Free Video School

at Vestavia Hills United Methodist Church

Equipment You'll Need

We try to keep things simple when we produce videos at VHUMC. You'll need a mini DV camera. You probably have a friend who owns one. If you don't, you or your Sunday School class can buy one at Amazon.com for $500 or so. Here's a Sony that we know gets the job done well. We also found a nice Panasonic camera at Costco recently for $350. The church owns a camera too, and in a pinch we can loan it out to help you get started. Just call Dennis Flowers at 205-979-9901, ext. 315, or send him an e-mail.

Beware of mini-DVD cameras. They often aren't compatible with the nonlinear editing equipment we use at the church. For example, the Sony DCR-DVD series cameras are probably nice and simple for consumers to use, but they have no FireWire connection, which means we can't import the footage and edit it on our equipment.  We had a church member bring in nearly 60 minutes of footage she had shot on a Sony DCR-DVD camera over a period of a week. The footage was beautiful but unusable, and she had to re-shoot the footage with a compatible camera. Moral: make sure your camera has a FireWire connection before using it for your footage.

You'll need a DV tape or two, which you can buy at Wal-Mart, CVS, Rite Aid, etc. Plan on paying about $5 for a 60 minute tape.

That's it. You don't need lights. You don't need a microphone. You don't need a tripod. You don't need fancy props. If you need these, you've already graduated from Free Video School, and what we say here will only annoy you.