Penny McCann is an independent director, writer and producer who focuses on experimental film. She is also the former Director of SAW Video, now DARC.
Penny first became a DARC member in 1989. She was active in Ottawa’s theatre community and had studied film, but had yet to gain any video production experience. She had an idea for a video she wanted to create, and mentioned it to a friend of hers in theatre. He told her about SAW Video’s JumpstART grant, a fund for artists entering new disciplines, and encouraged her to apply.
She received the grant and began learning how to produce videos “the hard way, with big cameras and crazy editing processes.” She recorded projects using three-quarter-inch videotape, the modern production technology of the time.
Penny became a very active member of SAW Video, eventually joining the management committee. In 2004, she stepped into the role of Director of the organization.
DARC has come a long way from its humble beginnings, and Penny witnessed this firsthand. When she first joined the centre, “it was basically a big hallway hidden behind SAW Gallery.”
One of Penny’s biggest efforts during her time as Director was shepherding the facility project, a 5-year initiative that scored DARC its current spot on the main floor of Arts Court, and allowed for the expansion of our state-of-the-art facilities. “We were the little media arts centre that could.”
One of the facilities Penny is most proud to see in use today is the recording studio. “That was something I always wanted … It’s a wonderful space.”
Penny left the role in 2018 to focus on her creative practice as a filmmaker, but she remains a member. As an experienced filmmaker with several titles to her name, Penny takes advantage of DARC’s subsidized equipment rental rates, and has taken the odd workshop to refresh her knowledge or expand her skills, like the Field Recording Workshop where she got to experiment with our binaural microphone.
“It’s just obvious if you’re an independent filmmaker to be a member of DARC … The large majority of my films have been made with DARC support.”
For her most recent film project, Before Me, she rented the Arri camera from the DARC equipment library. “It was really a wonderful, very exciting tool to use … The effect is really quite breathtaking.”
In Penny’s opinion, “the most valuable thing about being a DARC member is connecting with a community of independent makers.”
She mentions that though everyone in the DARC community comes from different backgrounds and have varying levels of technical experience, they all have one thing in common: “Everybody’s united in that they want to make independent work, and that is its own hard path that you embark on, and so you really need your people around you to help you move along the path.”
