What you are about to see will hardly blow you away with its quality or technique, but what it does show you is the ease with which anybody (not just a journalist) can now gather video footage on the move.
To gather my video footage I chose to use a Flip camera; a light-weight camera that is no bigger than a mobile phone. The appeal of the camera is its simplicity: one button to begin capturing footage and to end, and a easy-to-use menu for reviewing captured footage.
The camera records on to an internal hard drive and files can then be uploaded to a computer via the camera’s attached USB stick.
I then used Windows Movie Maker to edit the footage. There can be an issue with file conversion to suit this programme, which my more technologically advanced friend helped me with. Some useful advice can be found here.
The file conversion was fairly straight forward and once completed I dragged the files into the timeline at the bottom of the programme, using their simplistic editing tools, such as cross-fading and adding an intro (albeit a very plastic one). I then uploaded the video to Flickr.
Obviously the quality isn’t amazing, nor my shoddy camera work, but what the Flip offers you is the chance to capture video footage quickly and with ease. Coupled with the simplicity of Windows Movie Maker, the process is (dare I say it) fool proof.
Give it go. I don’t think mine looks too bad for a second attempt.
Some further tips on using Flip cameras can be found here.
The Moving Media 
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