99 Tigers

A Creative Agency

MTV | Influencers of a Generation

How do you take the sacred medium of television and “fuck with it”? Looking back at the early, revolutionary days of MTV, Glenn Lazzaro shows how. This clip from the 2008 Promax/BDA conference was part of the session “Influencers of a Generation: MTV.” Glenn’s message: Things were different back in the ’80s. Experimenting! Magnets dragged across screens! Anti-promotion that turned into some of the greatest promotion of all time! It’s all in one quick peek at how a groundbreaking brand was born.

Here is a little sampler of some of the best MTV Promotion.

1990 NBC Promo Break

http://vimeo.com/35702481

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

Several of the spots in this promo break came from the edit rooms at National Video Center. NBC producers Tim Miller and Don Duncan usually had one or two rooms going at any given time in those days. I worked on the “Real Life with Jane Pauley” promo in this break. As a bonus, I also got my first chance to shoot film.

Tim and Don had hired a documentary film crew to shoot “real-life scenes” of America for Pauley’s show open. For the promo, they wanted to intercut the open with an interview with Jane Pauley. The crew shot in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York along the Amtrak train line. (The railroad tracks became part of the title sequence.) As we cut the show open, Don felt there weren’t enough “Middle America” scenes, since most of the footage looked urban.

I was heading to the Catskills for a vacation, so I volunteered to shoot some footage with a 1956 16mm Bolex camera I’d just bought at a garage sale. The cinematographer told me which film stock to buy and which filters would match his footage. I kept the camera with me at all times, shooting wherever I happened to be with my kids: farms, baseball games, front porches, a dude ranch. I didn’t really know how to shoot; it was the first time I’d used the camera. Luckily our film style was cinema verite, so my grainy footage fit right in. I shot a lot of footage of my kids, but for some reason they never made the cut.

BONUS! My son found a spot with him as a 4 year old prominently in the beginning. And yes, the opening chords are from Rod Stewart’s Maggie May.

http://vimeo.com/45262340

 

Bravo “Top Chef Texas” Tease

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

July 11, 2011, Dallas Texas

Throughout the past seasons of “Top Chef”, Padma Lakshmi has eaten apples, oranges, cake, whipped cream, chocolate, watermelons and tomatoes for the Promos. And she has done it really, really well. So when it was time to shoot the promos for “Top Chef Texas” Amy Troiano, VP of On Air Promotion, Trez Thomas VP Brand strategy, Creative Director Justin Reichman and Producer Elizabeth Massip all agreed that we would shoot Padma eating an iconic Texas food for the Tease Spot. The people in Texas take their Barbeque very seriously so we had to make sure we did it right. Barbequed Ribs were of course our first choice but we had other options as well.-the big three of Texas Barbecue: Pulled pork, Brisket and Ribs were all considered. But one thing clinched the deal: while looking for reference images for the creative brief, Elizabeth did a Google Image Search for “eating ribs.” The very first hit was Padma Lakshmi eating ribs.

 

On the shoot day Padma did what she always does best. She made Texas Ribs look better than they ever looked.

 

 

Leo & Khloe Are Saving the Tigers

What the world needs now is peace. Brotherhood. Great on-air promotion.

Oh, and more wild tigers.

As we ring in 2012, 99 Tigers invites you to join a seriously cool mission: to keep wild tigers from vanishing forever.

As few as 3,200 tigers are left in the wild, endangered by illegal trade and deforestation.

Leo diCaprio and the World Wildlife Fund have launched a global campaign, Save the Tigers, to turn this around. Leo’s pledged $1 million to help build political, financial and public support to double the number of wild tigers by 2022, the next Year of the Tiger.

The Kardashians are letting the fur fly, too.

This week, Khloe Kardashian helped promote the WWF’s Texting for Tigers campaign:

“By texting TIGERS to 20222, your $10 donation will help WWF save the tiger in its vast range–from India to China, to the Russian Far East,” Khloe tweeted, spurring a flood of donations.

So hey, why not start 2012 with a roar? Join 99 Tigers, Leo and Khloe…and save a tiger today.

 

 

 

 

INXS – Beautiful Girl

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

http://vimeo.com/33724660

1992. National Video Center. NYC.

One day Mark Pellington called and said he wanted to come over and play 2 songs for me that he would be directing Music Videos for. I could choose which one I wanted to edit. I had been working with Mark for a number of years while he was a writer/producer/director at MTV and he had made the transition to full time director by this time. The songs were “Beautiful Girl” by INXS and “Jeremy” by a new band called “Pearl Jam.”

After listening to both songs I decided on “Beautiful Girl.” INXS was huge at the time and I had not heard of Pearl Jam nor did I think they were going to be very popular. (When I was a kid I also though that “The Dave Clark 5” were going to be bigger than “The Beatles”)

The song was written by INXS composer Andrew Farriss about how wonderful having a newborn daughter was. It was basically a love song to parenthood.

Mark was always challenging preconceived notions in popular culture and this Video was not going to be an exception. He intended the music video for “Beautiful Girls” to call attention to the increasing cases of anorexia in young girls. Mark remembers, “Michael Hutchence and his girlfriend at the time, supermodel Helena Christenson, were supportive. (it was) ironic because the video bashed models and the entire culture of dismorphia, female body image etc.”

The footage of the band was shot in London by Nick Evans shooting multiple exposures in camera. The 7 layers were created by back-winding the camera on one roll of film. Mark shot the girls or as he said: “real girls- not models” with Christophe Lanzenberg in NYC.

The edit was very straight-forward. Mark had great footage so very little editorial trickery was needed. Straight-cuts and juxtaposing his iconic footage alongside text got the message across very effectively. We did some layering of footage and also used the Abekas A62 to loop sequences. We also shot some magazine tear sheets under the title camera. The opening 40 seconds of the song has no lyrics and no drums so I used the single-note piano line to create a rhythm. It looks a little out of sync here because I got the video from YouTube but I assure you it was not.

The Video was nominated for a Grammy award.

Mark’s “Jeremy” Music Video won four MTV Video Music Awards in 1993, including Best Video of the Year, Best Group Video, Best Metal/Hard Rock Video and Best Direction. And “The Beatles” are still bigger than “The Dave Clark Five.”