TVTV

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 Guru Maharaj Ji and his followerscite web |url=http://www.experimentaltvcenter.org/history/people/ptext.php3?id=61&page=1 |title=Video History Project: Resources - People Text |accessdate=2008-04-10 |format= |work=]
* "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

Other participants in TVTV included artist Hudson Marquez, 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.

References

External links

* [http://www.eai.org/eai/biography.jsp?artistID=464 TVTV Bio at Electonic Arts Intermix]
* [http://www.eai.org/eai/artist.jsp?artistID=464 TVTV Productions Available for Rental]
* [http://www.vdb.org/smackn.acgi$artistdetail?TVTV TVTV] in the [http://www.vdb.org/ Video Data Bank]
* [http://www.experimentaltvcenter.org/history/people/ptext.php3?id=7 History of TVTV]
* [http://mediaburn.org/Video-Preview.128.0.html?&uid=4081 World's Largest TV Studio]
* [http://mediaburn.org/Video-Preview.128.0.html?&aaa=12&flagg=2&uid=4414 Four More Years]
* [http://mediaburn.org/Video-Preview.128.0.html?&uid=4248 Adland]
* [http://www.mediaburn.org/Video-Preview.128.0.html?uid=4247 Lord of the Universe]
* [http://mediaburn.org/Video-Preview.128.0.html?&uid=3977 TVTV Goes to the Super Bowl]