Doing the Math: The Flip Video Phenomenon

Flip Videos. You either love ’em or hate ’em. These remarkably compact and easy-to-use Flip Video cameras are a natural result of what has been called the “democratization” of video.

Many professional video producers are skeptical of these little cameras and the power of instantly distributing video around the world using the camera’s built-in USB connection. They quickly point out the limitations of the technology and the mistakes often made by amateurs who post their productions for the world to see.

As a professional video producer, I can sympathize with them: I am very conscious of the elements of quality video production—professional lighting, sound, composition, and editing.

But getting professional can mean getting out your wallet. Professional video production is not cheap—the old adage that professional video costs a thousand dollars per finished minute is likely a low figure nowadays.

What I care about most is getting out the story using video. It’s a powerful medium that now comes in a lot of shapes and sizes. Yes, some of them are going to be expensive, and need to be. But what fascinates me about the Flip Video is the power of storytelling it puts into our clients’ hands. Our client is typically an Extension educator who doesn’t have a big budget. They may have only limited experience with video. But what they do have are compelling stories to tell: how-tos on thousands of topics from growing tomatoes well to aging well.

One only needs to look briefly at YouTube to see millions of viewers watching “unprofessional” videos. Last spring I was asked to participate in a local video festival, where I screened a program I produced for the Natural Resources Conservation Service that had a price tag of $40,000. The NRCS distributed over one thousand DVDs, so it’s safe to say that perhaps 5,000 people saw the video. The next presenter at the festival showed a 10-minute production on climate change that he produced for less than a hundred dollars and put on YouTube. At the time of the festival, over 550,000 viewers had seen it. Do the math.

As communications consultants, what we can do is help our clients to feel comfortable expressing themselves and their work with video, and not hold them accountable to the professionals. The Flip Video does just that. With a push of a button, an Extension field agent can capture a complex process, a unique interview, or short demonstration, return to the office, download it to YouTube, and put the link on their web page. This will pull more eyeballs to the web page, where more information will be read and more learning will occur. In our shop, we began loaning Flip Video cameras to our clients to encourage this.

Video—once a complex, expensive process with high distribution costs—has become as ubiquitous as the cell phone, and a highly accessible and powerful teaching tool that educators anywhere with an Internet connection can’t afford to ignore.

By the way, you can view the global warming YouTube video here.

–Jeff

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