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April 2024 by Alexis Harte
I am not someone who generally bothers to write negative reviews, especially about local businesses. But I feel the need to warn fellow filmmakers about this place. Do NOT use East Bay Media Center as your fiscal sponsor. They will ignore their own agreement to disburse funds within 10 days. In fact, they will ghost you and you will struggle to recoup your funds for months.
Want to raise money for your film through small community donations? Good luck. Their donation system is terribly outdated (a paypal link that only points donations to their own general fund which means that donors must proactively write in what the donation is intended for). They also will not tell you when donations come in. The final straw was catching them in the act of actually concealing a donation from our project.
Avoid this place at all costs.
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April 2024 by LaTajh W.
Horrible establishment. DO NOT USE THEM AS YOUR FISCAL SPONSOR. They completely ghosted me for months and then charged me "email fees" for all the times I emailed them asking for the rest of my grant funds.
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September 2023 by Tomaj Trenda Real Estate
Cool place!
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April 2023 by Linda Schacht Gage
Mel is the best. Never had any problems there, nothing but helpfulness and courtesy and knowledge.
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July 2022 by Zack Kasten
Mel and Paul are the best! I've been coming to Mel for the last 17+ years for help with my little projects and couldn't be happier. They are truly a wonderful resource!
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July 2022 by handsmade xyz
A true community resource. I wish there were more places like this in the world.
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March 2022 by Jaytha Cj
Their phone number is disconnected and out of service. Though their sign says to call them to unlock the gate
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February 2022 by Chloe C.
We gave Mel at East Bay Media Center home videos for conversion. It's hard to believe what a bad job they did: some files were completely missing; others unnecessarily duplicated; and others came back with the audio and video completely out of sync. He said he'd re-do them (while insinuating that the problem must have been in the originals). It happened that the day after I dropped them off for the corrections I started to feel sick. Sure enough: Covid. I emailed Mel to warn him out of an abundance of caution. Almost a month later, after not hearing from him, I called and was told they now were refusing to work on our project and had "quarantined" the tapes. Later I managed to get the tapes back and brought them to A1 Photo Lab where they made excellent quality copies--no problem. I still haven't gotten my money refunded from East Bay Media Center.
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October 2020 by Jackie C
Of all the wonderful businesses who need your money right now, dont waste it here! Mel is one of the rudest people I have ever encountered in my life. I originally came in to get files from 8 DVDs transferred to a thumb drive, and working with EBMC was a terrible, exasperating experience. I wish SO BADLY I would have read their reviews here and on YELP before working with them, but I was in a hurry to get the work done for family gifts.Firstly, I wasn't even told that my original job was ready the first time - I had to follow up 3 weeks later and was then told it was ready. Secondly, the files weren't checked to be sure everything made it to the thumb drive and were in working order - which forced me to spend a lot of time that I don't have at the moment figuring out what and bringing them back in - Out of the 8 DVDs on the thumb drive I received from EBMC, 1 showed as "incompatible", 1 should have been over an hour but just 58 seconds made it to the thumb drive(strangely enough, 58 seconds from the middle of the DVD), and 1 DVD was missing from the thumb drive completely. Before bringing them back, I asked explicitly if I would be charged more, and Mel let me know he would need to look at the thumb drive and DVDs to figure out what the issue was before he could tell me either way.Before I left their offices, I confirmed once again that he would call when he found out what the problem had been, and his exact words were, "Yes.. I'll probably email." However, to my surprise, I received an email a few days later letting me know the work was completed, and advising me on the additional money I owed. When I asked why he hadnt called when he figured out the issue like we had agreed upon, he tried to lie and say they had - but they hadn't. They called me AFTER I sent the email asking why I hadnt been called explaining the issue - which is obviously no help if I have no way to then "okay" the additional work or not. Mel let me know that the drive I provided, 32GB, wasnt large enough for all of the files, which was the reason some were missing. However, If my drive wasn't large enough to fit the files, why wasn't this brought to my attention when I picked up and paid for the job the first time? At the very least, why wasnt I told about this as we had agreed so that I could confirm I wanted to buy another thumb-drive from them and pay for the additional work that, according to my and Mel's knowledge when I picked up my job the first time, had already been paid for? He then tried to blame it on the "bad quality" of my videos, but once again, why wasnt this brought to my attention if it was an issue? (The DVDs themselves are in perfect shape by the way, but the videos were copied to the DVDs from old home movie VHS tapes which are of seemingly poor quality as they're from the late 80s and early 90s.) This issue could have very easily been expressed to me as the reason the mistakes were made - but it was not.I explained to Mel why I needed the home videos copied to thumb drives - the reasons being that 4 of my family members who are on the home videos, are very sick right now, one of them currently in the hospital and likely wont live much longer. I was trying to get these videos out to my/their families before anyone passed. I told Mel that I did not want the work for one of the DVDs as i'm currently unemployed and dont have the extra money, but asked if he could please confirm that the the other videos that were very important were in fact loaded to the thumb drive and in working order. Mel's answer to all of this was telling me to pick up my job at 5:45pm that day(Nothing else). When I got to EBMC, Mel gave me my DVDs and thumb drive through the closed bars without saying a single word to me.THE WORST PART? The file that was just 58 seconds long WAS STILL JUST 58 SECONDS LONG! After explicitly asking him to confirm, the work still wasnt complete! I will be sending this thumb drive to family as im now basically out of time to get it to
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October 2020 by Jackie C.
Of all the wonderful businesses who need your money right now, dont waste it here! Mel is one of the rudest people I have ever encountered in my life. I originally came in to get files from 8 DVDs transferred to a thumb drive, and working with EBMC was a terrible, exasperating experience. I wish SO BADLY I would have read their reviews here and on Google before working with them, but I was in a hurry to get the work done for family gifts. Firstly, I wasn't even told that my original job was ready the first time - I had to follow up 3 weeks later and was then told it was ready. Secondly, the files weren't checked to be sure everything made it to the thumb drive and were in working order - which forced me to spend a lot of time that I don't have at the moment figuring out what and bringing them back in - Out of the 8 DVDs on the thumb drive I received from EBMC, 1 showed as "incompatible", 1 should have been over an hour but just 58 seconds made it to the thumb drive(strangely enough, 58 seconds from the middle of the DVD), and 1 DVD was missing from the thumb drive completely. Before bringing them back, I asked explicitly if I would be charged more, and Mel let me know he would need to look at the thumb drive and DVDs to figure out what the issue was before he could tell me either way. Before I left their offices, I confirmed once again that he would call when he found out what the problem had been, and his exact words were, "Yes.. I'll probably email." However, to my surprise, I received an email a few days later letting me know the work was completed, and advising me on the additional money I owed. When I asked why he hadnt called when he figured out the issue like we had agreed upon, he tried to lie and say they had - but they hadn't. They called me AFTER I sent the email asking why I hadnt been called explaining the issue - which is obviously no help if I have no way to then "okay" the additional work or not. Mel let me know that the drive I provided, 32GB, wasnt large enough for all of the files, which was the reason some were missing. However, If my drive wasn't large enough to fit the files, why wasn't this brought to my attention when I picked up and paid for the job the first time? At the very least, why wasnt I told about this as we had agreed so that I could confirm I wanted to buy another thumb-drive from them and pay for the additional work that, according to my and Mel's knowledge when I picked up my job the first time, had already been paid for? He then tried to blame it on the "bad quality" of my videos, but once again, why wasnt this brought to my attention if it was an issue? (The DVDs themselves are in perfect shape by the way, but the videos were copied to the DVDs from old home movie VHS tapes which are of seemingly poor quality as they're from the late 80s and early 90s.) This issue could have very easily been expressed to me as the reason the mistakes were made - but it was not. I explained to Mel why I needed the home videos copied to thumb drives - the reasons being that 4 of my family members who are on the home videos, are very sick right now, one of them currently in the hospital and likely wont live much longer. I was trying to get these videos out to my/their families before anyone passed. I told Mel that I did not want the work for one of the DVDs as i'm currently unemployed and dont have the extra money, but asked if he could please confirm that the the other videos that were very important were in fact loaded to the thumb drive and in working order. Mel's answer to all of this was telling me to pick up my job at 5:45pm that day(Nothing else). When I got to EBMC, Mel gave me my DVDs and thumb drive through the closed bars without saying a single word to me. THE WORST PART? The file that was just 58 seconds long WAS STILL JUST 58 SECONDS LONG! After explicitly asking him to confirm, the work still wasnt complete! I will be sending this thumb drive to family as im now basically out of time to get it
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December 2019 by Matisyahu M.
We just completed a many-month engagement with the EBMC and I/we have nothing but great things to say about both Mel and Paul and the operation as a whole. Our organization used the main venue every Saturday for several months. The space was always ready, Mel and Paul were always cheerful and they were flexible with our unique needs. Getting to know the guys who run EBMC over the last several months has been a real acquisition. Having lived and worked in the Berkeley area for decades myself, when I met them, they reminded me of the Berkeley from a couple/few decades ago. They really care about the community, as I learned from talking with Paul about his advocacy with the homeless. I've seen them interact with the locals on the block and see that they genuinely care about both the people and their establishment. I highly recommend EBMC as a venue for small/mid-size events. But don't bring any pretentious attitudes because this is Berkeley and Mel and Paul keep it that way.
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October 2019 by Peni Hall
Mel and Paul are energetic, supportive and committed to teaching and supporting media makers at all levels. I was part of a group of people with disabilities who worked on creative videos about disability culture. We would never been able to do what we did without EBMC
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August 2019 by Susie Wyshak
Wish I had not spent $25 per tape to digitize them. When the guy said do you want these on DVD I automatically said yes, not thinking it would literally be a DVD format. Like how many people actually want DVDs these days) it's not like they added nice titles as Legacybox did when I sent them home movie reels to digitize.
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August 2019 by Paul Cutteridge
One of the best
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August 2019 by Marco M.
I've used their services at least 5 times in the past 10 years. I've made a few short films and had them transfer them from mini-dvs to DVDs and from older formats to DVDs. I've had them run a bunch of copies so I could submit to film festivals. I've had them transfer from VHS to DVD. I've worked almost exclusively with Mel Vapour and he has always been professional, pleasant and warm. The work has always been done on time and done well at a reasonable cost. I've referred several friends here and they have been pleased too. I just brought in another pile of stuff to sort out and digitize for upload to YouTube. I look forward to picking up my order and watching some oldies that I wasn't able to view on old technology. When looking for their address I realized I had been remiss in not reviewing this great business years ago.
