Meesoo Lee, a video-maker from Vancouver whose work is inspired by zines and underground filmmaking, is one such artist. For his new video short, A Dream of Donuts, he used the video camera's tendency to bleed colours to create effective distinctions between segments of his movie.

When actor Jeanette Ordas dreams she has a huge plate of donuts in the fridge, the video effect is nearly surreal in its colour saturation. And when Jeanette awakens to discover the fridge is empty except for a jar of pickle brine, the shots are contrastingly sharp and clear. Like all of Lee's shorts, A Dream of Donuts is perfectly timed. His use of spontaneous effects turn the mundane details of life into objects of fine art.

"I started making videos because it was the only technology I could afford," he says about his choice of medium. "But you get to make lots of mistakes and try things out. And it's something you can do without taking classes."

In the space of a year, Lee has made four video compilations: Hair Fantasy & Other Delusions, Think, Why I Hate Modern Dance, and A Dream of Donuts. "I like the instant gratification," Lee says. "You get to see what you just made, for better or worse. And when you're finished editing you can run over to a friend's house and pop it into their VCR for an impromptu world premiere."

There are limitations to the medium, for sure, particularly with old VHS camcorders. Quality degrades when the footage is edited, or enlarged for projection. Shots can easily slide out of focus, or end up being shaky. Many of the in-camera special effects, like barn door wipes (the effect of doors closing) and page curls, are the height of cheese. But many video-makers have found uses for these weaknesses. Toronto video-maker and Broken Pencil magazine's film and video reviewer Jonathan Culp uses older Hi-8 cameras to produce his on-the-fly activist video documentaries, including Chew It, Somalia!, Haywire and Other Hits, and Homeless on the Hill: OCAP Goes to Ottawa. "It's pretty easy to make a certain kind of video all by yourself," he says. "You can ignore lighting, use the in-camera microphone, run out to the street and shoot whatever's going on." In Culp's view, the video camera is like a household appliance, "an image blender," he calls it.

Camcorders are also quick to set up and easy to disguise, so they're perfect for under-cover shots. One of the great moments in feature-length video-making was in 1993, when a guy from Houston named Christopher Wilcha got a job as marketing assistant at Columbia House mail-order record club and took his camcorder to work each day. After a while, his co-workers forgot about his camera and let him film them in bizarre and revealing situations, such as managers covertly monitoring their employees' phone calls. Wilcha quit his job and went to film school where he edited the 2,000-plus hours of footage into a documentary that exposes the uglier side of corporate America. Called The Target Shoots First (1999), the movie won two awards at Austin's South By Southwest (SXSW) film festival, Best Documentary Feature and the Audience Award.

Incognito and impromptu don't necessarily mean sloppy. Esther Bell's feature-length movie Godass (2000), is a classic example of the kind of beauty digital video can produce. Based in New York, Bell formed her own production company, Hell's Bells, after she graduated from college. Godass is a superb movie about a South Carolina punk zinester, Teri, whose mom keeps dating one loser after another. Teri doesn't fit in at all - she wears lots of black eyeliner and hosts punk rock shows to pay for printing her zine Skid Marks. Determined to bring her zine to a "more sympathetic" audience, she travels to New York with two friends. While there, she stays with her biological father and comes to terms with her deep-seated homophobia, while also managing to gain a bit of a reputation for her zine.

What makes Godass so exciting is that it captures indie culture in a way Hollywood never could. Godass is a breakthrough in DIY media, and shot on a budget of just a few thousand dollars. Jason Kucsma of Clamor magazine remarked that Bell's use of digital video has "an aesthetic feel comparable to the high production quality that most people expect from major films." Not bad for low-end technology.

Is there a distinct video aesthetic? Jonathan Culp feels that if there is, it is primarily based on the medium's limitations. "Most video ends up on a television set rather than on a big white wall, so you really kind of have to de-emphasize the panoramic vistas and dancing figures of light. You either need to blend in with your prospective surroundings, or create something so mindblowing that it sucks everyone's attention right out of the room."

The biggest obstacle for video-making is an effective distribution method - video stores don't often carry indies, so their makers toil in relative obscurity. After making his political documentaries, Culp started a small video distribution network called Satan Macnuggit Popular Arts. He carries dozens of activist and independent titles (including Meesoo Lee's videos), and distributes them through a zine catalogue where $5 videos can be bought through mail order. He has also managed to get Suspect Video to carry some of his titles.

Culp thinks that indie video might not stay underground forever. As he sees it, "When musical instruments became electric and affordable, the rock and roll that resulted was in general hugely energetic and truly popular, channelling old forms into an accessible and cathartic mutation. Don't pick your nose with your video camera, but don't try to ride it bareback to Hollywood either. Video was born to rock and roll!"

Indie video-makers and where to reach 'em: Meesoo Lee meesoo@direct.ca; Jonathan Culp and Satan Macnuggit Popular Arts satanmacnuggit@tao.ca; Esther Bell www.estherbell.com; and Christopher Wilcha's The Target Shoots First is available all over the Net.

Write to Emily Pohl-Weary at emily@kissmachine.org or visit www.kissmachine.org.

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