35mm Film Production of 1998 "Kira" TV Commercial by Glenn Przyborski

35mm Film Production of 1998 "Kira" TV Commercial by Glenn Przyborski

https://vimeo.com/358550806

Rewind back to the 1990’s. TV was standard definition and virtually every TV commercial (with a decent budget) was shot on 35mm motion picture film. There was no smart phones, websites, Facebook or Youtube. Quite simply, there was no internet. Przyborski Productions was hired by the ad agency for Lichtwer Pharma AG to produce TV commercials for their herbal based pharmaceutical products. This network commercial was for “Kira” a product based on St. John’s Wort. The concept called for a beautiful, warm, tranquil location for the Kira spokesperson to share her calming thoughts with women in the daytime TV audience. Kira was marketed to women who suffered from the stress of everyday life. This 1998 shoot had the easiest, most laid-back production schedule of our multi-day shoot in Savannah, Georgia. The entire commercial consisted of 3 scenes, all filmed at the same location, from almost the same angle. From an extensive pre-scout, I knew that the ideal shooting time for best light at our location was about 10:30am to 1:00pm. During those hours, the winter sun created a wonderful dappling effect through the overhead canopy of trees. Using HMI’s, we only needed to soft light our foreground talent and the sun would take care of the BG. We had to film in the South as it was February and bitter cold in Pittsburgh. Savannah has wonderful “old South” locations and lots of talented crew people who supplemented our Pittsburgh production team. For this commercial, we chose the historic Wormsloe Plantation which has been used in numerous motion pictures, including “Forrest Gump”. We scheduled our shoot on a day that the park was closed to the public. The State of Georgia goes out of its way to accommodate the needs of filmmakers who bring out-of-state production money and hire members of Georgia’s film community. All the footage was shot on 35mm Eastman Color Negative (5298). I used my Arri 35BL4 and O’Conner 100 head, mounted on a Fisher10 crab dolly. I used an Angenieux 20-120mm T2.8 zoom for medium shots and an Angenieux 25-250mm T4 for talent close-ups. I used both lenses as variable primes. The footage was processed by Cine-Film in Atlanta. Film-to-tape transfer and color correction was handled on a Bosch FLD-60 by Brent Clenny at Filmworkers in Nashville. The transfer was to D2 composite digital videotape. In addition to directing and photographing the commercials, I also edited the spots on a Sony based, D2 to D2 editing system. We brought along a miniDV camcorder and asked Brad Wucher, creative director of the St. George Group ad agency, to shoot a few behind-the-scenes shots of the production. Brad’s a very creative guy who combines a great sense of marketing with his creative ideas. on a sad note… the sound person on our crew was the very talented Jim Emswiller. He passed away in 2018 while filming the Mr. Rodgers based film, “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” starring Tom Hanks. Jim was a great guy and we miss him.

Uploaded 2019-09-08T00:00:53.000Z Wakefield TV Installers