TVTV
(video collective)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
TVTV (short for Top Value Television) was a San
Francisco-based pioneering video collective founded in 1972 by Allen
Rucker, Michael
Shamberg, Tom Weinberg, Hudson Marquez and Megan Williams. Shamberg
was author of the 1971 "do-it-yourself" video production
manual Guerrilla
Television. Over the years, more than thirty "guerrilla
video" makers were participants in TVTV productions. They included
members of the Ant
Farm: Chip
Lord, Doug Michels, Hudson Marquez and Curtis Schreier; the Videofreex,
Skip
Blumberg, Nancy
Cain, Chuck
Kennedy, and Parry
Teasdale. TVTV pioneered the use of independent video based on
wanting to change society and have a good time inventing new and
then-revolutionary media, ½" Sony
Portapak
video equipment, and later embracing the ¾" video format.
The group made a series of unique socially significant historical
documentaries such as:
- Four More Years (1972), covering the 1972
Republican National Convention
- The World's Largest TV Studio (1972), covering the 1972
Democratic National Convention
- Adland (1974), an examination of American commercial
culture
- Lord
of the Universe (1974), an award-winning documentary on
the activities of the GuruMaharaj
Ji and his followers[1]
- TVTV Looks at the Oscars
(1976)
- TVTV: Super
Bowl (1976)
- Gerald Ford's America (1975)
- The TVTV Show (1976), TVTV's final television
special, co-produced with NBC
television
- The Bob
Dylan Hard Rain Special (1976), another NBC
co-production
- Supervision (1976), a multipart PBS
series about the birth of television and its cultural impact
- The Good Times are Killing me (1975) a portrait of
Cajun culture. Focusing on the Cajuns'strong cultural identity as
well as the life of Cajun Musician Nathan
Abshire
Other participants in TVTV included designer Elan
Soltes, producer David
Axelrod, actor-comedian Bill
Murray and his brother Brian
Doyle-Murray, cinematographer Paul
Goldsmith, actor and director Harold
Ramis and producer Wendy
Appel (aka Wendy
Apple).
In 1976 -1977, experimental filmmaker Wheeler
Winston Dixon briefly joined the collective, editing most of the Supervision
series, as well as portions of the Hard Rain Special and the
entirety of The TVTV Show.
TVTV's many alumni went onto careers of their own with the disbanding
of the group in 1979, after a move to Los Angeles that brought many in
the group more into the orbit of conventional filmmaking. Bill
Murray went on to become an international film star; Michael
Shamberg a film producer, most notably with his company Jersey
Films, in collaboration with Stacey
Sher and Danny
DeVito; Allen
Rucker became a writer and author; Wheeler
Winston Dixon became an author and university professor; Harold
Ramis went on to a long career as a mainstream film director, writer
and actor.
Other TVTV members Skip
Blumberg became a well known videographer and producer; Tom
Weinberg produced more than 500 nonfiction broadcasts, local and
national based in his hometown, Chicago; Elan Soltes emerged as a video
graphic designer in Hollywood. One of the world's most influential video
"communes," TVTV's influence is felt to this day on the many
"guerrilla videos" on YouTube
and other websites, as people now routinely use videography to get their
message out to larger audiences.
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