{"id":2954,"date":"2019-06-19T16:55:21","date_gmt":"2019-06-19T16:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/?p=2954"},"modified":"2020-01-28T15:27:55","modified_gmt":"2020-01-28T15:27:55","slug":"videotaping-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/endcrawl.com\/blog\/videotaping-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Videotaping the Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s difficult to imagine a world without video sharing platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, Twitch, WorldStarHipHop, Dailymotion, Youku, and yes, even Pornhub. Forget that the legacy film industry considers Internet streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon as disruptors \u2014 not only do we have more choices for watching films and television than ever before, we’re watching ourselves<\/em> more than ever.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s rewind the clock to 1967, when Sony introduced the Portapak DV-2400 Video Rover<\/strong>, the first portable video system: a heavy, clunky two-piece set consisting of a large black-and-white video camera and a separate record-only \u00bd\u201d reel-to-reel VTR. (A separate VTR was required for video playback.) The one (sometimes two) person operation was light-years ahead of previous attempts at home video technology, the very first of which was 1963\u2019s 100-pound Ampex VR-1500<\/strong> video recorder that retailed for $30,000 USD and required an Ampex engineer to set it up for you.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Image used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

At the time, many consumers were still making their own films with Super8 and 16mm film cameras in all the ways we use our smartphones and contemporary video cameras \u2014 for private consumption, for sharing with friends \u2014 but methods of distribution were limited. Making copies of home movies and independent films (such as they were) was costly, cumbersome, and time-consuming, and as such there was virtually no exhibition platform for these films other than one\u2019s own home projector. Television was another matter. <\/span><\/p>\n

Television was <\/span>video<\/span><\/i>: electronic sound and picture recorded to the same magnetic tape, which was easier to edit than film, and could be duplicated over and over again, up to a certain number of generations. You could reuse tape. You could transmit it directly into people\u2019s homes, which in 1960 included 52 million sets \u2014 nine out of ten American households. (Compared to only 78 percent of households with a broadband connection in 2015<\/a>.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Until what came to be known as the \u201cPortapak Era\u201d, the realm of moving pictures was \u2014 and had been since the inception of moving pictures \u2014 ruled by a top-down system and controlled by those who owned the means of production as well as its dissemination. This realm includes entertainment and sports, and most significantly, education and the news.<\/span><\/p>\n

Video may have been relatively easier than film, but it was not cheap. In order to afford the equipment necessary to shoot, edit, duplicate, and distribute video, early adopters formed clubs around the new technology, collectively purchasing and sharing their resources as enthusiasts of the medium\u2019s potential for expression and for its disruptive and democratic nature. Some of the best-known collectives of that the late 1960s\/early 1970s were birthed in the coastal hotbeds of counterculture, including New York\u2019s The Kitchen<\/strong>, Fluxus<\/strong>, and the Videofreex<\/strong>, and the SF Bay Area’s Video Free America<\/strong> and the Ant Farm<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n