Before I made my first short I read somewhere a quote from Kubrick, which I'll paraphrase: "If you want to make a movie, before you know about anything else, you need to know about photography." I took this advice to heart and learned everything I could about the basics of composition and still photography, and I read about the elementary shots in cinema. I'm not a professional and I'm still striving to learn everything I can, but I did personally make a first short that I felt proud to have made. If one is careless about photography then one might as well write a novel instead and leave it up to the imagination.