Kandy Fong

Fan
Name:	Kandy Fong
Alias(es):	Kandy Barber
Type:	vidder & slash writer
Fandoms:	Star Trek
Communities:
Other:
URL:	Kandy at AO3 Kandy Fong songvid tape flyer from the mid-1990s
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Kandy Fong is a Star Trek fan and mother of vidding.

Kandy Fong is widely acknowledged to be the first live action media vidders. She began by making slideshows that set Star Trek footage to music in 1975. Most slides were one of a kind because they were made from pieces of discarded Classic series outtake film that she had obtained from Gene Roddenberry. Kandy showed these slideshows at dozens of gen and slash Trek cons starting with the 1976 Equicon/Filmcon run by Bjo Trimble, then continuing through the 1990s. The well known slideshow, "Both Sides Now," was made circa 1980 and sent to Gene Roddenbery in 1986. .

Kandy ran vid shows at west coast gen and slash cons starting in 1979 and continuing through the 1990s. Kandy created the concept of a vid show compilation tape in 1989 for Koon-ut-Cali-Con, and continued making the masters and copies for many other cons (sometimes with credits!) that continued to circulate long after the conventions. She also agented tape collections of other vidders, such as Mary Van Deusen. These compilation tapes, e.g. A History of Vidding, have preserved important pieces of vidding history.

Kandy Fong helped start the longest-running Star Trek Fan Club in the world: United Federation of Phoenix in 1975. Her first slide show was created as 'club entertainment'. Kandy was an editor for several issues of the club's zine: 'The Phoenican Star Galley'.

She then helped edit: 'Golden Oldies & New Delights'.

The next year, Kandy and 3 other local slash fans held the fourth K/S con, 4-Play in Phoenix.

She is also one of the creators of the famous K/S convention skit, the Dancing Penises.

Kandy brought her friends to Los Angeles to videotape the Hollywood Walk of Fame Star Ceremonies, plus the private parties afterwards for Leonard Nimoy and Gene Roddenberry. She also directed " Star Trek: The Home Movie."

Some of Kandy's early slide shows and songvids can be found on her Kandy Fong Slide and VHS Video Shows to 1990‎ compilation DVD.

In 2004, she released an anthology named "Vids by Kandy" which includes some of her early works, followed by "The Start of the Betamax Years: 1990-1992" in the late 2000s.

Kandy is the inventor of the con tape.

At Vividcon 2012, Kandy brought her slides and tapes to the convention and performed a number of rare slideshows: these performances were filmed and several can be seen at Kandy's page at the Archive of Our Own.

Interviews

• Media Fandom Oral History Project Interview with Kandy Fong and Marnie (2012)

Some Early Vids and Slideshows

• Just The Way You Are - Quantum Leap
• Losing My Religion -- SH
• Both Sides Now
• Banned from Argo (the slideshow)
• Kandy Fong's First Slide Show
• What Do You Do With a Drunken Vulcan?

Her Slideshow Start

From a 2012 interview with Kandy Fong and Marnie S:

[KF]:The Beatles did a music video for "Strawberry Fields." Where they were doing things like jumping out of trees, and then this long piano, that went up— the strings went up into the tree, and they were doing all sorts of things. They weren't standing there and playing instruments, which was all the music videos you'd seen to date. And I thought, duh. This guy I'm dating has the cigar boxes full of little pieces of film from Star Trek. I'll betcha I could put those together and tell a story.

MS: Off-cuts, yes.

KF: And, because the local Star Trek club in Phoenix, which is the longest-running fan club in the world, United Federation of Phoenix — thank you, I named it— (laughter)

KF: Umm— needed entertainment. I figured, well, let's put together a little show. So I said, "Hey. Hey, best friend. Hey, hey, future husband— (laughter)

KF: —let's get this idea, and put together a show.

MS: [name redacted] had no idea what he was getting into.

KF: I know. That was his dowry. The three cigar boxes full.

MS: (laughter)

KF: As well as the fact that he had all the episodes on three-quarter-inch tape. Professional one-inch tape. (unintelligible)

MS: One-inch tape. So you knew he was a keeper, then.

KF: Yeah. Definitely. So, I decided that let's do a thing there, I did a funny little thing where, uh, "What Do You Do With a Drunken Vulcan," I did a little thing of that.

MS: Yes, I remember that.

KF: Then I did a little story about Ensign Fong aboard the Enterprise—, a very Mary Sue story. Y'know, very little story, I just illustrated it. And as a club we were all gonna go over to the very last IDICon Film Con that Bjo Trimble was doing. And her husband was going to be coming to Phoenix for something with his job. And I wrote to her, and said, "Hey, I have this thing I'd love to show at your convention." And she says, "Well, hey, I'm going to be coming in town with my husband, why don't you show it to me?" So I did. She says, "Cool." I ended up taking it to the convention and they put us in this little room at the bottom. And she says, "Oh, I'm sure this'll be a couple of people will want to see it." Well, it had only like thirty-five people I think that could fit into the room. So they ran it in a loop, for eight hours. People would see it, get out, go back in line again, and then stand in line for an hour and a half so they could see the seven-minute thing again. And so that's— I knew there was a hunger for it. So, I had met Gene Roddenberry previously, 'cause he was in Phoenix giving a speech and I was president of the Star Trek club, so I got to meet him. It's complicated, I'll tell the story another time. So, when he was there, I kinda say, "Hi! I'm glad to see you. By the way, would you sign my, y'know, my club badge, so I'm officially a fan of yours," and he did. And he— and I says, "By the way, I have this idea of putting together a slide show." He goes, "Oh, that's a great idea. I've been trying to convince Paramount that there's enough fan interest in a movie." And I said, "Great." So I'm writing to him eventually, and he ended up writing back to me, and oh, I have it in writing, that I can do these slide shows. And in fact, in the future years I ended up visiting a couple of times at Paramount. And he gave me actual slides that were publicity shots, et cetera, from the various sets, so that I could kind of expand my slide shows, and show more....

[snipped]

KF: People liked it. And it was a way for me to get to more conventions, because I had very little money. I mean, I'd go and I'd work a second job just to be able to afford to go, to fly to a convention. MS: Well, that's what you did all this work for. My husband was amazed at the hours we put in, y'know, for absolutely no compensation. But the thing is, the egoboo you got. And the reaction of the fans who came. We had fans who sent us flowers and wrote beautiful letters, and stuff. After. And the thing was, that after the convention is over you're never ready to do it again. We would always say, people would be begging to sign up for the following year—

MS: —and we would say, we've got to take at least a month off, or two, to see if we are ready to do another one. And then we would start getting all this stuff in, and the next time we got together we'd start reading all this stuff. And, inevitably, we would say, okay. We'll do it again.

Articles

• mentioned in Why Do Fan-Made Trailers Rule the Internet?, by Cat Zhang, New York Times (October 25, 2023)