99 Tigers

A Creative Agency

Inside Pee-Wee’s Playhouse

Posted by Glenn Lazzaro for his series “Adventures in Television”

I am very proud to have been included in a new book  entitled “Inside Pee-wee’s Playhouse: The Untold, Unauthorized, and Unpredictable Story of a Pop Phenomenon” By Caseen Gains. Its a great read about the making of the original CBS television show and filled with great-behind-the-scenes stories and photographs.

Believe it or not, this “Connect-the-Dots” segment I edited for the show was  considered “state-of-the art” in 1986.

If you are interested in reading the book you can get it here:  http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Pee-wees-Playhouse-Unauthorized-Unpredictable/dp/1550229982/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321373227&sr=1-1

 

 

 

Kurtis Blow “America”

http://vimeo.com/30957074/settings

Posted by Glenn Lazzaro for his series “Adventures in Television”

National Video Center, New York City, 1985.

In the early ’80s when hip hop & rap were first noticed by the mainstream, most of the music videos were dance tracks and for the most part, devoid of political messages. Then Kurtis Blow released the single “America” and all that changed. It was a political rant about everything that was happening during the Reaganomics-Cold War-Anti-Russian era in America. Claude Borenzweig, then working at Polygram Records, was editing & directing internal projects when he got the chance to direct the “America” music video. Claude came up with the idea of a classroom filled with kids where Kurtis would teach them the “real” history of America. David Brownstein and Len Epand produced the shoot for Claude on the main stage at National Video. They shot on videotape using the giant, old-school studio cameras that were usually used to shoot “Sexually Speaking with Doctor Ruth.”

Claude did a rough cut using the classroom footage he directed, and a second cut using stock footage that we would combine in the edit. As usual, we went into the edit room over the weekend so we’d have all the time and equipment we needed. We needed time because we had no edit list, no After Effects, no digital storage, no tracking marks. Just an old Ampex ADO and lots of “crossed fingers” that we’d match the motion between the camera moves and the composited footage. Sometimes it matched. Most times it didn’t.

Needless to say, the special effects seem crude compared to what is possible today. But at the time they were considered state-of-art. We also used the then very popular technique of running the footage thru a black & white monitor to distort it.

Claude hadn’t shot any footage for the Pledge Of Allegiance section of the song, so I was enlisted to lie under the title camera and lip-sync the part. Yes, that’s my ’80s mustache you see inserted into the blackboard starting at 18 seconds in.

Shortly after we finished the video, I worked with Frank Zappa on a week’s worth of programming called “Porn Wars” for the music show “Night Flight.” Zappa would appear at the PMRC Senate hearings in Washington during the day, then come to National Video in New York to tape his segments for “Night Flight.” One night I showed him “America.” He was really excited that the rap world was finally getting political and asked for a VHS copy. I was very proud.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bonus: Article about Claude and the shoot in Optic Music Magazine

TeenNick Halo Awards

Posted by Glenn Lazzaro for his series “Adventures in Television.”

2010. Los Angeles.

When Steph Sebag, owner & creative director at BPG, called and asked if I wanted to direct a spot he wrote for the 2010 TeenNick “Halo Awards,” I  jumped at the chance. The spot, cut to Beyonce’s “Halo,” would showcase all the great things teens around the globe were doing to “change their world.” Steph’s idea was to create different tableaus using a series of movable sets that changed from one into another in one continuous “flow,” without using any cuts. The sets would be like giant “transformers” with movable walls and floors on rollers and tracks. Teen cast-members acting as stagehands would physically move the sets on cue and thereby change the world of someone in need.

The “flow” went like this: An outdoor city street would transform into a mailroom; we would travel through a door and find ourselves at a devastated house in Haiti; the destroyed house would morph into a brand new home; the house would rotate to reveal a market in Mumbai; the market would split open to reveal a classroom; the camera would pan across the classroom and enter a bedroom; the bedroom walls would split to reveal a basketball court; the camera would follow a basketball up to the sky and then down to a beach.

For safety’s sake, art director Andrew Trosman had to build sets strong enough to support up to 12 people at a time. This made them very, very heavy. So heavy in fact that on our shoot day, our teen cast-members couldn’t move them on their own. In the spot it looks like the teens are moving these huge sets by themselves, but in reality lots of people off camera were helping: the grips, the electrics, Steph, and me. Even David Chustz, then VP of Brand Communication for TeenNick, and his producer Matthew Perreault spent most of their day hidden, helping the teens move the sets.

In the end, we got the whole thing shot in one long, long day and the spot won a Promax Silver Award.

Bonus: An early crude storyboard I did.

 

 

CBS Letterman In London

http://vimeo.com/29331311

Posted by Glenn Lazzaro for his series “Adventures in Television.”

1995, National Video Center, NYC.

David Letterman was going to London for a week and Linda Danner, then head of the CBS Late Night Promo Department, wanted to do a big spot announcing the stunt.

The problem: there was no London footage. The show would be live, so there would be no footage until the first show aired. We came up with an idea to shoot some maps and iconic London landmarks to intercut with existing footage from New York. We were hoping to create a kind of 1940s movie sequence, where a plane is superimposed over a moving map to indicate the hero’s journey to a far-off land. Of course, once we started putting it together it evolved into something very different.  It was 1995, not 1940, and we loved manipulating footage to create wacky, abstract imagery.

Linda and CBS producer Jane Fogtman started scouring tourist shops for New York City and London iconic miniatures: the Statue of Liberty, a NYC taxicab, a double-decker Bus, the Empire State Building, etc. Finding the props today would be easy, but this was pre-Internet so it took a while.

Art director Kevin Largent would then repaint them with Letterman and CBS logos.

He also built some beautiful miniatures of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Ed Sullivan Theater with a lighted sign. We especially loved the lighted sign. We were crazy for it. We kept turning it on and off until we finally burned it out.

We set up a tabletop shoot at National Video Center with the help of my live-action producer, Susie Shuttleworth. She hired DP Steve Kasmirsky to shoot 16mm film. I shot a hand-cranked 16mm Bolex, creating single-frame animations and flash-frames, for what we called in those days “poor man’s production value.”

After the shoot, we transferred the film to tape and the footage Steve Kasmirsky shot looked really pretty. Too pretty. Too pretty for the aggressive mix track that Bob “Boom Boom” Chapman had done. We thought the messy, grainy, flashy Bolex footage meshed better with the spot Linda wrote. So we distorted the “pretty” footage beyond recognition to match the Bolex footage. (Sorry, Steve.)

Bonus: Later that summer, we shot a spot for the “Late Show”based on the Tim Bodet-voiced Motel 6 spots. The much-loved Ed Sullivan Theater with the lighted sign made a cameo appearance in two shots.

http://vimeo.com/29484957

OLN Freedom

Posted by Glenn Lazzaro for his series “Adventures in Television.”

2000, Hood River Valley, Oregon.

When we arrived in the Hood River Valley in November to shoot an image spot for OLN (now Versus), we had a great DP (Trish Govoni), a great crew, a 35 mm camera package, a bag of props, and a great song idea we hoped to license.

We also had a miniscule shooting budget and almost no cast. In order to save money, we decided to source local cast members as we went.

Wendy McCoy, then VP/marketing for OLN, had asked us to develop ideas for an image campaign for OLN’s 2001 season. With Rob Battles, then creative director at Crossroads Television, I came up with a campaign celebrating the first moment a child realizes his sled or bike can transport them to new, exciting places. We planned to shoot Snowboarding, Skiing, Mountain Biking, Wakeboarding, Skateboarding, Hiking and Kayaking–all cut to Jimi Hendrix’s “Freedom.” We’d have to find all these athletes on location.

We got lucky at Mt. Hood glacier: the local Burton Snowboarding team was practicing there along with the U.S. ski team and the Junior Olympics ski team. They all graciously volunteered to be in the spot. The two boys playing in the snow at the start of the spot are kids whose moms worked in the lodge cafeteria.

When we got to the town of Hood River, it was a different story.

Since we had no budget for casting, my producer Carla Tate and our AD Ann Taylor scoured neighborhood parks looking for volunteers.

Word spread quickly around town that some “strange people” were bothering children in the town. Police showed up to arrest Carla. After we explained what we were doing and showed them our film permits, one of the cops volunteered a neighbor’s kid for the spot. (She’s the little girl hanging out the car window at :16.) We also used crew members whenever we could. Our assistant camera operator can be seen running into the water at :20.

I wanted to use Jimi Hendrix’s “Freedom” for the soundtrack from the very beginning, but when we tried to license the track the record company wanted $80,000. We only had $3,000 in our budget for music. I had met Jimi Hendrix’s father at a Woodstock reunion concert a few years before and he seemed to be a really nice guy, so I suggested that we contact him directly.

We called Jimi’s dad, James Hendrix, explaining that we wanted to use the song but couldn’t afford the high price the record company quoted. We asked if he’d consider allowing us to use it for less. Much less. He was open to the idea, but he asked to see a cut before making a decision. We sent him the cut and waited. When he called us back and said we could have the rights to the song for our paltry $3,000, we were ecstatic. He also said, “I think Jimi would have liked your commercial.”

I could not have been prouder.

Mt Hood Glacier: