Every year Glenn Przyborski directs & photographs major healthcare campaigns. He shoots for agencies across the country as well as clients who internally handle their own creative marketing.
Przyborski is one of the few commercial directors who realizes production inside a busy hospital is not the same as filming in a studio. He knows how to work with doctors & medical teams to get great footage with minimal disruption. Everyone on the production crew is aware that real patients take precedence over the filming process.
The commercials featured on this reel demonstrate Glenn Przyborski’s directorial styles & techniques that enhance a project’s concept. All featured doctors & hospital staff are real. Testimonials are given by actual hospital patients. All operating room scenes were photographed during actual procedures.
In January 2001, The National Geographic Channel began cable & satellite programming to millions of homes across North America. From 2000 to 2002, Glenn Przyborski directed & photographed many of the network’s major promotions.
All projects were shot in 35mm at NatGeo’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. The network originated live & pre-recorded programming every weekday. That meant promo shoots were scheduled on weekends.
All promos involved complex effects and graphics. Przyborski worked closely with digital artists from San Francisco’s, 168 Design who handled post-production, special effects and motion graphics. The iconic National Geographic theme music was originally composed by Elmer Bernstein.
Living in the city of Pittsburgh, it’s easy to forget that most of Pennsylvania is 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.
Here’s a 4 minute “mini time capsule” of GNC’s early TV advertising. General Nutrition Centers had an amazing period of growth and profitability in the early 90’s. During this time, TV Advertising helped GNC realize it’s first quarterly profit as it went public for the second time.
From ’93 through ’96, Przyborski Productions produced most of GNC’s network TV spots. We introduced their “Gold Card” and many product lines that are still in stores today.
All the commercials were filmed in 35mm, then transferred and edited on 1″ videotape. By the end of 1993, we were editing on D2 composite digital. (In the 90’s, everything was standard definition.)
Most of these old commercials are dated and a little “corny.” Saturday Night Live even did a comedic parody on GNC’s “Colon Cleanser”, titled, “Colon Blow.” Thirty years ago, sophisticated computer graphics were in their infancy. The stock music GNC used also dates the ads. The commercials in this video were selected from several GNC campaigns.
Greg Yost, creative director of Lazor-Yost Marketing & Design, has passed away.
I first met Greg in the early 90’s. He was creative director of “The Kaiser Group”. Greg was the first agency art director I encountered that was sure computers would take over all mechanical aspects of layout & design in advertising. We both owned early Macintosh systems, and once a month we’d get together to swap 3.5” floppy disks of programs we either bought or borrowed.
The first project I directed and photographed for Greg was for Sheetz. Greg did much of the early creative marketing concepts and in-store signage for this family owned, Altoona based company. They were trying hard to be more than a group of “7-11 type” convenience stores. Greg created the advertising that introduced Sheetz Coffee, “MTO” food items, Sheetz Hot Dogs, “Sheetza Pizza”, “IT” Cola, “Jacks” cigarettes and Sheetz’s own brand of gasoline. When you pull into a Sheetz for coffee, food or gas… remember Greg Yost.
I also filmed many of Greg’s creative and sometimes crazy TV campaigns for Hoss’s Restaurants, HealthSouth Rehab Centers, Fruth Drug Stores, Unimart, CEI Cable & Internet and Atlantic Luggage. The projects always had limited budgets, but we always had fun shooting Greg’s concepts.
I last spoke with Greg in May and he never mentioned that he was sick and undergoing treatment for cancer. We talked about how the ad business had changed over the past couple decades and that today we’d never get away with what we used to do… He sounded positive, upbeat and directly involved in the marketing efforts of his clients.
As a remembrance, here’s a few of Greg Yost’s favorite TV projects from 1991 through 2009…RIP my friend.
On Friday, April 7th, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted England’s popular 70’s & 80’s rock group, YES. Cheering in the audience was John Brabender, one of the country’s best known political media experts, ad agency owner, and long-time super-fan of YES. Brabender also led a crusade to get his favorite band inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Every once in a while, a project comes along that’s completely different and fun to shoot. With hits like “Roundabout”, “Owner of a Lonely Heart”, “Long Distance Runaround” and many more, YES, is truly a super group from the 70’s & 80’s. Yet they still have a huge, cult-like, devoted following that sells out every performance.
For the group’s U.S. tour, Brabender asked Glenn Przyborski to direct and photograph several short videos that would play on YES’ concert video screens. They were tied to late 70’s nostalgia, including an homage to a scene from the movie “Almost Famous”. The videos were played before the band’s performance and to signal the end of intermission.
The videos were edited at Phenomenon by Thad Christian. John Brabender created the original concepts.
The Penguins won their first Stanley Cup in 1991. Back then, KDKA-TV broadcast many of the team’s games. The station needed footage of featured players for use in on-air promotions as well as open & close “bumpers” of the telecast.
Przyborski Productions was contacted by Drew Moniot, KDKA’s Creative Development Manager to shoot a stylized video of the team’s players. Drew’s original concept was to capture the action and interaction inside the Penguin’s locker room, between periods of play. The video would be a rough, tough, stylized look at team members preparing to hit the ice for the game’s final period. Our player-liaison, Phil Bourque helped us plan specific action cutaways that were unique to each player. Tinsy Labrie, former Marketing Director of the Pittsburgh Penguins, scheduled the shoot on a team “personal day”, so players had to be assured that their on-camera segment would take no longer than 30 minutes to film. Makeup stylist, Patti Bell enjoyed creating a realistic, hot, sweaty look for each guy. We never had more than two Penguins on-set at a time, so uniformed extras filled-in the foreground and background.
I shot all the footage on Kodak 5298 stock using my Arri 35BL4 and Zeiss Super-Speed lenses. Everything was shot from a Fisher 10 crab dolly. Film processing was handled by Producer’s Color in Detroit. The stylized “blue-bleach” treatment and enhanced grain were added to the locker room footage during the 35mm film-to-tape transfer at Postique in Detroit. After the winning ’91 season, we filmed our Stanley Cup scenes after-hours at KDKA, then transferred it as clean 35mm.
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.
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.
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!
