- About Us
- Demo Reels
- Misc Videos
- Introduction of 24P (from 2002)
- Americana
- Images from a Summer Carnival
- River Rafting
- Scenes from a County Fair
- America Lost
- Moments@24fps (1997)
- Behind-the-Scenes Prop38 (2000)
- 1991 Pittsburgh Penguins
- Barth Bartholomae (1997)
- Behind-the-Scenes Pagetime (1998)
- Frontier Telephone (2000)
- Time Capsule: GNC 1992-1995
- Glenn
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Usually, I’m shooting nice things… like attractive people eating food while smiling. This project was completely different.
John Brabender (BrabenderCox) is one of the country’s top political media consultants. For over 10 years, he and I have worked together on many successful TV campaigns. John rarely thinks anywhere near the box, much less inside it.
John gave us less than a week to put together this project. Fortunately, I remembered scouting an old abandoned manufacturing building in Pittsburgh for a previous TV campaign. My producer and production coordinator, Judy Gurchak and I re-scouted the location and it was still available.
I set up most of the shots to take advantage of a wall of windows that lined the North side of the building. This became my primary light source, supplemented with 1200 and 2500 watt HMI’s. We used smoke machines to add atmosphere and distance to the scenes.
Growing up in Florida, I hate shooting in freezing cold weather. For the entire shoot day, our set temperature was less than 50ºF. We couldn’t use heaters because they quickly dissipated the smoke. Our shoot day was overcast and snowy, so we knew we would loose useable window light by 4:30PM.
I used a motorized, 7′ slider for the marching feet scenes and all ground level camera angles. This slider can smoothly move 25 pounds of camera.
I photographed everything with a RED Epic M using the standard set of RED primes including the 300mm telephoto. Every scene (except the fall) was shot at 30fps for playback at 23.98.
Thad Christian at Pittsburgh’s Phenomenom Post did an amazing job editing and grading the 90 second spot in less than 2 days including numerous effect shots. Michael Goodis handled original sound design. Steve Parys worked his butt off as my assistant director. Without the talents of gaffer, Ted Wiegand and scenic designer, Rich Schutte none of this would have been possible in such a short amount of time.
PLEASE: No political comments… I’ve uploaded this commercial to show an interesting assignment and production treatment… it’s not intended to be a political statement.
A few years ago (before HDTV) I directed and photographed a project for General Electric Information Services. Michael Doherty, Stan Muschweck and the late, Joe Baird of The Birmingham Group, created the original concept. The 3 minute video, titled “Reaching Beyond” was created to open GEIS’ national convention. The concept was to show how a person’s ability, imagination and creativity “grows” over their lifetime.
We cast 3 young girls, a teenager, and 2 adult women who could all have been the same person at different stages of life. The original concept called for each of the actors to be drawing or painting their version of a tree. We hired 2 local Pittsburgh artists to “pre-draw” and “pre-paint” multiple versions of the various stages of artwork. During the shoot, these same professional artists helped the actors do a believable job of working with pencils, water colors, charcoal and oil colors.
I shot all the footage with my Arri 35BL4 equipped with Zeiss super-speed lenses. The 35mm film was then transferred to tape in Nashville by colorist, Brent Clenny at Filmworkers Club. The music was composed and performed by Sue Hartford at Euphoria in Pittsburgh. I edited the long-form video at our Pittsburgh facility.
All of us at Przyborski Productions were happy to learn that our commercials for Boca Raton Regional Hospital won a “Platinum” award for broadcast media in the 2011 MarCom Awards. This is the third year that Boca Raton’s marketing team, headed by Tom Chakurda, has called on Przyborski Productions for the medical center’s on-air TV marketing.
MarCom is sponsored by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals. The mission of the MarCom Awards is to honor excellence and recognize the creativity of marketing and communication professionals. The MarCom Awards is a creative competition for corporate marketing and communication departments, advertising agencies and industry freelancers. The MarCom competition has grown to the largest of its kind in the world with about 5,000 entries per year. A look at the winners shows a range in size from individuals to media conglomerates and Fortune 50 companies.
CLICK HERE to screen several recent Boca Raton Regional Hospital spots, including the latest MarCom Platinum winner.
Back in the 90′s, I directed and photographed many TV campaigns for Cleveland based ad agencies. The most talented agency creative director I worked with was Alan Glazen. His agency was given an assignment to produce a TV spot and long-form video for Action Technology (now part of the Invacare Corp.) The company manufactures specialized, wheelchairs that are used throughout the world by athletes. The video was produced to be played at a major wheelchair athletics competition.
The Americans with Disability Act (ADA) had just been signed into law, but many public buildings weren’t “wheelchair friendly.” Alan Glazen created an amazing script that was designed to let the world know, that people who have a physical disability, don’t want your pity or sympathy. They just want you to get out of their way and treat them as you would anyone else.
Alan and I filmed the intense, stylized action scenes of the wheelchair athletes in an old basketball gymnasium at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University. I shot all the scenes with my Arriflex 35BL4 equipped with Zeiss super-speed lenses. During film-to-tape transfer in Nashville, the clipped color and accentuated grain was added.
The “news event” scenes were filmed the following day in the lobby of an old downtown Cleveland office building. After transferring the 35mm negative to 1″ analog tape, I edited part of the project in Pittsburgh, with Glazen handling the final edit, original music and audio mix at a Cleveland facility.
As a footnote: Some years ago, Alan Glazen sold his ad agency and today is the successful owner of multiple restaurants in Cleveland, Ohio.
I live a few miles north of downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In our region, it’s extremely rare to have a mid-October snowfall. I woke on Saturday morning to unexpected, falling snow that was over an inch across. It was so beautiful that I grabbed one of our high-def cameras and shot a few scenes around my home.
In Pittsburgh, we were lucky. Our snow melted and was gone by early afternoon. The entire Northeast U.S. didn’t fare as well with a massive 6 to 12 inch snow storm.
For the past several years, I’ve directed and photographed the HDTV commercials for Boca Raton Regional Hospital. BRRH is one of Florida’s finest hospitals. They’re ranked #1 in Florida for overall cardiac services and stroke treatment. They also have one of Florida’s largest cancer programs.
This video was an opportunity to salute one of Boca Raton’s most important assets: its nurses.
I photographed these candid scenes using Panasonic GH1 & GH2 cameras. These small DSLR’s were equipped with Olympus 14-35mm F2 zooms and Canon FD series 50mm F1.4 & 85mm F1.2 lenses. For several days, we maintained a very low profile working in and around active operating rooms and patient areas. Small, 12″ x 12″ LED plexiglas panels were used as fill light on certain scenes.
For the latest series of Eat ‘n Park TV spots, Sarah Marince asks employees what they love about Eat ‘n Park (besides their paycheck.) In my favorite spot of the new “Team” series, Sarah gets to put the icing on EnP’s iconic Smiley Face Cookie.
I currently shoot these spots on 2 HDTV digital cameras. All the sync sound sequences are shot on a Panasonic AF-100 equipped with Canon and Olympus lenses. I use the very heavy 14mm – 35mm F2 zoom for most wide angle scenes. Either a 50mm F1.4 or a 85mm F1.2 lens handles talent close-ups.
My second camera for quick, hand-held cutaways is either a Panasonic GH2 or a Canon 5D mk2. All the cutaways in this spot were shot on a GH2 equipped with a 20mm F1.7 lens.
Over the years, I’ve found that the only way to direct and shoot this “scripted spontaneity” is to think of each sequence as a very short play.
While gaffer, Ted Wiegand is setting lights with the crew, I’ll have the talent first perform the scene or sequence without any direction. Invariably, people will naturally stay too far apart for TV. After a couple run throughs, I’ll get the desired distance between the actors. Then I’ll determine the best wide shot or master shot angle to cover the action. The close-up, return shots between actors happen naturally based on the master shot.
Although I often use a Fisher 10 crab dolly, for this spot I shot all the test kitchen dialogue with my camera mounted on a monopod. It gives the scenes spontaneity and just enough movement as if the action was natural and unrehearsed.
When you’re working in tight quarters, such as Eat ‘n Park’s test kitchen, the choices of camera angles and camera positions are limited, so you make the most of the best overall background for your master shot. The backgrounds for close-ups will be out-of-focus, so you can add, subtract or cheat certain scene elements.
One last bit of advice, when working with “real people” as opposed to actors, let them play themselves. As long as the role they’re playing is within their normal “world” you can usually get a pretty credible performance. I’ve found that non-professionals do their best on the second or third take. After that it’s a crap shoot.
BTW, that’s actually Sarah perfectly icing the cookie in the close-up!
Background Info: Don Nehlen is a former head coach of the West Virginia University “Mountaineers” football team. For 20 years, he lead the team to winning seasons and bowl games. Nehlen retired from his successful coaching career in 2000. You know you’re appreciated when the road to Mountaineer Stadium is named Don Nehlen Drive.
A few years ago, West Virginia University Healthcare performed triple-bypass heart surgery, which saved his life. Coach Nehlen agreed to be featured in a TV commercial for the WVUH Heart Institute.
This commercial is an example of combining the best image quality attributes of 2 completely different 1080P HDTV cameras. I shot all of Coach Nehlen’s on-camera interview scenes with my Sony F900R. All the cutaways or “B-Roll” scenes were shot with my Panasonic AF100.
Personally, I’m sick of seeing “interview” spots where the subject is looking and talking off-camera to some nondescript, unidentified person. I wanted Coach Nehlen to tell his story, first person, directly to the home viewer. I resurrected an idea and technology that I first pioneered in the mid-eighties. We hooked 2 cameras and teleprompters together so the coach could talk directly to a virtual image of the interviewer’s face which appeared to “float” in front of the camera’s lens. The technique worked very well and added to the believability and sincerity of the Coach’s on-camera delivery. Thanks to Gary, Jay, Heidi and Mary of WVUH’s marketing team for putting up with my crazy production techniques…
The HDTV commercial is scheduled to begin airing in August throughout West Virginia.
A couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to direct and photograph Steelers’ coach, Mike Tomlin in the new TV spots for “The Extra Mile Foundation.” This worthwhile, non-profit organization gives urban kids the chance to attend a school where they learn in an atmosphere that’s free from drugs and violence.
When you’re the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, every hour of your day is blocked out with meetings, interviews and other activities. Mike Tomlin was kind enough to give us 3 hours of his time. Producer and production coordinator, Judy Gurchak and I worked our entire shoot day around Tomlin’s schedule.
Stan Muschwek wrote and produced the new ad campaign. Stan thinks in visual terms, so he wrote scripts that didn’t require our featured talent to rush through his on-camera and voice-over copy. Stan and I have worked together on numerous projects for the past 25 years.
I shot all the 1080P “B-Roll” footage in actual working classrooms. For these scenes, I used Panasonic’s new GH2 camera. It makes great images and it’s small enough that kids don’t feel intimidated having it close to their face. Gaffer, Ted Weigand used small LED soft panels, bounce cards and battery powered LED fill lights to minimize classroom disruptions.
I shot Mike Tomlin’s on-camera segments with Panasonic’s new AF100, HDTV camera. I also photographed the still images for The Extra Mile Foundation’s 2011 print campaign. It feels great to give your time to such a worthwhile cause.
I live in the City of Pittsburgh. Our company is in the city. Most of our clients and ad agencies are located in cities across the state. It’s easy to forget that Pennsylvania is mostly rural farm country.
Once a year, my wife Carol and I travel an hour and a half north of Pittsburgh to Meadville, Pennsylvania. It’s the annual site of the Crawford County Fair, the largest agricultural and livestock exhibition in the state. For an entire week, kids and adults from all over Northwest Pennsylvania show off the best looking animals they’ve raised. 4H members and others take pride in their sheep, cattle, pigs, horses, goats, ducks and chicken. Every exhibitor hopes to win a prize and the bragging rights to having raised a “best of show” animal at the Crawford County Fair.
I call this video “Scenes from a Pennsylvania County Fair” because every week in the summer, scenes like these repeat themselves in rural towns across the state and throughout the country. It’s was a hot, sticky 92 degrees at the fair but everybody enjoyed walking the fairgrounds, eating junk food and catching up with their old friends.
This video is a compilation of 1080P footage I shot in 2008 and 2011. It’s a salute to the hard working people we sometimes take for granted…
