99 Tigers

A Creative Agency

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

 

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.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MTV-Mysterious Man/Randee Gets A Job

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

http://vimeo.com/32156004

National Video. 1989

In 1989 most MTV producers were trying to out-cut each other using blinding-fast edits. There was one exception. John Payson. John had come to MTV from the Harvard Lampoon so the majority of his work was comedy based. He was less concerned about “being cool” and concentrated more on linear storytelling. (but with a decidedly MTV feel) Between 1987 and 1990 John was responsible for helping make “Randee Of The Redwoods” the face of MTV.

Mysterious Man

When John shot the “Mysterious Man” promo he intended it to be one long 60-second shot. Sadly when we got into the edit we had to put a few cuts in just to bring it in on time. We created the soundtrack in the edit stealing bits of music from classical CDs that John brought in. (in those days no one was worried about licensing music)

He shot the “Mysterious Man” in color but wanted it to have a “noir” feel. We turned it black & white but John felt it needed something else- some strange “Randee” kind of thing. We put some color back into his hair because, as John said, “Not even Film Noir could contain Randee.”

Randee Gets a Job

While working at a gas station Randee has a run-in with a “yuppie.” The most hated stereotype of the 80s and his obvious archenemy. The edit is pretty straightforward with the exception of Randee sucking the car into the gas nozzle. Doing it today it would be simple. Just shoot the car separately against a green screen. But MTV shoot budgets in those days wouldn’t allow that so John shot the car in the gas station. In order to separate the car from the background we cut mattes by feeding the shot into a TV monitor under the title camera. We then traced its outline off the face of the monitor onto a piece of paper with a sharpie. We cut the shape out and put it under the title camera and used it as a matte to separate the car from the background. Using an ADO I shrunk and distorted the car frame-by-frame to get it into the nozzle

Note: The explosion at the end was borrowed from a UK show called “The Secret Life Of Television” that I had lying around the edit suite. In the show they dynamited a stack of televisions just to see what would happen. The explosion found its way into many, many MTV promos over the years.

Bonus. As part of a marketing stunt, Randee became the dark horse candidate for President and John had Artist Peter Max do the campaign poster. I got a signed poster for working on the project. Sadly mine is gone but it looked just like this one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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