Additional training

Being finicky here but, in an occupation where you're expected to provide examples of your work, not just an employment history, CV may be the right term.

 

Who lists what articles are in their clips package on their resume?

 

Flip is a piece of cake. Taught myself and it helped me keep my job when we just had a bunch of layoffs. Although the company is going to hold training now to make sure everyone knows how to do it. That said, I haven't used iMovie. I hope they show us that since we're getting all new equipment.

 

That's my point. One of the ways a CV can differ from a resume is by having work samples attached.

 

Visual QuickStart guides: This company's books are hands down the best I've come across. I have the HTML/CSS, Flash 9, Dreamweaver and InDesign editions on my desk and reference them for every problem. Better yet, they're written to walk you through basically from scratch. The HTML5/CSS one is the perfect place to start if you want to learn what they are, how they're used and then have it walk you through with really simple and illustrated examples. It would help if you have access to an HTML-editing program like Dreamweaver, but you can just register for a free website account somewhere and experiment with that book and the raw code you can generate. Most of the Visual QuickStart books range from $20-30, and you can probably find plenty of used ones at college bookstores if you're near any.

In terms of video, it's probably cheaper and easier to pick up than most people imagine. I've got a $110 Kodak Playsport ZX5 HD digital camera that's the size of my cell phone (and is waterproof and shockproof, to boot), a $20 SD memory card for it and a $60 copy of Sony Vegas. There are some pretty extensive and simple tutorial channels on YouTube for Vegas, and once you master that there are some awesome free tutorial sites for video graphics/effects programs such as Adobe AfterEffects (videocopilot.net is superb). I also used to work in a market where I frequently ran into reporters from the local TV stations and I picked their brains for lots of tips on how to shoot quick sports segments. If you're looking to pay for some good tutorials check out lynda.com, which has some really great tutorials for video, HTML, video-editing programs and more. I think it's $25 or so a month for access to all of the courses. I've downloaded a few and thought they were among the best I've seen.

I took a couple of web design classes and a video class in college, and both of those gave me a nice base in those areas, but I didn't learn any technical information there that wasn't taught in those Visual QuickStart books or didn't see in the online tutorials I mentioned.

 

But 'tart:

"Send a CV, cover letter and your
five best published articles to ..."

 

Poor wording, indeed, though you could argue that the applicant needs to know how many clips the CV should contain.

 

Don't learn Flash. Don't bother. It's soon to be a dead language. http://apple.copydesk.org/2011/11/09/flash-finally-dies-19-months-after-it-was-mortally-wounded-by-apple/

Take a community college class on Web design. No one's expecting you to be able to do awesome graphics work in HTML5 unless you're a graphic artist, designer or (in very extreme cases, perhaps) online editor. But you should understand how to use basic HTML coding, various blog and content hosts (WordPress is becoming increasingly more standard) and a simple camcorder or flipcam.