Here’s the story behind this video … In’ 86, I was contacted by Andy Quinn among Kennywood Park’s marketing individuals. He asked if I was interested in producing a TELEVISION spot for the theme park. As it turns out, Kennywood was in the middle of a “divorce” with their advertising agency.
Kennywood wanted a fun commercial to profit from the fact that ladies go to the park to meet guys and vice versa. They likewise wished to include as lots of flights as possible.
I instantly thought about the traditional summer tune, “Palisades Park” by Freddy Cannon. By opportunity, a music producer good friend, Dave Bernard, happened to know the contact number of Freddy Cannon. (There was no email, internet or Facebook in 1986).
I spoke straight to Freddy at his home in Tarzana, CA. He used to fly to Pittsburgh to re-record a brand-new variation of his 1962 hit, “Palisades Park”. Chuck Barris of “The Gong Show” popularity had written the initial hit tune. Barris had sold the licensing rights to MPL, Paul McCartney’s music publishing business. After a couple of days of long distance call and FAXes, all celebrations accepted permit me to re-record the tune for a Kennywood Park TV commercial.
I re-wrote the lyrics of the hit tune, substituting the names of Kennywood’s trips. A week later, Freddy Cannon got here in Pittsburgh and tape-recorded, “Kennywood Park” at Jeree’s Recording Studios, with musicians from the oldies group, “Strong Gold”.
The location movie shoot was a fun, 2-day romp through the amusement park. Dawn Lambing was our star. (I can’t remember her co-star’s name???) All the extras were park guests who didn’t mind being on TELEVISION. Deborah Docherty, my AD on the job, had to move our film crew through the congested amusement park, without pushing away park visitors.
I utilized an Arriflex 35mm BL4 camera to photo the commercial. The very first day, we shot all the afternoon and night scenes. The following day we got missing out on shots and the rider’s rollercoaster POV footage using an Arriflex 35mm 2C video camera, tough mounted to the front cars and truck of the coaster. I keep in mind that both shooting days were overcast needing HMI back and edge lighting for a lot of the scenes.
Film processing and film-to-tape transfer was handled at Producer’s Color in Detroit, Michigan. I edited the long-form “music video” on 1″ tape at our Pittsburgh based post-production center. The commercial was so popular that it aired for 2 years in ’86 & ’87. This long-form variation is from the initial 1″ analog tape master.
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