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.
CLICK HERE TO PLAY JOHN’S REEL
My friend, director/cinematographer John Pytka passed away in 2024. It happened soon after his 82nd birthday.
For years, John & I would get together for lunch every month or so. We’d share stories about film production in the 70’s through 90’s. Based in Pittsburgh, John & his older brother Joe, were “Pytka Productions”, one of the country’s top commercial production companies. On some of Joe’s projects, both brothers would work together. Separately, John directed & photographed network TV commercials for Alamo Car Rental, Gallo Wine, Budweiser, & many more. He was often used by San Francisco’s Hal Riney & Partners to photograph iconic ad campaigns, including Ronald Reagan’s memorable “Morning in America” TV commercial.
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 “larger-than-life” feel to the action. I describe his photographic technique as “moving stills”. This contrasts with today’s fast cuts, punchy graphics & rapid camera moves.
As a true “filmmaker”, John also edited many of the commercials he shot. This involved cutting thousands of feet of 35mm work print, using a classic Moviola upright editing machine. At the start of his career, John worked at a motion picture film lab. He mastered all aspects of color film processing, Hazeltine color timing & the use of sophisticated optical printers.
John spent much of his retirement with his wife, Jennifer on their farm North of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He loved his dogs & would often take them for rides in his truck. We’ll all miss him.
For 25 years, I directed and photographed almost every Eat’nPark TV campaign. During that time, Cliff Miller was the driving force behind Eat’n Park’s advertising. First as Creative Director at Ketchum Advertising, then as Eat’n Park’s own VP of Creative Services. It was Cliff’s idea to use Eat’n Park’s iconic “Smiley Cookie” as a key part of the company’s image & logo. (Cliff retired from Eat’n Park in 2016.)
From 35mm standard definition to HD digital, I thought it’d be fun to look back at a dozen Eat’n Park’s TV commercials from 1990 to 2015.
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.
Clients sometimes ask if I miss shooting commercials on film as we used to do on every project. Our last “film” production was in 2006. Looking back, my business partner, Jim DeVincentis and I had a lot of fun on film shoots in the late 80’s, 90’s & early 2000’s.
In the mid-90’s, JVC introduced a small mini-DV camcorder. We bought several of them and asked clients and crew to shoot some behind-the-scenes video during our film productions. I located several of the old tapes and edited them together with the actual footage we were filming. Of course everything back then was standard definition.
Most people think of the past with nostalgia… as if things were always better in the “good old days.” Do I miss shooting film? I’ve always enjoyed working with agencies & clients to create commercials that everyone was proud to air. The specific production “medium” was never the most important part of a project.
My son John said, “Dad… If the vinyl LP record can return to popularity, movie film has a good chance of a come back.” You never know…
Over the past 30 years, John “Buzz” Moyer has become one of the most sought after cameraman and Steadicam operators in the film & TV industry. John has shot over 70 feature films & TV series including Marvel’s, “The Avengers” and Stephen Spielberg’s remake of “West Side Story”. John won the 2022 Society of Camera Operators (SOC) Camera Operator of the Year Award for his work on “West Side Story”.
He began his career as a Steadicam operator working on numerous TV commercials, including hundreds of ads for Przyborski Productions. In the mid-90’s almost every major TV project included Steadicam cinematography. In the early 90’s, John bought a used Steadicam and taught himself to be an excellent operator. Today all his camera equipment is state-of-the-art.
John’s filmed projects all over the world, but still lives in Pittsburgh with his wife Kathy and their sons, Hayden & Grady. He’s also an excellent woodworker and talented pianist.
A short time ago, I ran into Russ Streiner, an old friend who’s best known as the producer of George Romero’s, “Night of the Living Dead”. He has the unique distinction of being the first person in the film killed by a zombie. Russ was excited about the Blu-ray HD release of this classic horror film. In the 60’s & 70’s, Russ produced dozens of television ad campaigns. Many people are unaware that his business partner, the late George Romero, was a popular director, cinematographer and editor of TV spots before moving on to motion pictures.
Russ asked if I had saved any of the old commercials created by Hartwick-Przyborski Productions. Paul Hartwick (who passed in 2013) and I founded the company in 1975. From 1975 to 1987, “H/P” produced hundreds of TV commercials for clients and ad agencies across the USA. At one time, we had offices in New York, Chicago and Pittsburgh.
I located several boxes of old 2” and 1” videotape. All these spots were originally shot on 35mm film. In the 70’s & 80’s, commercials were distributed to networks and TV stations, exclusively on videotape.
In no particular running order, I selected 25 commercials. They look and sound so dated when compared to what we do today. Check out the popularity of musical jingles and just how bad electronic title graphics looked 35+ years ago. If you’re over 40, you might remember some of these ads from when they originally aired…
This video is also on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/272371561
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.
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.
