Rock 'n' roller Todd Rundgren envisions a brave new world of television-for-the-people.

The small monitor screen flickers to life in the darkened room. A small boy, slumbering in bed, is awakened by a brilliant flash of red light. Outside his window, the planet Mars hovers, growing to Olympian proportions. The boy speeds off into space in pursue of adventure. Mechanical toys are transformed into Martian warriors. Spaceships zoom silently across space, engulfed in precision dogfights. On the planet Venus, titanic trees and strange, canine creatures cavort. The planet Mercury assumes a playful, Tinkerbellesque form and glides through the solar system like a pulsating guardian angel.

The images on the screen flow smoothly from one scene to another. It's more somnambulistic than Star Wars, more dreamlike than dramatic. At the end of 25 minutes, the screen goes black and the viewer realizes that he has just witnessed an adventure wherein the plot-line was conveyed totally through visual imagery and music: Holst's The Planets. By commercial television standards, the spacey excursion is a revolutionary step in video techniques.

At the back of the room, The Planets' producer, Todd Rundgren, looks pleased at the reaction of his small audience. Known to millions of teenagers as a rock and roll musician/composer, Rundgren is also a force to be reckoned with in the field of do-it-yourself video.

He doesn't look like your typical revolutionary type. His hair is long, yet obviously styled. His clothes are casual, yet well tailored. What serves as the base for his revolutionary operations is, in reality, a million and a half dollar country house/video studio near Woodstock, New York. Despite the expense of his trappings, Rundgren is a bit of a guerrilla fighter, a leader in the new army of young video exponents: artists helming homegrown studios who are interested in advancing the state of the art for artistry's sake, commercial video interests be damned.

Rundgren's individualistic stance on video may seem anarchistic to all those whose idea of the medium consists of Charlie's Angels or reruns of I Love Lucy, but to those who look to video as the next great step in cultural/communication/entertainment circles, Rundgren is just one of the visionary crowd.

Many technophiles look to the 198O's as the decade of the great video explosion. Network television is quietly losing its hold on "the vast wasteland" of TV viewers. Already, 22 percent of the nation's tube watchers have subscribed to non-commercial cable outlets. Sears, at present, is selling a theatrical TV channel to individual set owners on a house to house, one to one basis. The advent of satellite cable will make privately owned receiver/antennas for non-commercial stations the rage by the decade's end. In addition, the last five years have witnessed the enormous growth of home video markets, with accessories such as video tape viewers, recorders and wall-sized screens becoming big sellers. Several companies, including RCA, are openly proclaiming that an entertainment revolution is en route thanks to the new video disc line.

As highly publicized as these hardware advancements have been, their arrival has been much too slow in coming, according to Rundgren and his adventuresome video peers. Their development is being hampered, in the opinion of some, by commercially minded corporations with dinosaur marketing mentalities and myopic vision.

In his own small way, Rundgren is trying to speed up the video revolution and break down the creative restraints imposed by the commercial world. He has produced a $150,000 video presentation, the aforementioned visual interpretation of Holst's The Planets as performed by RCA recording artist Tomita. The project was originally intended as a video disc to be marketed by RCA and was half-completed when RCA backed out. Currently attempting to finish the project, Rundgren expresses cautious optimism when talking of the near-future of free-form, conceptual video productions.

Will there be a demand for such an art form? "I think there could be," he ventures. "I don't think that the people who are shaping the market, at this point, have the vision necessary to realize it, though. They haven't seen any examples as yet. A lot of them aren't willing to experiment with something that hasn't been tried. Most commercial video at this point is something that's based on a proven formula or has appeared somewhere else; a movie that's already been a hit in the theater and is simply transferred to video or, in broadcast television, sitcom formulas that spawn countless imitations. Even within those boundaries, if a first experiment is not successful, there will be no experimentation beyond that point.

"The breakthrough for creative video will come when one piece is hugely successful. I don't know whether it will be The Planets or something else. But some one presentation has to be successful, a video Star Wars. People didn't make huge investments in science fiction movies previous to Star Wars. Somebody had to take a gamble on that. And it was hugely successful. Then everybody started making science fiction movies with astronomical budgets. Now, there's a whole new genre of film: the high tech science fiction film of the 1970s and 1980s. Someone had to take the same chance with video."

A robot pilots an extraterrestial spacecraft on a miniature set, which was especially built for The Planets

Rundgren removes the cassette of The Planets from the tape deck and replaces it in its drawer. He moves from the viewing room to the nearby art room. Inside are stacked small armies of mechanical Martians, Venusian creatures and paintings that served as strange spacescapes in the presentation's chromakeyed scenes featuring live action and various video special effects. Rundgren heads downstairs to his studio proper.

"I first got interested in video about five or six years ago," he says, "right after I moved up here. I used to do work in my house on a more or less personal or experimental basis. The first piece of equipment I got was a video synthesizer made by EMS Industries. I'd been using some of their keyboard synthesizers in my music but when they came out with a video synthesizer, I had to buy one.

"After that, I started accumulating equipment on a regular basis. It still wasn't broadcast quality, though. Then, about a year and a half ago, I got in the financial position to upgrade to broadcast quality. [Editor's note: The financial position was caused, in part, by Rundgren's producing Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell mega-hit long player.] I've continued to add equipment since that time and now we have a broadcast capability studio. Anything we produce here can appear in any format. It can be broadcast over the air or can appear on cable, cassette, disc or whatever.

Rundgren walks through the cluttered control booth and the vast studio located in the basement level of his hideaway. Amidst the rows of monitors and playback units are choice pieces of equipment. A motion control, computer camera system. BVH-1000 recorders. A Vital special-effects switcher. Rutt-Etra Synthesizer. Two-channel digital effects generator. Sixteen track audio recording capability. The works.

"It's all state of the art," Rundgren drawls. "But in the video industry, where there's a new development every month, state of the art changes very quickly. We're not behind anyone, though. I first got interested in all of this when I started seeing what some people were doing in terms of experimental video, mostly on educational TV: Channel 13 in New York City. They had a regular program called Video Tape Review which showed what artists were up to. I think the first time I actually got into a video studio and did anything was for a commercial for one of my albums. I produced the commercial at Channel 13.I had a chance to fool around a little bit with some of the equipment. I was hooked."

As Rundgren's fascination with the medium grew, so did his reputation as a video experimenter. A few years ago, when the video disc was being touted as the greatest leap forward in society since the advent of sliced bread, Rundgren, found himself at RCA. "When video discs seemed an imminent thing," Rundgren recalls, "I went to see both video disc companies, MCA and RCA. At RCA, Bob Summers, who was the president of the record division, was the only one who had anything to do with the video at all. They didn't have anyone in charge, so they kind of stuck him in there. I showed him three or four of the kinds of things I had done and he took one of them, which was a sort of preliminary version of The Planets, and showed it to some people. He came back with an offer to do a demo."

RCA gave Rundgren a shot at producing a video disc produced and designed as an original visual presentation. Not a disc culled from Steven Spielberg's greatest hits, not excess rock and roll concert footage geared towards the 13-year-old guitar army crowd; but an honest-to-Dumont video production linking original imagery with music.

"I did the demo," Rundgren shrugs. "I did it the way I had explained to them, which was to pay as much attention to the video portion as, for example, Tomita had paid to the music. He takes six months to a year to make an album. It took me four to six months to finish the first half of the disc. It cost relatively very little: $150,000. If I hadn't been working in my own studio, if I'd spent six months in an outside studio, it would have cost a half million dollars. When RCA realized how much it costs to do an original video presentation, they lost interest in both The Planets and the concept in general."

By that time, Rundgren's name had been linked to the video disc program via a flood of press releases. When RCA balked, he was left with his tape, a taste of the future of commercial home video and a lot of thoughts on the future of the medium.

"As it stands now, RCA has the rights to use this one side for demo purposes only. They don't have the distribution rights for it. They don't even have the second side. I'm just now working on the second side and once we get the synch rights to the music from the Holst estate, we'll have the sole commercial rights to the production. What will I do with it? I don't know. A lot of people are interested in The Planets for various reasons. Cable companies like it. It could be sold as a video cassette. European film companies are interested in releasing it theatrically as a short film. I don't know what will happen."

After dealing with the corporate side of the video disc "revolution," Rundgren has come to see the flaws in the self-proclaimed "next big step" in home video. "I don't see the disc as being the be-all and end-all," he offers. "I think there are too many factors working against it. The manufacturers could possibly pull it off and establish video discs as a popular form of entertainment if they would just spend some fraction of the amount of money they're pouring into hardware on software; creating an indigenous type of software that was unique -- that you couldn't get anywhere else. If they did that, people would buy the machines just to view this unique disc entertainment. When you buy the machine today, however, it's mostly old movies you're buying or recycled TV programs; stuff you've seen before.

"If that's all you're getting and if all you're into is a playback device, you're better off buying something that's a recording device as well. That way, if you decided that you don't like what you have on tape, you can record something else over it. No video disc has that capability, although I've heard vague rumors that there are discs in development that will do that.

"Aside from that, from a consumer point of view, most people are going to want to get into independent recording more and more. So it's the method by which they accumulate their software that will be the next big thing in video. I just think that things are developing too quickly in other areas to allow the video disc to take hold. Look at viewdata systems and things like that. Eventually, people won't have to go out to a store and buy a pre-packaged presentation. They'll dial up the directory on their data link and pick out the program they want. It will then be loaded into their storage area. That process will completely by-pass the whole concept of going out and buying someone else's software.

"Eventually, there will be more standardization. The whole digital approach will standardize the art form. There will be a standard of digital video and a standard of digital audio and a standard of digital information transfer. So, all these diverse systems of disc playback will be obsolete soon anyway. There won't be any moving parts in the future systems. It will all be solid state bubble memory or some kind of memory that we haven't even conceptualized at this point because digital technology advances at such a rapid pace... much faster than video disc technology."

At this point, Rundgren would like to be totally disassociated from the RCA realm in general and the videodisc hype in particular. "I don't care at all about the hardware," he stresses. "I'm just into the software. I'm into the programming aspect of it. I'm not touting anybody's hardware. I'd like to see the ultimate end of the hardware wars come to a head soon because that will just make it easier for software producers to get what they're into to the people's homes; into the so-called marketplace. As soon as the hardware is standardized, you're going to see untold creativity in the video area -- artistry.

"You can see a lot of diversification video today if you take the time to notice. Things like cable stations and satellite stations are offering a much more diverse range of programming than ever existed before and it's growing even more diverse. Look what's happened during the past ten years with cable television alone! That's why I have more faith in the central broadcasting, central disseminated concept of video than in the disc concept. You can find your audience a lot quicker and narrowcast to their needs. With cable and satellite, big isn't necessarily the best.

"Take a look at the whole Christian Broadcasting network. It's tremendously successful. It comes via satellite and is broadcast by both local network affiliates and cable TV. Those people reach 15 million viewers a week. They don't have to worry about commercial advertising, either, because they're getting money from direct contributions. They have a small, select audience but can afford to stay on the air because their audience pays to see them.

"Maybe that idea, the idea of specialty subscriber networks, will be the key to forthcoming video advancements. Maybe, in the future, there will be a porno network, showing nothing but pornography to people who will pay a large amount of money for the chance to view it. That way, a small audience can keep a whole network going. That might wind up benefiting so-called conceptual video, as well. Maybe there will be video patrons of the arts who will pay to have a network of avant-garde video presentations."

Until that time comes, however, Rundgren is perfectly content to work in his studio on groundbreaking projects that will be commercial enough to be shown in any video format yet thought-provoking and visually stimulating enough to invite imitation.

"I think the most important area to zero in on, right now, is commercial television," he reveals. "That's where most people's heads are at. That's what the public is paying the most attention to. TV is why I got seriously involved with video in the first place because people are so attuned to the screen that if you've got something important and relevant to say to them, they're already there in front of that screen in the first place. I'd certainly like to move into that area, but I certainly wouldn't want to say the same things that are already being said there. I want to fill in that gap that people in television today are afraid to touch. Most people in the TV establishment tend to downgrade the intelligence of the audience. They do that, not because the audience doesn't have the intelligence to grasp new ideas, but because the people in charge of TV don't have the intelligence to come up with consistently creative programming. Instead of admitting that they're incapable of coming up with good programming they shrug and say 'People are too dumb to understand it anyway.' Most people in the television industry are only interested in dollars and cents."

In an attempt to break into commercial TV, Rundgren is currently working on a half-hour fantasy/science fiction anthology show and a series called How to Run for President; an historical look at the American political process. He is also, of course, determined to get The Planets before the eyes of a national audience as well.

"I don't see any reason why it couldn't appear on NBC, CBS, or ABC," he says. "I think that it would be hugely successful from a commercial standpoint because it's visually pleasing and undemanding. Of course, I also realize that it doesn't fit into any established TV formats. It's non-narrative. We've shown it to broadcast people and they've said, 'It's fine but you have to have someone talking over it, someone explaining what's going on.' That's TV formula. They figure their audience is too ignorant to grasp the story line. I don't think that's a valid point to make. I won't have it shown any other way than the way it was made."

Rundgren prowls impatiently around his studio, trying to juggle his time between video and recording commitments. His recording and concert career bankrolls his video experiments so there are always concessions to be made. "I think that if The Planets was shown on a typical broadcast evening and people were scanning the dials, they'd immediately stop. "What the hell is this? I haven't seen anything like this on the air before!' If The Planets was successful, then it would open the door for other works.

Rundgren fiddles with a video monitor during the making of The Planets

"I don't know that this is the presentation destined to crack the door open but something has to do it... eventually. I think that people involved with straight, network television are beginning to realize that the competition from alternative programmers -- the cable people, the satellite people -- is getting stronger. Networks have to experiment a little more in order not to lose a lot of their audience. Maybe The Planets will.

Rundgren dashes out of his video headquarters, with thoughts of two-way cable TV, home video banks and millions of do-it-yourself video studios existing coast-to-coast dotting his conversation. He's off to New York and a live concert date. Perhaps his visions, his dreams and the dreams of all video pioneers concerning the future of the medium are best found in the name of his ambitious hideaway in upstate New York: Utopia Video.