99 Tigers

A Creative Agency

Bravo “Top Chef All-Stars” Food Fight

August 18. 2010, NYC Posted by Glenn Lazzaro

For the past few years, I’ve directed most of the launch promos for Bravo’s “Top Chef.” Whenever we’d discuss creative for a new season, someone invariably suggested a food fight. We’d all get excited, but ultimately we never did one. It would be too time-consuming. Too messy. Too hard to coordinate.

Then last summer I got a call from Bravo. Amy Troiano, VP of On Air Promotion, Trez Thomas VP Brand Strategy, and Creative Director Justin Reichman said we were finally doing a food fight, for an upcoming season of “Top Chef All-Stars.”

I got really, really excited. For inspiration, I watched the famous food fight scene in “Animal House.” But I learned virtually nothing. The actual food fight in the film is only 3 seconds long, and none of the cast takes part. It seemed easy compared to our plan. In one day, we had to shoot enough footage for Bravo to use over a whole season: interviews, B-roll, web components, mobile content, and tease spots for 18 chefs, Padma Lakshmi, and Tom Colicchio. All this before the food fight even started Suddenly, we all remembered why we never attempted a food fight before!

We built a stylized kitchen set at SilverCup Studios in Long Island City, and started planning the battle royal. We paired up the 18 “chef-testants” and devised one-on-one fight scenarios. (My favorite would be when Tre and Jennifer threw 30 gallons of spaghetti sauce at each other.) The chefs would do battle, then head for the shower and wait for their next scene. The art department would clean the set and we’d do it again.

18 chef-testants and numerous wardrobe changes later, we prepped for the big battle.

The art department loaded the set with weapons: eggs, flour, spaghetti, seltzer, whipped cream, shish kabobs, tomatoes, carrots, ketchup and endless other messy stuff. The cast readied their weapons of choice and we rolled the camera. We had one chance to get the shot. There would be no “second take.”

We devised a shooting method we called “Fight Freeze” to ensure we got enough coverage. We rolled the camera at 60 frames a second and the chefs would wage war. After a while I would scream “Freeze,” and they would stop mid-fight, holding their poses. We’d quickly move the camera, re-frame, and I’d scream “Action!” to unfreeze the battle. We did this for about 10 minutes. In the footage, you can see the chefs are really having fun. They brought a lot to the fight. Using pots as helmets and pot covers as shields was their idea. At times when I called “Cut” they still wouldn’t stop, swept away by the messy momentum. I think they were waiting for this moment their whole careers.

Writer/Producer/Editor Jeff Edelstein and Han Yi, Senior Graphics Designer, did the finishing for Bravo in-house. Using opera music for the track gives the spots a sweeping, ominous feel I love.

Steve Winwood “Higher Love”

http://vimeo.com/27818768

1986. National Video Center. NYC.

By 1986, I’d worked with co-directors Peter Kagan & Paula Greif on a few music videos, including Dream Academy’s “This World” and “Love Parade.” These grainy, dreamy, impressionistic videos were changing the MTV landscape. Most music videos at that time were bright, Pop-style linear storytelling. Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love” was going to be different.

Peter and Paula did most of their off-line edits with an editor named Laura Israel. Laura would cut on 3/4-inch videotape with window time-code. No list. I would lay down her cut on one-inch tape, read the numbers off the screen and match the cut. Peter and Paula would generously leave what they called “Glenn sections” in their videos. These were sections that had been unresolved or that they didn’t like, which I would finish.

All the black & white footage and some of the color was shot on Super 8 or on a wind-up 16mm Bolex camera. We called it “Paula Cam”—Paula being pushed around in a shopping cart with her Super 8 camera. None of the Super 8 or Bolex footage would hold sync during the vocals. We spent many, many hours speeding up and slowing down the tape machines to match lip-sync. It’s simple to do now, but at that time it was a pretty primitive process, and it took lots of “previews” to get it right. After we all agreed that the preview was right, we recorded it only to find out it was different, due to the tape machines’  sloppy mechanics.

No sweat. We did it all the time. We’ll do it again. The difference this time was that Warner Brothers Records was insisting that we provide two “first-generation masters” for delivery. They did not want a “dub.” If the video had fewer speed changes, we could have finished the first master and reassembled a second master from the edit list. We tried a little test and of course it didn’t work.

There was no such thing as a clone in those days, so that meant that we had to run two master record decks at the same time. Not fun or easy in those days.

Every time we made one of the 170 or so edits in the piece, we had to check each master and make sure they were identical. Same field edit, same speed change, no color shifts, no servo errors and on and on. My poor assistant stood in front of the two monitors for 13 hours straight.

In 1987, “Higher Ground” was nominated for an MTV Music Video Award. So of course, I had a big party that night waiting for the results, only to lose out to Peter Gabriel’s “Sledge Hammer.” Another glimpse of the changing music video landscape in the mid-1980s.

 

Rush Job: Rush & Mr. Mister

1987. National Video Center. NYC.

Usually when I got a rush job to edit an ’80s music video, Rush was not involved. This was not one of those times.

Producer Stuart Samuels called sales exec Steve Ostrow to book me for 7 days straight. I’d have to be available 24 hours a day. Zbigniew Rybcznski, one of the hottest directors at the time, wanted the freedom of working around-the-clock on two music videos: one for Rush and one for Mr. Mister. He wanted to, as he put it, “Edit live.”

Rybcznski was know for his Oscar-winning short “Tango” and his supremely cool music video “Close To The Edit” by The Art of Noise.

His early work had been shot and edited on film, but lately he’d become enamored with video effects, shooting his last few projects on videotape.  I personally thought he seemed more concerned with technology than aesthetics.

The Floating-Aimee-Mann Rush Video

http://vimeo.com/27579494

An edit suite was set up in the control room of National Video’s largest stage, where I would live for the next seven days. You can see the edit suite at 2:17 in the Rush video. Zbig moved his wife and kids into one of the green rooms. Rush and Aimee Mann moved into adjoining rooms. I got a room in a Holiday Inn across the street from National that I never saw.

Zibig had shot footage of country landscapes for Rush. The idea was to shoot short pieces of Rush performing the song against green screen, then composite them together. When we started working, Zbig decided he loved the stage and wanted to composite Rush over that instead. I suggested that we shoot them live in the stage, but Zbig wanted everyone to “float” around it. He also insisted that everything had to happen “live.” Each new layer would be placed on top of the preceding layer without making protection copies or “laying off” a copy, as we used to say. The green screen footage was shot with the same giant studio camera Aimee Mann is using in the video. Zbig would give some vague direction to Rush; I would set up the effects, play the audio track and press record, causing multiple one-inch tape machines to roll up on the third floor. For 3 days in a row. It didn’t matter what time it was. If Zbig got an idea at 3 in the morning, he’d wake everyone up (I was sleeping in the control room) and we would all go to work. We started the Rush video on Saturday morning and finished Tuesday night. Wednesday morning Mr. Mister moved in.

The Disembodied-Heads Mr. Mister Video

http://vimeo.com/27486441

This one was a bit more focused. Zbig wanted it to feel “surreal,” like a Dali or Magritte painting with many, many layers. (Complete with umbrellas.)

Zbig had already shot cityscapes; we started by looping sections of this footage to the beat. Next we shot each layer live and composited them live. I can’t even count how many layers there are in this video. The band was never on the stage together. Each member was shot separately and layered on top of each previous layer. It could not have been done without the Abekas A62, which I talk about in another post (“It Takes Two”). Three days and nights later, we finished and everyone moved out. I personally hated this video, but National Video Center decided to frame a giant print of the disembodied heads and hang it in the lobby, to my embarrassment. When it was nominated for an MTV Music Video Award for “Best Special Effects,” I went into hiding.

Here’s a brilliant spoof someone did of the Rush video. It really skewers the editor. Me.

http://vimeo.com/27775512/settings

 

 

NBC “We Didn’t Start The Fire”

1989. National Video Center. NYC.

I’d been working with NBC’s Tim Miller and his top producer, Don Duncan, for a few years. Don was super-talented and always oversaw the best projects. He also loved taking chances in the edit room. Like the time he used “Helter Skelter” by the Beatles for a series of promos for Tom Brokaw…without permission. When they told me we were going to do a music video for NBC News based on Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire,” I knew it would be fun.

Don intended do a “word by word” interpretation of the lyrics. His assistant producer Jennifer Johnson had sourced massive amounts of archival footage for almost all the historic references.

Billy Joel had famously said he never wanted to do a literal interpretation of the song, because it would be too obvious for a pop video. Therefore, he would have to approve our finished video in order for NBC to obtain the rights.

We had footage for most of the lyrics, but had no clips for the song’s long instrumental sections. We had to figure out what to cover those with. We tried editing the track to shorten the instrumental sections, but that didn’t worked well. We decided to just start cutting the lyric sections and save the instrumental sections for later.

When I started cutting, I discovered a sales tape NBC News had made in the 1950s to advertise their studios for outside TV production. It was chock-full of great sound bites and imagery extolling the miracles of videotape. The opening line for the sales tape was “Did someone mention television tape?” It was perfect for what we were doing. We started putting these sound bites in the instrumental sections and flash cutting slates, leaders and TV imagery into the piece. It gave us a framework to put anything we wanted in those sections. It also allowed me to throw type in to underscore what we were seeing or going to see. I had transferred different types of film grain, countdowns, and film leaders to one-inch tape, so that reel stayed on a tape machine during the entire week-long edit session.

When the NBC News execs saw the piece, they loved it but they wanted all their reporters included in it. Don hated the idea but we were forced to do it anyway. We had no beauty footage of the reporters so the back end of the video is a festival of “Lip Flap.” I hated that part. I still do. Bob Chapman did his usual amazing mix and the tape was sent to Billy Joel. He loved it and gave NBC News permission to air it. For the next couple of years, local NBC affiliates re-edited it and added their local reporters, usually airing it on New Year’s Eve.

 

U2 “One”

1992. National Video Center. NYC.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes it does exist. Vimeo has removed it at the request of the RIAA- the organization that polices U2’s work.

It seems silly to me. I seem to remember a certain member of U2’s organization telling me, when asked if we had the rights to the broadcast TV footage we using for the ZOOTV concert, “Its ok. we’re stealing from the thieves.”

In the meantime enjoy the spoof of the video below.

“Rattle & Hum” director Phil Joanou called and said he was coming to NYC after being on U2’s “Actung Baby” tour for 2 weeks. He and I had worked together earlier on his film “State Of Grace.” Now he was doing a music video for the U2 song “One.” Two other videos had already been made, but U2’s management wasn’t happy with them. Phil asked if I could start Friday night and work over the weekend to cut the video.

At 6PM Friday, Phil arrived with 10 hours of film he’d shot: 5 hours of Super 8 shot live on tour, 3 hours of performance footage shot on a soundstage, and 2 hours of film he’d just shot of Bono in the Village nightclub Nell’s. I met with Phil, U2’s manager Paul McGuinness, and Ned O’Hanlon from Dreamchaser, U2’s music video company. They said the video had to be finished Sunday afternoon so it could be flown to London for its premiere on “Top Of The Pops” Monday night.

Only the Super 8 footage had been transferred to tape. All the other footage had to be color-corrected and transferred to tape before we could start the edit.

At 6PM Bill Willig, the colorist at National, started transferring the footage. My assistant, Scott Harrison (a fantastic editor today) started shuttling all the color-corrected footage to me in my edit suite as they finished each one-hour tape.

They finished the transfer around 1AM. Phil, Ned and Paul McGuinness gave me some direction and said they would come back in the morning to see how I was doing.

As I started going thru the footage I realized I was never going to make the deadline if I tried to incorporate all the footage and stick to the narrative Phil had envisioned. I decided to ignore the 3 hours of soundstage footage. I also ignored the narrative. I’d decided that non-linear storytelling was the only way I could get the video done on time.

I started cutting around 1:30AM.  I soon realized the Super 8 footage cut really well with the shots of Bono in the nightclub. It was a gold mine of little moments that accentuated the lyrics beautifully. I decided to build the video around Bono’s performance and use the Super 8 to support the lyrics.

Phil called a few times that night and I explained what I was trying to do. He though it sounded like a great idea and gave me the go ahead to continue.

Around 11AM the next morning I had the first minute and a half done. Phil and Ned and came by to see it. They were very surprised but excited.

They were, however, concerned how U2 would react. There had never been a U2 video without the whole band performing together in it.  I’d also used footage of a girl that was not intended for this video. No previous U2 video had a woman interacting with Bono in it.

Phil loved it. He had us make a 3/4 inch copy for him to take to Boston that afternoon to show Bono. He also made an audio-cassette recording of me explaining every edit’s significance and the reasoning behind it. They left and we went back to work.

Saturday evening Phil called to say he was coming back to NYC and that Bono liked the cut. We kept cutting.

Sometime on Saturday I accidentally put in a shot where Bono “dropped” a line during the filming. He stopped singing and looked at the camera as the lyrics continued. After playing it back, Scott & I felt it really worked and helped make the video unique. When Phil arrived that evening and saw it, he though it was a mistake. (You can see it 2:43 into the video.) After some debate he embraced it and sold the idea to Bono. They eventually liked the technique so much that when they shot the video for “Wild Horses,” they did the same thing intentionally.

Phil, Scott and I worked straight through the night a second time. By morning we had an almost complete cut. Phil took it to show Bono, who was in NYC by then, and we kept cutting. When Phil came back with the word that the video was approved, we made a few little tweaks, put a slate on it (I’m listed as “Glenn O’Lazzaro” out of respect for the Emerald Island) and Phil put it on a plane. We’d worked 48 hours non-stop from start to finish.  Later, the video was spoofed perfectly by Ben Stiller on his TV show. He used our video as the foundation, adding elements from the two previous videos. You can see “Lucky Clovers” below.

http://vimeo.com/27403185