99 Tigers

A Creative Agency

Time Warner Global Image Spot

http://vimeo.com/28405221

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

1990, National Video Center, NYC.  Posted by Glenn Lazzaro

Before 1990, a lot of the things we did in the edit suite (animating art under the title camera, warping images, revealing the process, etc.) were primarily for promos and music videos. The commercial advertising world had yet to embrace the “MTV editorial style.” Agencies would borrow ideas occasionally, but they’d never really done a full-blown spot using “edit suite” techniques. This spot changed all that.

I’d worked with director Jon Kane from Optic Nerve on a number of projects prior to this. He always loved to take chances and subvert what was considered the norm.

Together with Steve Stein, Jon had built a stream-of-consciousness audio track combining spoken word, foreign language, and sound effects with music. This gave us the freedom to do anything we wanted.

Since this was a national spot with a big budget, Jon booked 3 open-ended nights so we could take our time and experiment. He also insisted that we have access to any and all equipment at National Video. The spot was going to be built from hundreds of still images from Time Magazine that we would manipulate under the title camera. (There are only 10 seconds of live-action footage in the 60-second spot.) When Jon said he wanted access to everything, he also meant the kitchen. We shot a series of Time Magazine covers through a fruit bowl under the title camera (you can see the actual bowl 13 seconds into the spot). We also ran the audio track through an ancient oscilloscope we borrowed from the video shop, to create the squiggly sound waves throughout the spot.

Placing the art under the title camera, we recorded 3 frames at a time and created animations that we then processed with digital effects and switcher “wipes” to create the spot. Trez Thomas, VP Brand strategy at Bravo, who was freelancing with Optic Nerve at the time, remembers “long nights and the fact that the Quincy Jones edit for ‘Listen Up’ got moved to LA, so all the suites could be used to edit this one piece.”

After all the layering and digital manipulation of the stills, Jon wanted to introduce a “human” element into the finale of the spot. We enlisted whoever was around at 3 AM to hold their hands under the camera as we animated more stills. That included, Jon, Trez, myself, and some of the girls who were stuck in scheduling that night because of us. This was the second time my hands appeared on TV. (See my “It Takes Two” blog post for the first)

The spot aired nationally, and was written about in the business section of the New York Times (see below). It wasn’t long before the advertising world started doing similar style spots to sell their products.


 

ESPN “Winter X Games”

1996. National Video Center. NYC.

By 1996, I was transitioning from editor to director  with the help of executive producer Susie Shuttleworth. Together we started a production company in partnership with National Video called Division 6.

I’d been working with Patrick McDonough at PMCD Design since the late ’80s as an editor; he was one of the first people to hire Susie and me to produce and direct his live-action projects. Patrick had designed ESPN2’s on-air look, so when they launched the first Winter X Games they chose PMCD to design the show packaging. Patrick wanted live action to be the core of the design. Since I was an avid snowboarder, Patrick hired Division 6 to produce the shoot with me directing the live-action footage. We couldn’t shoot imagery for each event, so we decided to just shoot ice climbing, snowboarding, downhill snow biking, and shovel racing—a modified version of a sport invented by ski resort workers who used shovels as sleds.

We decided to shoot the footage at night to make it more dramatic. We also wanted to use heavily gelled “Lightning Strikes” lights to add color to the “lightning” flashes.

We shot at Big Bear Resort in California at 10,000 feet in 20-degree temperatures. Hauling lights, cameras, crew, scaffolding, an 8-foot turntable, and a 300-pound ice statue to the top of the mountain was a challenge in daylight. but at night it was downright dangerous. The resort wouldn’t let us use the chairlifts at night, so we used snowmobiles to get everything up the mountain. A helicopter would have been helpful, but we couldn’t afford it. (We did get one accidentally. One of our crew members had a severe asthma attack due to the altitude and had to be airlifted out.)

When our lights failed due to freezing temperatures, it looked like we’d miss some of our needed footage. But our cinematographer came to the rescue: we grabbed our last shots by using the headlights from two snowmobiles.

Back in NYC, Patrick and his team went to work using the footage to create the X Games packaging. I was assigned to edit the tease spot. I did what would be considered a traditional cut, using aggressive modern music that had become the signature of action sports, since “MTV Sports” pioneered its use. That’s what aired on ESPN.

But I did a different cut for my reel, with music that would be less expected. I also looking for something graphic to toss in the mix. My assistant had referred to the helmets the athletes wore as “brain buckets,” and we started comparing the airborne athletes to astronauts. I searched bookstores (remember them?) and found an illustrated children’s book on space exploration. We photographed the illustrations under the title camera and animated them in 3-frame increments. Adding digital decay gave them a dreamy, surreal quality. They worked as great transitions between the helmeted athletes and the helmeted astronauts. With the connection between the brain and the danger the astronauts and athletes shared, “If I Only Had A Brain” from “The Wizard of Oz” became the perfect track for the cut. It was truly a no-brainer.

Sorry. I couldn’t help myself.

Bonus: Some of our old logos at Division 6

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

Connect The Dots


“Connect The Dots”

1986. National Video Center. NYC. Lynda and Ellen Kahn of “Twin Art” asked me to help them put together an animated sequence for the upcoming new show “Pee Wee’s Playhouse.” In the sequence “Connect The Dots,” Pee Wee Herman jumps into his “Magic Screen” and tosses up colored dots that connect and construct a farm tractor for him to play with. Pee Wee had been shot on green screen on 16mm film and transferred to one-inch tape. Twin Art prepared the graphic elements on a Quantel Paintbox, the standard at the time. (Photoshop, After Effects, or anything else for that matter didn’t exist.)

It was my job to combine the green screen footage and all the multi-colored graphic elements in my edit suite.

Hoping to get the 1:20 piece done in 10 hours we decided to book the job starting on Friday night in case we needed more time. That also allowed us have the use of all the Videotape machines and equipment we wanted without anyone knowing. The amount of time we though we needed was a guess because no one had done anything like this before.

In 1986 one-inch videotape was the gold standard for editing. Non-linear editing or digital compositing system had yet to be invented. Although the most widely used editing controller at the time was CMX, we had a system called a “Datatron Vanguard.” (It was nicknamed “Dumbatron by some of the editors.)  It controlled tape machines, production switchers and audio decks thru a series of relays. The relays had a “delay time” of up to 6 frames. Not ideal for doing precise single frame animation editing. Doing multilayered compositing on tape prior to the digital revolution was time consuming and each time you made a copy or added a layer the image degraded severely. One had to be careful of “generational loss.” This piece was going to ultimately take upwards of 100 generations. The piece looks simple by today’s standards (and it is) but at the time it was uncharted territory. We had to find a way to reduce “generational loss.

”Slaving 6 one-inch tape machines together and using two switchers- one in a separate edit room down the hall helped. For each edit I would roll all the tape machines containing pre-built sequences in a long 30 second pre-roll and run to the other room hopefully in time to hit a button on the switcher in there (and account for the 6 frame delay). One frame at a time. Doing thousands of single frame edits we built the piece backwards. We started with the end frames and added layer upon layer hoping that everything would match up at the end. Luckily there were a few full frame edits so we could hide any errors. And the childlike style of the animation also helped.When we finished it was Sunday morning around 11Am. We went straight thru Friday and Saturday night in order to make Monday morning delivery.

I went on to do 2 more “Connect the Dots” sequences with Twin Art. On the next 2 we had gotten a “black box” called the Abekas A62 that changed everything but that’s another story.