TeleVISIONS (Autumn 1976)

a: ane e renee rere eee eee eee eee The Gerontological Society, a professional association for researchers and academics in the field of aging, has received an $85,000 grant from HEW to conduct a series of workshops on the use of television and other media to inform older Americans about available services. Among the consultants is Gwyn Donchin who has organized a major TV series at KQED on services for senior citizens. For further information about the location and perspective of these workshops, write: Dr. Alexander Comfort, Gerontological Society, One Dupont Circle, Suite 520, DC 20036. The Conference on Culture and Communications, held alternate years as the Conference on Visual Anthropology, is scheduled for March 9, 10, 11, 1977 at Temple University. Focus of the conference is the processes whereby social and cultural ideologies are formed, transmitted and expressed in behavior, including ideological messages, structures, codes. Write: Dept. of Anthropology, Temple University, Philadelphia PA 19122. (215) 787-7601. Site selections for ten workshops about videocassette technology at public TV stations were made on October 25 by a panel consisting of representatives from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Public Broadcasting Service and the group which is running the workshops—Global Village, in cooperation with the Coalition for New Public Affairs Programming. The workshops, which are schedules monthly starting in November, will be held in the following cities: Rochester, NY; Trenton, NJ; Pittsburgh; Chapel Hill, N.C.; Miami; Houston; Wichita, KS; Seattle or acoma, WS;-Minneapolis; and San Fran-cisco. Approximately half the 20 participants at each workshop will be area artists and producers working in film and video. The emphasis will be hands-on use of cassette technology. A full SONY 2800/DCX-1600 production unit and 2850 editing system will be left at each station for a month following the workshop. For further information, write John Reilly, Global Village, 454 Broome, NYC. 10013. The Apprenticeship Program at cable TV systems sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts and local cable systems is being offered by the Alternate Media Center at New York University for the fourth year. Deadline for applicants is December 13. The salary is $8,580. Apprentices must make a joint application with a cable system, with details on the kind of programs intended for production, experience and capabilities, etc. Guidelines are available from AMC, 144 Bleeker St., New York 10012. (212) 598-3338. Independent Film and Video Preview Network is a newly organized cooperative for screening new independent work at 13 sites around the U.S. Monthly application to enter work in the four-month preview “cycle” is initiated by the producer and is free. Acceptance is on a first-come, firstserved basis. Works are bicycled to the 13 host sites for screening to programmers (museums, media centers, film societies, schools, etc.), purchasers (distributors, libraries, etc.) and writers, not the general public. Screening cycle began Oct. 6. Cities include Pittsburgh (where the _ project originated), Washington, D.C., Greenville, S.C., Kentucky, Houston, Boulder, LA, Berkeley, Portland, Minneapolis, Chicago, Buffalo, New York. Details for tape application or participa tion. are available from Pittsburgh Filmmakers, PO Box 7200, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 (412) 681-5449. ‘*Video October’’ was a San Francisco experiment in showing videoart in a theater environment. For five weeks two programs per week were shown on alternating afternoons and evenings. Dozens of programs were featured. The operation was organized by Cyril Roseman and sponsored by Public Eye, which hopes to raise money for an ongoing theater space in the city. Public Eye also again sponsored the “Moebius Video Show,” part of the San Francisco Art Fest. 70 entries yielded a stimulating show. Top honors went to Max Almy for her The ‘ Love You Tapes”. Second prize: Chonk Moonhunter Productions for Go Gong Go, a piece about Chinatown. Exceptional Individual Film Festival: the University of Southern California University-Affiliated Program at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles and the Southern California Region of the American Association on Mental Deficiency are sponsoring their Seventh Annual Film Festival on March 11, 1977 in USC’s Hancock Auditorium. Outstanding professional independent, and commercial films and videotapes portraying handicapped children and adults produced during the preceding 18 months will be presented. The films selected may be those that were prepared with a special professional group in mind, e.g., physicians or educators, or may be of general interest. For information contact: Neil Goldstein, Assistant Director of Instructional Materials, University Affiliated Program, Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles; P.O. Box 54700; Los Angeles, Ca. 90054. Hospitals and Clinics Training Office at the University of California Medical Center (San Francisco, CA 94143) seeks both health and non-health alternative programming for a closed-circuit patient channel in Moffitt Hospital. If you would like to have your cassette shown, contact Sherry Stern, care of CCTV Patient Education Project. Phone: (415) 666-3247. For four days at the annual meeting of the Gerontological Society in New York, Oct. 14-17, a conference room was available to view and discuss videotape and film presentations to its ‘Media and Aging” forum. Audiences of students and professionals working with senior citizens saw videotapes ranging from large-budget programming for national PBS distribution, to mini-budget programs produced on 1/2” equipment for cable or closedcircuit audiences. Watching a segment of “Maude,” followed by a tape of senior citizens working their community 2-way telecommunications system in Reading, Pa., indicates the variety of ways video is being used to relate to a largely neglected segment of the population. Individuals and groups interested in making their local media more responsive to community needs should be aware that the FCC has initiated a rulemaking proposing to make more station materials available to the public. Comments are officially due by Dec. 8 (but if you miss that deadline, the FCC will still read your comments). The FCC asks for public comments on four issues: e Whether the FCC should require local radio stations to machine reproduce their public file materials upon request at reasonable cost, as it now requires television stations to do. e Whether the program logs of radio stations should be maintained, made available to and duplicated for the public, as television stations must now do. e Whether the FCC should continue to require that radio stations maintain for three years all listener correspondence relating to the radio stations operation; and e Whether, as a new requirement, the FCC should require both radio and tele vision stations to retain and provide to the public, transcripts or tapes of programming other than sports or entertainment. (Public broadcasting stations are already required to do this for public affairs programs.) Comments can be in the form of a simple letter. They need not be long or legalistic. Sending several copies to the FCC is a good idea, so that copies will get to all FCC Commissioners (technically you are supposed to file 12 copies, but even one is accepted). Remember to give the Docket number (#19667) of the rulemaking and address the comments to Vincent J. Mullins, Secretary, Federal Communications Commission, Washington, D.C. 20554. HARDWARE NYC Trade Shows Spotlight ENG Equipment By JOHN TRAYNA Video Expo opened with a great deal of fanfare and advance publicity on October 12. For three days Madison Square Garden became the industry’s slickest equipment showroom. More than a thousand interested spectators had an opportunity. to see, play with, and compare a variety of equipment, technologies and theories. Time base correctors and automatic editors seemed to be in the main spotlight, with a dearth of new models and entrants into the field. The Microtime 2020 time base corrector raised quite a few eyebrows with fairly early, but nonetheless impressive, field test reports to accompany their on-site demonstrations. CVS, one of the early leaders with time base correctors, had three new models display. In both cases, the cost is close to $20,000 when ordering all the options, which on the 2020 at least, includes a built-in image enhancer. TRI and Convergence Systems automated editors have become the overwhelming choice in the past year but there seems to be a lot of competition in this area. In both cases the newer models are generally smaller, easier to operate, more accurate, and more expensive! Most of the automated systems manufacturers have more or less abandoned 1/2” as a viable medium to work in, and have concentrated their energies on the 3/4” market. Sony went all out as usual, but their own broadcast version time base corrector was conspicuously absent especially considering the rumors that have persisted about it ever since the NAB convention earlier this year. Their $30,000 broadcast color camera was the primary focus of their exhibit along with the rest of their broadcast series equipment. 2850 cassette editors and their other second generation cassette equipment was the accepted standard of the majority of the exhibitors, but | can’t remember seeing a single 1/2” machine in Sony’s exhibit. Speaking of color cameras, you saw them everywhere you looked. Most of them five-figure range. Hitachi is now promising east coast delivery of their CCUless, 7 ibs., 3030 portable color camera with a new and improved single gun system, and more sensitive tube. Along with its detachable, short shotgun microphone, it comes equipped with a detachable, sidemounted, viewfinder. At a cost of approximately $5,000, it bears looking into. JVC showed their new portable color cassette unit which was received with mild surprise. Their latest effort provides vertical interval assembly editing with the camera, a practically non-existent CCU, and no AC color unit required for color playback. At the SMPTE Conference held in the plus Americana Hotel, Sony showed their own time base corrector, excusing its performance as a prototype model. Otherwise, the video portion of the SMPTE exhibits was largely a carbon copy of Video Expo. Sound was a subject of major concern, and there were a number of alternatives offered, including stereo Nagras, Uhers, and the like. The Dolby Corporation of America had a major exhibit booth with three separate automated systems to offer. Audio Services Corporation announced their entry into the equipment rental business and published a list of incredibly low rates for audio equipment rental which should be of major interest to New York area independent film and video producers. They also had a parabolic dish for attachment to any omni-directional microphone to make it outperform, they claim, any shotgun microphone on the market. Neither show was an earthshattering advance glimpse into video’s future, but both clearly demonstrated, the current meaning of ‘‘state of the art.” John Trayna, Technical Director of Electronic Arts Intermix in New York City, answers reader inquiries about hardware in his column ‘‘Dear John.’’ If you have a problem, write John directly at EAI, 84 Fifth Ave., NYC, or at TELEVISIONS. He will answer all questions, whether or not they’re published. TV/Media Grantees at $20,000 from the SF Foundation to the Committee on Children’s Television in San Francisco to improve the quality of local programming, 5/6/76. $490,000 from the Sloan Foundation to MIT, a two year grant for second phase of development of cable television system and for relating work in video and computer programming, 4/13/76. $10,000 from the Ford Foundation to Mills College, Oakland, Ca. to document ideas and work of 8 American composers on videotape, 5/76. $18,000 from the Arca Foundation to the National Association for the Southern Poor, Petersburg, Va. for purchase of video equipment to expand activities of Virginia Assemblies, '75. $100,000 from the Ford Foundation to EBC, NYC for production of pilot public TV series aimed at working class audience, 5/76. $23,317 from the Markle Foundation to Pomona College, Dept. of Sociology in Claremont, Ca. to produce pilot TV program of entertainment and information for the elderly. $186,000 from the Markle Foundation to the Harvard Graduate School of Education to secure basic knowledge about how children encounter and then come to understand the TV medium and to trace steps whereby children learn to make distinctions between fantasy and reality in TV presentations. Note to subscribers As many subscribers have noted in letters, this issue is late. We have concentrated on securing adequate funding to guarantee a regular quarterly publication during 1977. Next year our prices will change to reflect new costs. However, all current subscribers who paid for 10 issues will receive that many, regardless of future subscription offers. Thanks for your support during this difficult period of fund-raising. FOR SALE: (2) Color Sony AV 8400 1/2” EIAJ VTR modified for broadcast use. (2) Color Concord PCC-49 camera. Extra batteries, cable, backpack, etc. Contact: Richard Ward, PO Box 7, Carrboro. N.C. 27510, or call 919-933-8191. eee ee EEEIEE Er nIInIII IDEN EERE!