- 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
CLICK HERE TO PLAY JOHN’S REEL
My friend, director/cinematographer John Pytka recently passed away. It happened shortly after his 82nd birthday.
For years, John and I would get together for lunch every month or so. We’d share stories about film production in the 70’s through 90’s. Back then, John & his older brother Joe, were Pytka Productions, one of the country’s top spot production companies. John directed & photographed network commercials for Alamo Car Rental, Gallo Wine, Budweiser, & many more. He was often used by San Francisco’s Hal Riney & Partners for iconic ad campaigns, including Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America”.
John’s reel from the days of 35mm film, showcases a different style of production than what’s en vogue today. It’s well paced, beautiful photographic images. Many of the scenes incorporate slow-motion that creates a bigger than life feel to the action. I describe them as “moving stills”. This contrasts with today’s fast cuts, punchy graphics & rapid camera moves.
John spent much of his retirement with his wife, Jennifer on their farm North of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We’ll all miss him.
For the 50th Anniversary of Boca Raton Regional Hospital, Tom Chakurda, vice-president of marketing and communications, asked Przyborski Productions to create a moving video that would be a tribute to their doctors, nurses and thousands of employees.
For the celebration, the medical center secured the rights to Barbra Streisand’s “Ordinary Miracles”. This inspirational song celebrates the work that people do everyday for the benefit of others.
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.
