouldn’t be including your opinion; you SHOULD be including ALL sides of a story; you should be double-checking the facts and not reporting rumors; and so on.
# '''Bad quotes.''' Some random person stating her opinion on camera is the worst possible type of quote. The viewer wants to know about the story/situation and not what the interview subject thinks about it. Don’t include interviews from ignorant, inarticulate people. Don’t let an informed, articulate person go on and on, either – feel free to paraphrase their long quote in your own (fewer) words and just put the most important or memorable portion of the quote into the story.
# '''Plagiarism or copyright violation.''' Always unacceptable. Don’t rip off other news reporters’ stories. Don’t use B-roll ripped from YouTube. Don’t use Google image search to illustrate stories. EVER.