Community Video Report (Winter 1974)

8: theory Theory and practice of community video [Continued from p. | night, 8 p.m. Weekly video features, No commercials, See your friends and yourself on TV, video demonstrations, cable TV discussions, open screenings—bring tapes.” We were inviting an audience to come help us create an experience using media. And they have been coming now for many months. Each week is different, depending upon what the programmer emphasizes, how we advertise, who shows up, what they want to get into, and so forth. We maintain . this open video night on Thursdays and the video process is lively and varied. The most effective have been with groups that are organized for other reasons and are motivated to come and participate. In November we taped the first annual Adams-Morgan football classic and showed the tapes to the Ontario Lakers team and their friends in a video environment. Mass Transit, a local poetry workshop, came in for a reading and everyone videoed everyone else. The process tape also builds self-esteem and a sense of personal value. Television is the determinant of what is “news” and what is “important.’’ Seeing yourself on it makes you seem more important, and, more “‘real’’ (and Walter Cronkite becomes correspondingly less important and less real). We have discovered working with kids from the inner city that video can help create a counter-image to the negative one which is encouraged by their physical and media environments. And, for adults, these kinds of realizations lead to greater questions about the functioning of the ‘regular’ TV. Literally every time we have ever used video in a group situation people have asked why this can’t go on TV. This is the first step in de-mystifying the media, the first step in creating the consciousness. that will ‘‘create safeguards against mind manipulation of the majority by small privileged minorities,” as Herbert Schiller points out in The Mind Managers. If process video has value, it also has limitations. First, and foremost, is the fact that most of these tapes are only valuable for participants. When newcomers begin to use the cameras, which is essential to give them control over information, they seldom use it well. Moreover, lighting and sound are usually as bad as the camera work. From a purely technical stand-point, nobody wants to be bored by a crummy quality videotape. In addition, most of the people involved in this sort of video turn-on have little desire to become video producers, or to invest the time and energy necessary to make an entire communications process happen with others outside their own friends. Afte :i., being taped once is a fairly superficial activity. Buti‘ is eccssary for every beginner to get past the phase of fas’ 1a) on with his or her own image on the tube, as ‘vell as ‘fic almost universal fear and mistrust of the hardware. Thus, we include the video experience as an early part of any training or teaching at the Center, and we try to take into account that the process is always the priority for the beginner. After the familiarity wears off, the individual or group that wants to go beyond the superficial begins to enlarge his concept of video’s usefulness. Each involvement with video deepened his understanding. something which occurs experientially, not intellectually. system, a method of reaching an audience. Most people in our community don’t have enough time, interest, or inclination to take responsibility for a media process or to really exercise the access available to them. But, when media is being used in a familiar context that involves them and their friends, and a method is used that clearly serves their needs and has positive results, they know it, and they will support it. When media doesn't fulfill needs, they will mistrust it, and they will mistrust the people doing it, (just as they do existing broadcast media). Product Video “Product” video is the term we use to describe a tape which can stand alone, one which doesn’t require the viewer 1o have been involved in making the tape. This doesn’t mean the elimination of feedback, since the ‘process’ now includes several steps beyond the video experience itself, as we will see. Nor does ‘‘product’”’ video refer to the kind of pre-packaged television fare we all know and love. Because video products are prepared in advance for presentation to groups, distribution of these messages to an audience must be considered just as high a priority as the way the tape is produced and the content of the message. Electronic products, like goods, must have a distribution system, a method of reaching an audience. The most familiar, and for community video people, the least accessible distribution system is broadcast television that goes into everyone’s home. Cable television is important, perhaps the most viable method of distributing messages to people, but less than 10% of the nation’s homes are wired for cable, and most of these are not in large cities where video activity is concentrated. Other, newer tech nologies are even less widespread: multipoint distribution systems, direct satellite transmission, microwave transmission. Thus, the most accessible and flexible way to get the message out is by closed-circuit television (CCTV), which is the primary method that we currently use for showing videotapes in our project. However. closed-circuit TV, like the other forms, are only a technique for reaching an audience. Herein lies the primary consideration in creating product video: Who is the intended audience; how will I reach them; what is the context of the viewing environment; what is my goal in showing them video; and, importantly, what kind of feedback is possible? These important questions are rarely, if ever asked by media practitioners. We have learned to make it a requirement that such questions are determined before a tape is shot. Far too many of our early video efforts involved endless shooting of ‘important’? events which have since gathered dust because nobody had the interest to edit the raw tape or work on the distribution and feedback problems. So often people come in to the Center and suggest making a tape. We ask, “Who will see it?” ‘‘Oh, you know, the people who see all your tapes,” they say. They seem genuinely surprised to discover that there is no regular audience developed that sees all our tapes. And until an audience is specified and the method of bringing them together with the tape is identified, we have no way of analyzing the proposed idea. Another assumption that is made by people is the existence of some sort of national network to distribute for videotapes. “don’t you sell your tapes across the country?” they ask. We wish we could, but, as anyone in video will tell you, each tape must be individually handled, since no real readymade system exists even to the extent of the independent film market. Many efforts have been made for tape exchange and purchase networks among video producers, starting with the first few issues of Radical Softwar in 1970-71, but nobody has ever been into functioning as a central clearinghouse and distribution structure, os it has always come down to individual contacts and arrangements. We are still relying on this approach to acquire software for our video theatre. Commercially, we had once hoped to distribute tapes to institutional users like libraries, universities, business and government groups either on half-inch or in three-quarterinch cassette, but the current market is oriented toward transfers of slick color films and tapes, not locally produced half-inch stuff. By insisting that the people pin down their method of playback or distribution and their audience, we don’t want to sound like every tape must be rigidly planned. There must always be room for sponteneity and experimentation. One of the best pieces of video work I have ever seen was done by Phil Braudy and his co-workers at Project Accountability. His group had heard that some people in a public housing project were angry because of poor garbage pick-up and bad sanitation service from the city. They took a PortaPak over to the project and started rapping with folks. Before long the people decided that they would do something about the problem—that they would go dump their garbage at the local housing officials’ offices. Police were called, and they were brutal and beat on women, some of them pregnant. The video people, who had the confidence of the community, taped much of the whole thing, and continued taping interviews with injured residents, police, HAVE YOU SUBSCRIBED TO Just fill in the form below and mail your check or money order to: Community Video Report. c/o Washington Community Video Center, P.O. Box 21068. Washington, D.C. 20009. Check appropriate boxes: (_) Yes, I would like a 1-year subscription to Community Video Report, starting with issue number: ( ) 1..Summer, 1973 ( ) 2...Fall. 1973 ( ) 3...Winter, 1974 ( ) 4...Spring 1974 (next issue) There are two subscription rates: $4/person for individuals and community organizations which cannot afford the higher rate. For corporations. schools, univeristties, audiovisual departments. libraries. agencies. governmental bodyies.other groups which can afford it, and the individuals representing such organizations, the rate is $12/vear. Check is enclosed for ( ) $4.00 ( ) $12.00 ( ) Enclosed is a donation of the following amount to help the Center with its projects (All donations are tax-deductible). ( )$5,( )$10.( )$15.(_) $25, ( ) $100 ( ) other Checks payable to Washington Community Video Center. name organization, if any address. city officials, and bystanders, both on the scene, at the police station and elsewhere. The tapes were held in reserve for the tenants’ use, and were later edited into a powerful “product’’ tape that documents the process of the community action. No such tape could ever be planned. But, by the same token, too may people presume that having video equipment means that everything that is interesting to anyone must be taped. How many tapes of speakers and demonstrations and conferences would you be willing to watch? And, even if you would be interested in watching a given tape, would anyone else? If so, how do you connect up that audience with the tape? Without cable or broadcast TV going direct into a home, we are forced to either bring a tape to the audience, or vice-versa. Thus, publicity becomes crucial—telling people about it by word-of-mouth, through existing informal or formal channels, or via the media. This is an enormously time-consuming and difficult task. Even so, CCTV has an advantage over most other existing TV media in its natural capacity for immediate feedback. When I show a videotape I made to a group of people, I not only can hear their suggestions, criticisms, and feedback, but I can see their physical response and the action which the tape initiates. This is impossible with mass media, even though two-way cable and telephone-linked broadcast TV make some sort of feedback feasible. ere Target audience is difficult Producing tapes with a structured target audience is a lengthy and difficult process. Project Accountability, which used a combination of live and taped television over broadcast TV last year to focus their community’s attention on the issues of housing, worked in the community for months before ever writing a script or shooting an inch of tape. . We initiated a project with the city government to tape community leaders showing environmental hazards in the 14th St. corridor and analyzing the city’s role in those failures. We then showed the tapes weekly to a group of city officials and taped their response. This was a careful, targeted feedback process aimed at getting results in 14th Street, and changing the procedures of the city government. Three staff people worked at least three days a week, plus all the time of the community leaders, who did the research and on-camera work. In a sense, these sort of video ‘‘products’’ are hard to isolate from the concept of video process. It’s just that the feedback loop encompasses a larger number of components. One distinction, however, ought to be quality. When we want a tape to have a desired impact, the viewer must be able to see and hear everything. That doesn’t mean that video is useless if it doesn’t look like NBC. But it requires certain skills that must be learned. It requires a perception of the medium and an understanding of the limitations of technology being used. For this reason, we usually insist that our limited equipment resources be utilized by people who know what they are doing. We offer low-cost introductory video training workshops at the Center and operate an intern program for people who want to get more involved in the work we do. Other programs are designed to involve people with fewer skills at a level they can handle. As Schiller points out, ‘‘new communications technology, as it becomes cheaper and more available, makes it possible for relatively large numbers of individuals to become knowledgeable in media practices and routines. This may not result in immediate professional expertise, but it helps demystify the medium for a significant number of people; equally important, it begins to provide the basis for a new corps of trained individuals, capable of handling some of the now-ignored informational needs of the nation’s communities.” ots alt