Bring a ladder and get up in a tree. It usually pays off to be creative. In most videos you'll see fisheye at the bottom of the stair. You're going to have to get a computer if you want to do any type of editing, but it's becoming way more accessible. They're coming out with Final Cut, and they have a low-end version, too.
Videos take a massive amount of memory for the most part.
You could do small projects and put them on the hard drive, but if you're getting into a thirty-minute production, you're going to need a lot of external drives with a lot of memory. They're fast so you can retrieve the information quickly. Technology is advancing and prices are coming down. You have to be serious about it, though. If you have cheap gear, like a cheap camera, then you're going to have cheap photos.