If you don't like TV, go out and make some of your own.
They have interviewed high school students who sell condoms (and fear AIDS) at Condomania, a trendy Melrose Avenue prophylactic store.
They have tagged along with John, the nude handyman, as he repaired a leaky faucet in his birthday suit.
They have videotaped the Church Ladies for Choice singing to the tune of Malvina Reynolds's "Little Boxes": "Psycho Christians, blocking health care, and they all look just the same; There's a white one and a white one and a white one and a white one; Psycho Christians, blocking health care, and they all look just the same."
They have toured the Nixon Library, hung out with anti-nuke protesters in the Nevada desert, and aired previously unseen outtakes from Elvis's 1968 comeback special. They have caught up with writer Paul Bowles in Tangiers and journeyed to Amsterdam to cover High Times magazine's official 1994 Cannabis Cup, a smoke-out where so much dope was consumed that one gets a contact high just watching the footage.
And, on a less humorous note, one of the far-flung video journalists (VJs, they call themselves, and they're not referring to Kennedy and her MTV brethren) interviewed students and parents in Kalkaska, Michigan, on the day that a public school was closed because the community vetoed, for the third time, a tax increase. One 59-year-old resident whose seven children (and several grandchildren) attended the Kalkaska schools admits with no apparent remorse, "I voted 'No' on every one of them."
They are CamNet, the Camcorder Network, and they want to liberate your TV screen.
Their video verite offers a refreshing and badly needed dose of everyday people dealing with the joys, sorrows, highs, and lows of real life, in stark contrast to the blood-and-guts video bites typically dished up by the blow-dried robots of network news.
Using mostly amateur, unpaid VJs scattered throughout the country who have Hi-8 camcorders and plenty of chutzpah, CamNet's founders and editors, Nancy Cain and Judith Binder, have been beaming their delightfully offbeat, often insightful, sometimes funny, always intelligent, frequently political, and genuinely entertaining documentary-style news shows out into a million or so American homes for the past two years.
It is the night of April Fools' Day, and Judith Binder is on assignment. Armed with a small Sony Hi-8 camcorder (see "How to Become a CamNet VJ" below), Binder is standing in the parking lot behind Mondo Video A-Go-Go in Hollywood, where a performance art troupe will soon begin its satiric Crucifixion Carnival, in which "The Miracle of the Bleeding Heart of San Moronus" will occur.
But first, as longhaired artsy types unload a cross - with a life-sized Jesus figure attached - from the back of a van, Binder has her camera trained on a self-described "rock singer/actor/alien" who calls himself Rocket Boy. Wearing a red beret and wild beard, he explains that he's currently acting in an underground film called The Revenge of Big Foot, in which he "goes to hell for raping and killing Big Foot's daughter." As Binder lets the videotape roll, documenting this craziness, she is assisted by actress Beth Lapides, a sometime CamNet correspondent who at the moment is deftly handling Rocket Boy's interrogation. "So, Rocket Boy, what's with the name?" wonders Lapides.
"It has to do with my five UFO experiences," Rocket Boy matter-of-factly replies.
"Oooh!" exclaims Lapides. Then, without a pause, she asks him to talk about his most recent one-on-one with these alleged space invaders. "They came down to me and asked me to help find a person, another alien actually, who had been kidnapped...."
And so it goes when you're out there, trying to break new ground, looking to show that slice of life that rarely makes it onto the TV screen. Two weeks later, in the Venice Beach, California, cottage that houses Nancy Cain and serves as CamNet's base of operations, Cain explains that the only snippet expected to make it onto the screen from the Crucifixion Carnival is a 30-second bit featuring a young woman. The woman, playing the role of a "cheerleader for Jesus," goes through her routine yelling: "G-O-D God! Go God!" and thrusting blue-and-gold pompoms toward the sky.
"We might use that as a 'bumper,'" says Cain, referring to brief, evocative pieces of video - kids playing video games, two turtles fighting, a snail oozing through the grass, a little girl explaining why she doesn't like TV commercials - that are interspersed between CamNet's longer pieces.
Cain and Binder never go anywhere without their camcorders. Sometimes a tad spacey, sometimes highly focused, Nancy Cain has the look of a '60s anti-war protester, with her long, curly, slightly out-of-control hair and oversized jeans jacket. The look fits, though - in the late '60s Cain was part of Videofreex, a radical video group that shot footage of Woodstock and the Chicago Seven.
Judith Binder is more uptown: styled reddish hair, black combat boots, jeans with appliqueed fish, and plastic snake earrings.
CamNet is their labor of love. Neither of the founders are paid, and often they have to supplement the advertising revenues that dribble in to keep their show on the air. To survive, Cain has taken on outside video-editing jobs, most recently working on infomercials. Binder, who is financially independent, does theatrical consulting and directing on the side.
Since going on the air in 1992, more than 40 hourlong CamNet shows have been broadcast.
When asked why she devotes so much of her time to CamNet, Binder gets very quiet, very serious. "It's my way of expressing myself," she says, adding that she believes the work is making a positive contribution to the community. "I feel I need to give service."
"We are the alternative network," says Cain proudly. "We give people the chance to communicate with each other using this vehicle, the camcorder. You don't have to be on the Internet; you can be on the CamNet."
While network news and CNN tend to report what could be considered the official version of the news, CamNet offers a down-to-earth, proletarian perspective. The VJs see themselves as video revolutionaries. Long before a home video of police beating Rodney King shook the nation, Cain and Binder understood both the power and revolutionary nature of the camcorder. No longer limited to media professionals, the camcorder today is nearly as omnipresent as the VCR. "Everyone pretty much has access to one," says Binder. "Either they own one, or they know somebody that has one."
In an MTV-world of quick cuts and trendy camera angles, CamNet pieces unfold slowly. CamNet VJs couldn't care less about slick; what they're after is emotional resonance. People are allowed to talk for more than just a sentence or two. To view CamNet is to look through a window into the real, dirty, unvarnished, and - in a sense - unedited world.
It's not The News, cautions Cain, but the other news. Right now, CamNet is at something of a crossroads. In the two years it's been on the air, Cain and Binder have assembled a crack crew of VJs and managed to get national acclaim for a show put together on a true shoestring budget (US$1,000 per on-the-air hour). But without a sales team to bring in serious advertising dollars, without savvy business brains to expand its audience, CamNet is a good idea in search of serious capitalization.
That hasn't stopped the two women from continuing to produce the show, but they have spent much of this year seriously pursuing Hollywood dollars that can fund their dream of the CamNet Channel – alternative news and features 24-hours a day.
With access to the tools of the trade, everyone is a potential VJ. Take correspondent Barbara Brownell, a teacher, actress, and mother living in North Hollywood, California. Brownell stumbled across CamNet while channel surfing and dug it so much she bought her own camcorder and became a regular contributor to CamNet. Whileanyone is a potential VJ, it takes practice to deliver footage that will satisfy the exacting and peculiar standards of Binder and Cain. "No talking heads," Binder says. "No anchorman-style narration. Just tell the story by showing it to us."
Many of the pieces they air are remarkably intimate. A prosthetic-breast manufacturer gives them a tour of the factory, then reveals that she herself wears prosthetic breasts. She even pulls a falsie out of her bra, as CamNet's camera rolls. "We don't have any three-man crews," says Cain. "One person with a little camcorder just isn't intimidating."
"They feel this is their chance to be heard," adds Binder, trying to explain the willingness of people they video to expose their humanness. "We're not confrontational. We're not there to confront them, we're there to hear them. I think people are starved to be heard. And most of the time, people are not being heard."
Though the pieces are often heavily edited - Cain and Binder can go through two hours or more of raw footage to pull together a five- or six-minute segment – the goal is to create seamless television. "If it looks like it's happening at the moment you're seeing it, if it looks like you're experiencing it live and you're inside it instead of outside it, then it works," says Cain.
"Like you're overhearing it - or, I should say, watching it - as it happens, as opposed to being told about it later," adds Binder.
Cain and Binder met in the fall of 1985 at the Wallenboyd Theater in Los Angeles. Cain's husband, satirist (and publisher of The Realist since 1958) Paul Krassner, was performing his stand-up routine. By chance, they happened to be sitting near one another at a long table. Cain overheard Binder saying, "I have this little JVC camera and I can fit it into my bag ... and I have so many jobs and I don't even have time to do all of them."
"I turned to her and said, 'The first thing you have to do is raise your rates.' Which she still hasn't done," Cain laughs. "She said to me, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'Well I shoot with that same kind of camera.' 'You what?' It was a big shock. It was great. So that was a Saturday, and I think on Monday Judith came down here. At the time I had nothing in this place but a coffee table. We had to go somewhere else to look at each other's video."
"But I wasn't going to let her go," continues Binder. "I knew this was it!"
The two women discovered that each had been shooting video for years and that they shared the same fervor for the medium. Cain had first picked up a camera in 1969 while working as a producer at CBS-TV in New York; she says that once she started shooting video in the field, she began daydreaming about a community-based video news channel. For a time, as part of Videofreex, Cain did broadcast home-grown video using a jerry-built transmitter to her neighbors in upstate New York. Binder was a housewife until the feminist movement of the '70s inspired her to pursue her interests in art and theater. In addition to directing alternative theater in LA, she turned to photography, and in the '80s to video, to document female artists.
Cain and Binder became good friends and business partners, helping each other out on any and all video jobs that came along. Then they got a lucky break. At the end of the '80s, two of Cain's longtime friends, Tom Weinberg and John Schwartz, started The '90s Channel in Boulder, Colorado. The '90s Channel began by broadcasting independently produced documentaries in eight cities on United Artists Cable (now owned by Tele-Communications Inc.). At the same time, Weinberg and a number of his associates, including Nancy Cain, developed The '90s, a weekly hourlong alternative news and features show that primarily used camcorder footage. Cain and Binder were hired as producers. The '90s went on the air in 1989 and ran for four seasons. For two seasons it was funded by PBS, aired on PBS affiliates, and seen in more than 100 markets. While working on The '90s, Cain and Binder put together a loose network of VJs. But in 1992, PBS canceled its support for The '90s. "That's PBS," says Cain with a shrug. "They never do what we want them to do. I don't know why they discontinued it."
Meanwhile, Cain says, The '90s Channel was "desperate for good programming." So instead of seeking out other staff TV jobs, Cain and Binder created CamNet, which gained instant access to the million or so homes that get The '90s Channel as part of their basic cable package.
Operating out of Cain's cottage, surrounded by editing equipment on loan from Weinberg (he eventually took the equipment back; CamNet currently trades ad space for editing time), Cain and Binder put the show together. Initially, they produced two two-hour shows each month. Each show was "looped" and broadcast continuously, 24 hours a day, for a week, on The '90s Channel. At the beginning of this year, they cut back to producing one hourlong show each month to free them up to capitalize and develop better distribution.
CamNet currently airs on The '90s Channel in ten localities: Los Angeles; suburban Denver; Baltimore; Detroit; Philadelphia; Vernon, Connecticut; Alameda, California; Scottsdale, Arizona; Shreveport, Louisiana; and Oakland County, Michigan. At press time, CamNet was also available via satellite on National Access Television (NATV) in the US, Canada, and Mexico.
"We share air with Yoga With Lisa, Punk Wave, and Girls Girls Girls, " says Cain.
"That last one is suspect," smiles Binder.
Nancy Cain is doing her best to hold back the tears. As Cain, Binder, and I sit in the living room of Cain's cottage, just a block away from the craziness of the Venice Beach boardwalk, she is screening an extended piece on a woman who spends her days singing for spare change in New York's Christopher Street subway station.
The piece is powerful. The singer, a young woman from Alabama who is missing a few teeth, is a real talent, an Emmylou Harris of the streets. As she strums her electric guitar and sings James Taylor's sad ballad, "You Can Close Your Eyes," a drunk tries unsuccessfully to clap along in rhythm. For the most part, the singer is ignored by the New Yorkers hurrying onto the subway cars. At one point, when the camera leaves the singer to focus for a moment on the drunk, he snaps, "I told you don't put the fucking camera on me. You want to pay me, pay me!"
When she's done singing, the woman kneels before her open guitar case, counting the $3 or $4 contributed by passersby. Does she make much, she is asked. "Pretty good," she replies dispassionately.
"Something about that really gets to me no matter how many times I see it," says Cain.
"Sad, so sad," says Binder. "Her eyes."
"And her situation," says Cain.
Spend a few days with Cain and Binder, and it becomes clear that CamNet is not simply a job but a way of life. Actually, CamNet isn't a job at all. At the moment, they're running but one paid ad, for Phone Relief, a device that attaches to a telephone headset and allows for a hands-free phone conversation. "CamNet is absolutely an act of love," says Cain. "We've got to do this."
They've been actively pursuing financing from a major media company. They've "taken meetings" with executives from CBS Late Night, Fox, Time Warner, and others. They say an exec at Time Warner promised, "We're going to throw some money at you," but then wouldn't return their calls.
"They like it, but then they get scared," says Cain. "As I always say, if you want to be innovative, you have to be innovative. That's the problem."
But lately things have been looking up. In May they negotiated a deal with two veteran TV executives who hope to turn CamNet into a real business. The plan is for Cain and Binder to spend a month in a top-of-the-line video suite (paid for by the execs) and put together a killer CamNet demo. Their new business partners intend to shop the show to medium-market network affiliate stations for broadcast during "fringe" hours.
The two women are hopeful that before long they'll have the resources to air a 30-minute version of CamNet daily. Still, if things fall through, they'll continue on their own, self-financing CamNet and airing it through their current outlets. "The more the Hollywood execs say 'No,' the more determined we are," says Cain. "For every deal that doesn't happen, it just makes us more determined, goddamn it!"
Individuals interested in buying copies of CamNet shows can do so for $20 from CamNet. Call +1 (310) 399 3775 or write to CamNet, P. O. Box 2757, Venice, California 90294.
How to Become a CamNet VJ
CamNet is looking for volunteer VJs (there's no money in it yet). If you think you've got what it takes you can reach CamNet at +1 (310) 399 3775. If you want to submit something you've already shot, send a VHS copy, not the original, to CamNet, P. O. Box 2757, Venice, California 90294, along with a self-addressed envelope with postage if you want the tape returned.
Binder and Cain insist that they look at everything and will offer feedback.
CamNet Rules:
Use a Hi-8 camcorder.
Bring along plenty of high-quality Hi-8 tape (Fuji is recommended).
Bring two extra fully charged two-hour camcorder batteries.
Buy an external, directional microphone (available for less than $100) and attach that to your camcorder. The built-in microphone doesn't cut it.
Wear a stereo headset (available for $3 or so) and monitor the sound as you are shooting.
Keep your lens as wide as possible; avoid zooming in on your subject. If you want to get closer, physically move towards your subject.
Keep shooting! Videotape is cheap. Keep the camera running, even if nothing is happening. Chances are, as soon as you shut it off, something will happen.
No tripods.
No talking heads.
Follow these simple rules and CamNet will be happy with your tape.
