The fans seem less concerned about their relation to video
technologies than they are to writing technologies. Although the
video contest is often the high point of a slash convention, going
on for a tremendously raucous and pleasurable three or four
hours, fewer of the fans are involved in making videos, or “songtapes,”
as they are called. One reason is obvious: the greater difficulty
of access to video equipment, especially editing equipment,
than to desktop publishing and photocopying technologies,
which are often available in the fan’s own workplace and can be
used even while on the job.

That the fans are concerned to make this technology more available, however, can be seen in the scheduling at fan conventions of workshops such as one I attended called “Song Tapes for the Masses.” The workshop, organized by two fan video artists known for making songtapes that are not particularly slick but highly effective and popular with the fans offered the novice or would-be songtape producer advice that was both practical and aesthetic.

The songtapes are, in fact, music videos made right at home with two VCRs, an audio cassette deck, and a stop watch. The organizers of the workshop handed out a helpful chart that allows the songtape maker to write down each line of, usually, a rock song with a love theme,
the duration of each phrase, and the duration of the video segment
that will be matched vvith it. The video segments are taken
from fans’ private collections of the seventy-eight (plus the pilot)
Star Trek episodes and the seven Star Trek films, which are also on
tape, copied from video store rentals.

“NASA/TREK Popular Science and Sex in America” by Constance Penley (1997)