Center to Give Expanded Access to Video Gear

Access is the key word in the name of the San Diego Media Access Center.

Established last spring, the group consists of little more than an office, a brochure and a multitude of intentions. Soon, however--as soon as next month when the group begins a program of film and video screenings at the Central Library downtown--the center could become a rallying point for non-commercial video and film producers and their audiences.

Now, independent producers working outside of the academic womb face a daunting array of obstacles.

If $400-an-hour rates at video production facilities don’t sap their creative juices, the near impossibility of showing their works in San Diego will. More affordable access to production equipment, better access to information about cable television screening opportunities and access of producers and viewers alike to regular public showings of work in the independent media are high on the agenda of SDMAC, as its founders begin to tackle the needs of the local media community.

“Where is the support for people with ideas but no access?” asked John Walden, a video maker schooled at UC San Diego and one of the founders of the new media access center.

Dan Wasil, another of SDMAC’s founders, recognized the problem several years ago when he was the director of Installation, an alternative gallery that closed its downtown space last year. The gallery began to hold screenings of independent film and video before it closed, but Wasil had grander ambitions.

“The Long Beach Museum of Art was the model I held up,” Wasil said. “They offer grants, fellowship support, access to cable, a viable exhibition program, production support--that was all non-existent here.”

The Long Beach Museum’s program, the oldest and most active museum program in the country to address and support the media arts, is “wonderful,” agreed Walden, “but it’s too far away.”

Founded in 1974, Long Beach’s program features changing exhibitions of video art and several forms of technical assistance for artists, including use of the museum’s video annex, a fully equipped production facility.

Los Angeles, San Francisco, Buffalo, Baltimore, New York and many other cities all offer a support structure for their local filmmakers and video makers, in the form of a media center, such as the fledgling SDMAC, or through programs in existing institutions. San Diego, too, has the potential to be a major site of independent video production and exhibition, supporters of SDMAC say, largely because of the city’s two outstanding university programs in the media arts.

UCSD and San Diego State University offer instruction and technical support for students pursuing a range of directions, from producing video art to documentary film.

More than 150 serious production students graduate each year from UCSD, according to Sherman George, head of the university’s media center. Each quarter, an average of 420 students use the well-equipped center.

SDSU is also actively training future generations of media mavens through its telecommunications and film department, chaired by Dr. Michael Real. Because of the universities, San Diego has yielded a disproportionately high percentage of the independent video makers whose work appears in museums and on cable stations nationwide, but the city hasn’t exerted much effort to hold on to that talent.

“Graduates will stay here if there is some media activity here they can hook into,” said DeeDee Halleck, a communications professor at UCSD and co-founder of Paper Tiger Television, a cable-access show and media center in New York. “They need space to work, to band together and share equipment, a place to exhibit and give each other support.”

The high cost of using video production equipment is the most startling and discouraging of challenges facing graduates and other independent producers. Many UCSD students prolong graduation so they can maintain their privileges at the media center, George said, avoiding the $400 commercial rates.

“Six-year media students are six-year media students by their own choice. They realize that, within this environment, they have the best opportunity to do their work.”

Founders of the San Diego Media Access Center are hoping to broaden those opportunities by arranging more affordable access to commercial production facilities. Many businesses offer substantially lower rates to makers of non-commercial video if they use the facility on standby during off hours, usually late night and early morning.

Now, video makers desiring such rates “must rely on an individual’s sense of compassion,” said Louis Hock, a UCSD professor and widely exhibited video artist who has often negotiated his own rates at production houses. “It would be great to know that there were established rates I could depend on.”

Steve Fagin, a video artist who also teaches at UCSD, sees such an arrangement as a gesture of community responsibility but not necessarily a burden on business.

“Historically, it’s worked out as a reciprocal relation. For every editing job I do, I bring in five more customers. It’s a community service that serves both sides. It also allows people who run these businesses to work on some interesting projects.”

Once such projects are completed, local video makers face another formidable challenge: finding a place to show them. When Installation gallery’s screening program ended, it created “a real hole in the community,” said Halleck. The San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art has operated a “video porch” since 1984, where visitors can choose from a menu of tapes in the museum’s collection, but Wasil calls the museum’s efforts “perfunctory.”

In September, he and the other SDMAC founders will begin offering monthly film and video screenings in the auditorium at Central Library, 820 E St. The first program, organized by SDMAC co-founder Eloise de Leon, will feature three works representing artists’ different motivations for using video, as a means of autobiography, for instance, or as a political tool. In the future, the group plans to schedule traveling exhibitions of video as well as open screenings.

Another opportunity for video makers to show their work lies in public-access television. By law, cable stations are required to provide a certain amount of broadcast time and technical assistance to the community, but, according to Wasil, it’s an opportunity that remains largely untapped.

“A lot of people don’t know that they can go down to their local cable station and screen a panel discussion on inadequate child care, or why there isn’t a public park in their neighborhood,” he said.

One of SDMAC’s goals is to act as a liaison between independent producers and cable stations, and to fulfill the potential of television, what Wasil calls “the ultimate democratic communication tool.” Using cable access, he said, “is an empowering method for individuals and small groups who don’t have the means to reach a larger audience.”

Whether or not SDMAC will have the means to fulfill its potential remains to be seen. The founding group--which also includes Suzanne Sedivec, Dan Martin and Chelle Draper--has applied for several grants and expects some funding from city or county agencies. This month it will be mailing membership brochures and, in October, a “video scavenger hunt” may serve as a fund-raising event.

For now, however, SDMAC exists because of the energies and support of its founders, all of whom have worked in video and yearned for more contact with their peers, a stronger support system and greater access to the eyes and ears of the public.

“We’re inventing something that doesn’t exist,” said Wasil, “but we know what other venues have and haven’t done. We know how to reach the art community. How to reach everybody else? We’ll have to experiment.”