Occupational Overuse Syndrome...

 Often, as a film-maker or potential film-maker, it's easy to find something you love to add during filming or in post. And there is a long list of directors who just can't drop certain techniques or post effect and sometimes the gimmick works, but other times it just starts to get over crowded and will bog a film down.

HAND HELD

  The frenetic hand held camera action scene techniques of Paul Greengrass were initially inspirational and at times perfectly suited to a scene, but as it progressed from film to film it went from a technique to a motion sickness inducing on screen blur. The worst of his films for this was clearly The Bourne Supremacy.
  In the trailer below (from around 25 seconds), it is 'blink and you miss them' fast cuts and hand held freneticism which was NOT just limited to the Trailer. Thankfully he toned this down in the following sequel, but Supremacy is clearly the weak link in the series because of the excessive use, it was even reported than some people left screenings to inform staff the film was out of focus!!

Bourne Series

LENS FLARE

  The Lens flare is a technique often used, and abused by JJ Abrams, in some films it is to good effect, but often a little excessive. Although entirely unnecessary in say Mission Impossible III, the effect was over used in his Star Trek films (especially the sequel), the screenshot below is possibly one of the least offensive, but clearly shows the addition of manually added and manipulated lens flare.

BACKGROUND

  Although, I find this inoffensive and actually generates a need for multiple viewings of a film, scene background is often overlooked. Where Stanley Kubrick was renowned for his excessively long shoots in search of perfection, Terry Gilliam is equally renowned for excessive takes due to the movement in the background of a scene. Twelve Monkeys is a perfect example of this overt attention to detail and garnered the title for this perfectionism as "The Hamster Factor". The term came about when Gilliam took an entire day to shoot a very basic scene, because the hamster (in silhouette) in the background didn't move during the takes. I can easily forgive this of Gilliam because his films are so beautifully riddled with detail, but for budding future film makers, these are delays that just can't be allowed.

  These are just some of the traits and hang ups that can bog down a production, post production process or just have a detrimental result on the end product. I myself have a nasty habit of overusing Aged Film effects and the Bad TV effect in FCP, even to the point of manually creating these effects or micro-managing effect changes in the timeline, believe it or not the video below is the tamed down version. 

  There are millions of far more talented Directors and DOP's (than me), but noticing these traits within yourself can aid in trying something new or a little different instead of going back to what quickly becomes "old faithful". 

PS: Some may note the lack of "Bayhem", but there are just far too many of his traits to discuss AND his films really aren't that substantial from a pure filmic perspective, they are for lack of better words, Box Office Popcorn films. Let's face it, they aren't going to win any Oscars