- About Przyborski Productions
- Show 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 (1999)
- Behind-the-Scenes Prop38 (2000)
- 1991 Pittsburgh Penguins
- Barth Bartholomae (1997)
- Behind-the-Scenes Pagetime (1998)
- Frontier Telephone (2000)
- Time Capsule: GNC 1993-1996
- Glenn
- Jimmy D
- Map
- Contact Info
- Scrapbook
Bill Garrison and Dave Hughes created a unique vehicle to introduce Eat’n Park’s new gourmet hamburgers. The concept required Przyborski Productions to produce a runway fashion show, only the featured items would be burgers, instead of designer clothing. The commercial was to be a fun parody of the popular TV show, “Project Runway”.
Stylist, Rachel Vallozzi created the individual looks for the Eat’n Park servers who were actually experienced runway models.
Glenn Przyborski photographed the food scenes during the studio set & light day. Food stylist, AnneMarie Leydon worked to insure the new burgers looked great on-camera. Custom made, high-intensity LED panels were used as “strobes” to simulate paparazzi camera flashes.
Sarah Marince had fun playing host of the “fashion show”. Director/cinematographer Przyborski shot the commercial with a RED Epic and a Canon C100, both equipped with Canon lenses. Some of the non-sync cutaways were shot at 96 frames-per-second.
Working with Garrison-Hughes’ producer Nan Quatchak, Ray Tragesser of UpperCut edited the spot. Rob Deaner at Market Street Sound created the original music and mixed the finished commercial.
AutoZone wanted to re-broadcast a successful commercial that I directed and photographed in 2003. Back then, TV spots were produced in standard definition as most networks and cable systems weren’t accepting HD commercials.
I shot the original Duralast battery commercial in 4:3 ratio, standard definition at 23.98 frames per second. Fortunately, we recorded the original video, non-compressed on a video file server.
I went back to the 16 original scenes and removed the 3-2 pulldown which yielded progressive scan video at 23.98 frames-per-second. My son, John Przyborski, who created the visual effects for the spot, had saved progressive scan versions of each scene that included mattes or re-touch effects.
The next step was to use the program, “Shake” to expand each scene so the progressive scan video became 1080 pixels high. Finally, on a 1080P timeline, I literally re-edited the entire spot, frame-by-frame. All title graphics, such as the Coast-to-Coast Warranty, Proven Tough, and AutoZone logos were re-inserted at full HD resolution. Doner’s art department created the shaded Duralast logo to pillar-box the left and right of the screen. The original audio mix from 2003 was re-used.
You may ask, “Why the pillar-box format? Why not expand the original scenes to fill the entire HD frame?” The original scenes were framed for the standard 4:3 ratio TV format. To fill the top to bottom of the 1080HD image required a 224% expansion. To fill the entire HD screen (while maintaining correct image proportion) would require a 306% expansion. Also, by filling the left-to-right, the top and bottom would be chopped off. The “pillar-box” technique that we chose, yields an acceptably sharp HD image that’s also compatible with center-cut, standard definition TV.
All across the country, traveling carnivals setup shop outside hundreds of small towns and cities. Within a day or so, workers transform an open field on the outskirts of town, into a midway with rides, games and lots of junk food. Where else can you enjoy chocolate funnel cakes and deep-fried ice cream?
For many residents, a trip to the carnival’s an annual tradition. For the $5 admission, you can spend all day and night cruising the fair grounds. There’s groups of girls checking out the guys and catching up on mid-summer gossip. As day slowly dissolves to night, young lovers stroll the midway hand-in-hand.
At a Midwest carnival, tractor and truck pulls are very popular. A powerful truck or tractor drags a weighted sled down a dirt track. It’s not a sophisticated sport, but it’s fun to watch and very loud! The owner of the winning entry gets a prize, but more importantly, all his friends know he drives of the most powerful truck in town.
I shot this video to capture moments from a hot, humid July day, at the fairgrounds, just outside Butler, Pennsylvania.
Here’s a look at a nesting pair of American Bald Eagles that have built a 6′ wide nest, a little over 1000ft from the Great Allegheny Passage bike trail, a few miles south of Pittsburgh, PA USA. The male and female have one rather large “eaglet” in their nest. He looks almost ready to fly.
As a commercial director/cinematographer, this was my first experience with nature photography. I’m used to planned projects and production schedules. I now have complete respect for the men and women who shoot nature photos and videos.
Every scene in this video was shot from about a quarter mile from the birds and their nest. At this distance, the birds aren’t really noticeable to the naked eye.
It’s great that the American Bald Eagle has made a complete comeback from near extinction. They are now in every US state except Hawaii. We have 3 nesting pairs in the Pittsburgh area. They hunt in a radius of several miles from their nest and can easily lift small animals weighing up to 4 pounds.
Neil Walker plays second base for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He’s a very popular hometown kid and the Sports Medicine Spokesman for Allegheny Health Network.
Glenn Przyborski directed and photographed a 6 spot TV campaign featuring Neil Walker. On-camera scenes were shot at Pirates’ Spring Training in Bradenton, Florida. The medical sequences were photographed at Pittsburgh’s Allegheny General.
It’s always a challenge to work with a sports personality… You’re given specific time restrictions, so you better know exactly what you’re doing and have your act together. With this project, we had to shoot all 6 commercials in only 4 hours. This included weight room cutaways and recording Neil’s VO segments for all 6 spots.
The day before the shoot, Glenn Przyborski, Mullen Creative Director, Michael Hoff, and AHN’s Tim Donovan planned, discussed, and walked through every Neil Walker scene. This included meeting with stadium groundskeepers and our Florida based production crew. Producer & production coordinator, Judy Gurchak broke down the entire shoot day into 15 minute segments.
On set, Neil Walker was a real pro. He was enthusiastic, never complained and quickly memorized his lines. Extensive shot planning & pre-production allowed us to finish the Florida portion of the shoot in 4 hours, 20 minutes.
The ROOT Sports division of DirectTV supplied the MLB Pittsburgh Pirates’ game footage. The multi-spot campaign airs in regional broadcast and cable sports programming.
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.
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.
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…
Taye Diggs stars on ABC-TV’s “Private Practice” He’s a Hollywood “A” list TV actor with a long resumé of shows, movies and guest appearances.
16 years ago in ’95, Taye Diggs was a young actor making the rounds doing New York casting sessions. I was in NYC, with agency producer Frank DiSalvo, casting a series of Giant Eagle Supermarket TV spots. We were looking for a young male actor to play the “helpful, polite deli clerk” (that’s how the client approved script referred to his part.) 24 year-old, Taye Diggs had a great look and did a killer job at the session.
We flew Taye to Pittsburgh for an all-night shoot in one of Giant Eagle’s Supermarkets. Back then, Giant Eagle insisted that all TV production be done between 10PM and 6AM. Taye did a great job and maintained a positive attitude… even at 3AM!
Next thing you know, he’s featured on an episode of NBC’s Law & Order. Then he’s a regular on Ally McBeal… next he lands the lead on the TV series, Kevin Hill … then it’s Grey’s Anatomy… Now he stars in the popular, Private Practice airing every Thursday night at 10PM.
I’d like to think that Taye’s good fortune started when he appeared in our 1995 Giant Eagle spot… after all, his agent requested several VHS dubs of the commercial to send to West Coast casting directors. You know…the more I think about it, Taye Diggs owes his success to Giant Eagle!
Director, Glenn Przyborski and artist, Burton Morris
Burton Morris has created major works for CocaCola, The Academy Awards, Heinz, the Olympics, Absolut Vodka and hundreds of other corporations. Although he’s an internationally famous artist, Burton Morris’ is also one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet.
He just completed a fun project for Eat ‘n Park Restaurants. Burton created his own original art to celebrate the 25th anniversary of “Smiley,” Eat ‘n Park’s corporate cookie icon. This summer, Burton Morris’ original artwork will adorn t-shirts, coffee mugs and other items that are sold in Eat ‘n Park’s chain of over 80 restaurants.
Sorry, I can’t reveal Burton’s original “Smiley” artwork, ’till it’s unveiled in June!… stay tuned!
