Don’t End Too Early

One of the more important rules in any kind of filmmaking is to start early and end late. (Unless you’re dealing with union labor.) In this case, ending late means you need to keep your camcorder recording to allow your subjects to finish whatever it is they are doing, and you need to leave time to shoot editing handles, or footage at the beginning and end of a take that gives you more flexibility when editing. Try not to cut short a shot, because that cuts your story short in editing. It’s worthwhile to shoot the entire moment during which the pie comes out of the oven, or to hold the camera on the dog during the final rinse of the bath, including the dog shaking out the water and running back out to the yard. You never know what will be good footage in the end.
Excited new videographers make a common mistake—after getting a shot, they immediately drop the camcorder and point it at the ground, yelling out “That was great!” or something similar. Fight this instinct. Instead, quietly hold the camera for a few breaths after you think you’ve gotten what you wanted. That will give you a good out handle and keep you from seeing the dreaded, shot-ruining “whoosh” of the image that most of us have seen at some point in our career because of an overzealous desire to yell “Cut!”
Note that holding your shots for a few extra seconds is different from shooting everything—you should still make decisions about which shots you want to get. But once you’re in a shot, stick with it until you’re past the action. Then you’ll have some extra footage to lop off when you’re editing, which is a great position to be in. Think about it this way—it’s much easier to cut away unimportant footage than it is to add footage that isn’t there. The more options you have (within reason), the happier you’ll be in the editing phase.