With digital cameras offering increasingly sophisticated video tools, the “record” button is getting as much action as the shutter. John Kenyon, a member of the Rotary Club of Ojai West, Calif., USA, is one who is navigating the learning curve from photographs to video.

He started out by piecing together slide shows of photos he’s taken on trips to India and Nigeria for polio immunization. “My goal was to share pictures with people there,” he says.

But sending photos through the mail was difficult, especially to places where postal service was spotty. So Kenyon started putting together slide shows on his computer and posting them on YouTube, where anyone could access them. Not content with static images, Kenyon started experimenting with pans, close-ups, and music.

“The music really touches people emotionally,” he says. “It makes it more than just looking at pictures.”

He also burned the slide shows onto DVDs and started using them in presentations to Rotarians. “I realized the power of showing these things,” he says. “I want them to see this and fall in love with people as I have.”

Then he discovered that his little digital camera could also shoot video and, although it could record only two minutes at a time, he was able to capture footage of a soccer game in Nigeria in which the players – all polio survivors without use of their legs – maneuver seated on skateboards (watch the clip at www.youtube.com/user/jlkenyon1).

After putting that piece together, Kenyon switched from his PC to a Macintosh computer. “With the new iMovie and iPhoto, it’s so simple to do things,” he says. He’s now thinking about buying a small sound recorder.

Such affordable and easy-to-use equipment has opened up videography to everyone, but making videos that people want to watch takes some skill. The best videos tell a story and have visual drama, says Stuart Cleland, senior video producer at Rotary International, where he produces segments for RVM: The Rotarian Video Magazine.

“You don’t want a video about a symposium that has a person standing in a classroom with a PowerPoint,” he says. “You want to come up with some kind of ‘here’s where we started, here’s where we ended’ story. Maybe it’s building a house.”

If you want to create a video overview of your club and its projects, planning is paramount – what stories you will tell, who will appear, how long each person will talk, and how much narration you will need. Professional videographers work from detailed scripts that include both the images on the screen and what is being said by subjects or the narrator.

When members of the Rotary Club of Portland, Ore., USA, decided their club needed a way to tell its story at events like its annual auction, they hired a professional video production company to put together a six-minute video (watch the video at www.rotarypdx.org).

The club’s executive secretary, Debra Fitzhugh, interviewed several companies. “It really came down to the look and feel of the examples they were able to show me,” she says. “We wanted to make a video that wouldn’t be dated in a year.”

To collect stories, the videographer met with a committee of Rotarians. “We went around the room and shared stories they would like to have told,” Fitzhugh says.

The video cost about $13,000. Donations from club members – along with a $5,000 donation from the video company – allowed the club to avoid dipping into its general fund to pay for it.

If your club decides to hire a professional, Fitzhugh advises relying on that person’s expertise. “It’s very easy to just want to throw everything at the videographer,” she says. “Really listen to the videographer to help you focus on the areas that are the most meaningful. Let them advise you on what’s unique. They’re the experts. Let them guide you.”

If you’re shooting video on a trip or a project, Cleland recommends filming as much as possible. Look for people who can tell your story for the camera – the Rotarians doing the work, as well as the beneficiaries of the project. “If you’ve got enough material and enough people who have talked about what the project is, you might be able to get away without any narration at all,” Cleland says.

But whether you’re shooting from a script or shooting from the hip, the key to an effective video is editing. You might find that one trip or project can yield stories for several short videos.

RVM tries to keep its segments to 10 minutes or less. “We try to imagine that they’re going to be shown at a Rotary club meeting,” Cleland explains, and he knows that those meeting usually have full agendas. But he also remembers the words of film critic Roger Ebert: A good movie is never too long and a bad movie is never too short.