"I had had no experience"
Dear italki users, could you please help me with this sentence with Past Perfect tense?

"Before I made my first video, I had had not filming experience"

I have two questions about it:
1) Is 'had had' grammatically correct in this context?
2) If it is correct, can I say just 'had' instead of 'had had'?

Thank you!

Question

"I had had no experience"
Dear italki users, could you please help me with this sentence with Past Perfect tense?

"Before I made my first video, I had had not filming experience"

I have two questions about it:
1) Is 'had had' grammatically correct in this context? 
2) If it is correct, can I say just 'had' instead of 'had had'?

Thank you!

Answer

...I had no filming experience. Had had is a correct construction under other circumstances.

Answer

There is one small mistake:  "not filming experience" should be "no filming experience."

A more common wording is "I had not had any experience."

Yes.  This is a correct use of the past perfect to clearly indicate the sequence of two states or actions in the past.  Some native speakers omit this distinction in spoken English.  For writing, use the past perfect.  For speaking, match the people around you.

More information:
https://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/pastperfect.html

Answer

1) Yes "had had" is correct. They are you auxiliary and primary verbs, respectively.
2) You can just as easily use the simple past here because of your use of "before". You would however need to use the past perfect in a sentence such as, "I had not yet eaten when I arrived at work yesterday."

Answer

So it might be better to say "I had no experience in filming " or "I hadn't any filming experience"

I hope that's helpful:)

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