"All that you need to become a true video activist is the necessary equipment, practice to develop your required skills, and, perhaps most importantly, inspiration." Thomas Harding (1)

          

• Learn the skills of taking and making a good video. You do not need to be a film producer or photo journalist to be successful.
  
  
• Not mind obtruding on people, asking them probing questions and poking your camera into their faces.
  
  
• Be confident and courageous when approaching rowdy or aggressive people in hectic situations where you might get hurt physically or when approaching despairing people in desperate conditions where you might get hurt emotionally.
  
  
• Feel comfortable ears muffled with headphones, staring through your camera, separate, even alienated, from everyone around you when the action gets hot.
  
  
• Be able to stick to your role as video activist should an animal or anyone get beaten or trampled. You will miss getting those video shots if you dilute your task with distractions; you must let others do the aiding.
  
  
• Be willing to cope with tedium and frustration. Your mere presence does not guarantee that interesting incidents will materialise and you will spend days in the field when nothing of note happens. You have to hang around a lot.
  
  

• You prevent or restrain by your mere presence any over-reactions and excesses by the police acting heavily against demonstrators or being idle when they should be attentive and competent. Police are accountable and do not want to be caught out on video for the world to see.
  
  
• You forestall opposition violence when they see they are being videoed. But keep an eye open for anyone wanting to 'taking you out', hopefully a rare occurrence!
  
  
• You offer video footage to lawyers as evidence in litigation disputes to acquit activists and bystanders of spurious or inflated police charges.
  
  
• You may capture confrontational fracas to distribute to the news media for publicity in favour of animal rights.
  
  

• Camera: often a camcorder (a camera with a built-in recording device) that plays back footage and sound.
  
  
• Batteries: they will probably come with the camera, but get a long-life battery as a spare.
  
  
• Battery charger: it will probably come with the camera.
  
  
• Headphones: to monitor your sound recording. Buy them as an extra.
  
  
• Kit bag: for carrying your kit conveniently and safely. Buy this as an extra, too.

Buy a cheap video camera if your equipment might get smashed, eg at a violent demo; but buy quality equipment if you intend your video for television or other public viewing.

Perch your video camera on a monopod or tripod to prevent it (and the footage) shaking. Otherwise, if you do not want an impediment in a fast moving demonstration, brace yourself against something, like a lamppost or a helper's shoulder.

Get ten seconds or more of footage on each of the important shots.

Be sparing when panning and zooming. Do not continually move the camera back the way it came. Your viewers will not want to be motion-sick. Pan slowly and steadily from one scene or subject to another.

Your video camera is also a tape recorder. It will record sounds closer to it better than sounds further away. Experiment with an external microphone. You can point it at sound sources and filter out peripheral sounds.

While recording, monitor the sound with headphones to make sure it is not a jumble of noise.

Check that you really are recording. You may have been recording when you thought you had stopped, and stopped recording when you thought you had started.

Monitor what is going on while shooting by keeping both eyes open, one eye looking through the viewfinder and the other eye checking your surroundings.

Learn to shoot while walking backwards.

Start your video with an overall shot to show the context of your subject, such as a landmark, a signpost, a building, or something else relevant and unique to that place.

Be discrete and unobtrusive. People may feel uncomfortable and object to you shooting. But sometimes it is worth making a nuisance of yourself for a good shot.

Prepare for Murphy's Law: if anything can go wrong it will go wrong.

• Show your video online if you have a web site or post it to a web site that displays people's videos, like YouTube or Google Video.
  
  
• Describe your video to web site owners and ask them for a link from their web site to the page on your web site where viewers can see it. Give a reciprocal link to web site owners who link to your site.
  
  
• Send out details of your video to potential customers and to anyone who might be interested in it. Briefly describe it (plus ordering information) and include a web address where they can see a preview.
  
  
• Present your video at events arranged by animal activist organisations where audiences can view and discuss it.
  
  
• After much experience you may find that you are exceptionally good at video activism. Then you may be in the market to sell footage to television. Who knows, you might hit the jackpot by catching a sensational event that television companies fall over themselves to air!