How do you take the sacred medium of television and “fuck with it”? Looking back at the early, revolutionary days of MTV, Glenn Lazzaro shows how. This clip from the 2008 Promax/BDA conference was part of the session “Influencers of a Generation: MTV.” Glenn’s message: Things were different back in the ’80s. Experimenting! Magnets dragged across screens! Anti-promotion that turned into some of the greatest promotion of all time! It’s all in one quick peek at how a groundbreaking brand was born.

Here is a little sampler of some of the best MTV Promotion.

NEW YORK, VENICE & DALLAS, January 10, 2013  |  Diana Lochridge, who recently left her position as VP of creative services at truTV, has joined 99 Tigers, a branding and promotion company based in New York, Venice and Dallas.

While at truTV, Lochridge played a key role in one of television’s most successful recent rebrands, helping to reshape its identity from Court TV to a high-energy home of “actuality” programming, featuring real people and real situations in an entertaining context.

At 99 Tigers, Lochridge will be working on a variety of branding and promotion initiatives. She’ll also be heading up a new 99 Tigers division, 98 Monkeys, which will focus on leveraging her unique blend of comedic and dramatic broadcast advertising and promotion.

“Starting up a division with 99 Tigers was an easy decision,” said Lochridge. “They have some of the best creatives working in television.”

Lochridge previously worked at VH1, HBO, and broadcast agencies Charlie Company and Crossroads Television. She’s worked with 99 Tigers’ creative team for decades.

“Di is a powerhouse in our industry and a close, longtime friend,” said Glenn Lazzaro, creative director at 99 Tigers. “I couldn’t ask for a better creative partner.”

Lochridge complements her creative skills with an extensive strategic and production background, noted 99 Tigers executive producer Molly Christie Benson: “She makes my life easier as an EP, because she can handle all sides of a big, challenging campaign.”

99 Tigers creative director David Seeley, who’s worked with Lochridge frequently since the ’90s, prizes her sense of humor above all. “Di creates killer spots and long-form pieces,” he said. “But comedy is her secret weapon. We can’t wait to see what we can all do together as one team.”

99 Tigers is a creative services agency serving America’s leading TV networks and entertainment brands. Based in New York, Venice and Dallas, it delivers strategic creative from concept to production to post. The 99 Tigers team brands and promotes with a focus on live-action on-air campaigns and high-impact sales videos. Recent clients include Bravo, Oxygen, truTV, MSG Networks, CBS Television Distribution and Microsoft.

Contact Info:      Molly Christie Benson        424-259-1134        molly@98monkeys.com

Todd hails from New Orleans and has been making movies since age 11 (Dick Tracy vs. Dr. Bubbles, in which he also starred). His first feature, The Scenesters, played over 30 film festivals in 2010 and won Most Interesting Film at the Slamdance Film Festival. His feature-length documentary Don’t Eat The Baby: Adventures at post-Katrina Mardi Gras played on the final night of the 2007 New Orleans Film Festival. His most recent film, It’s A Disaster, had its world premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival and will be released later this year. Todd works as a screenwriter and actor in Los Angeles, with scripts currently in development at MGM, DreamWorks Animation, Sony Pictures, Jim Henson Productions, and The Disney Channel.

Here’s a review of his recent film from the Guardian:

Los Angeles Film Festival: It’s a Disaster is a triumph

Todd Berger’s comedy drama about four couples spending their last night on earth together deserves a wide audience

At the after-party for the Los Angeles Film Festival’s premiere of Todd Berger’s comedy drama It’s a Disaster at the Hotel Figeuroa, the blue drink tickets are being handed over the bar faster than you can say “not another apocalyptic couples brunch movie.” Around the pool, actor David Cross is being asked for possibly the 100th time if there’s going to an Arrested Development film. “We were supposed to shoot in the next few days,” he’d told the audience at the post-screening Q&A. “But I have yet to see a script or a contract.” So that’s that sorted. For now.

It’s a Disaster is an absolute gem of a doomsday movie about four couples who meet for brunch and find themselves in the middle of a chemical warfare attack, coping with their last few hours as best they can. Julia Stiles and America Ferrera star alongside Cross, but the project was born out of the mind of Berger, and brought to life with the help of producers Kevin Brennan, Jeff Grace and Blaise Miller, who also star. Collectively known as the comedy troup the Vacationeers (“Although we don’t really do that anymore,” says Grace), their previous movie, The Scenesters, is on its way to cult status. If there’s any justice in the world, It’s a Disaster will find an even bigger audience. “But we’re still looking for a distributor,” said Berger. “How much cash do you have on you?”

Berger says he was inspired by watching George A Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, but felt that while zombies “are kind of done,” he could write a strong piece where a group of people are contained in one small space. “I liked the idea of a bunch of people being forced to stay inside the house, because you never know when there’s going to be an earthquake or terrorist attack,” he said. He added that the cast suffered their own emotional pain as the movie was shot during the hottest two weeks in recent Californian history. “We had to turn the air-con off because it made so much noise. It was insane.”

Posted by Glenn Lazzaro for his series “Adventures in Television”

Several of the spots in this promo break came from the edit rooms at National Video Center. NBC producers Tim Miller and Don Duncan usually had one or two rooms going at any given time in those days. I worked on the “Real Life with Jane Pauley” promo in this break. As a bonus, I also got my first chance to shoot film.

Tim and Don had hired a documentary film crew to shoot “real-life scenes” of America for Pauley’s show open. For the promo, they wanted to intercut the open with an interview with Jane Pauley. The crew shot in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York along the Amtrak train line. (The railroad tracks became part of the title sequence.) As we cut the show open, Don felt there weren’t enough “Middle America” scenes, since most of the footage looked urban.

I was heading to the Catskills for a vacation, so I volunteered to shoot some footage with a 1956 16mm Bolex camera I’d just bought at a garage sale. The cinematographer told me which film stock to buy and which filters would match his footage. I kept the camera with me at all times, shooting wherever I happened to be with my kids: farms, baseball games, front porches, a dude ranch. I didn’t really know how to shoot; it was the first time I’d used the camera. Luckily our film style was cinema verite, so my grainy footage fit right in. I shot a lot of footage of my kids, but for some reason they never made the cut.

BONUS! My son found a spot with him as a 4 year old prominently in the beginning. And yes, the opening chords are from Rod Stewart’s Maggie May.

Posted by Glenn Lazzaro for his series “Adventures in Television”

July 11, 2011, Dallas Texas

Throughout the past seasons of “Top Chef”, Padma Lakshmi has eaten apples, oranges, cake, whipped cream, chocolate, watermelons and tomatoes for the Promos. And she has done it really, really well. So when it was time to shoot the promos for “Top Chef Texas” Amy Troiano, VP of On Air Promotion, Trez Thomas VP Brand strategy, Creative Director Justin Reichman and Producer Elizabeth Massip all agreed that we would shoot Padma eating an iconic Texas food for the Tease Spot. The people in Texas take their Barbeque very seriously so we had to make sure we did it right. Barbequed Ribs were of course our first choice but we had other options as well.-the big three of Texas Barbecue: Pulled pork, Brisket and Ribs were all considered. But one thing clinched the deal: while looking for reference images for the creative brief, Elizabeth did a Google Image Search for “eating ribs.” The very first hit was Padma Lakshmi eating ribs.

On the shoot day Padma did what she always does best. She made Texas Ribs look better than they ever looked.

Oh, and more wild tigers.

As we ring in 2012, 99 Tigers invites you to join a seriously cool mission: to keep wild tigers from vanishing forever.

As few as 3,200 tigers are left in the wild, endangered by illegal trade and deforestation.

Leo diCaprio and the World Wildlife Fund have launched a global campaign, Save the Tigers, to turn this around. Leo’s pledged $1 million to help build political, financial and public support to double the number of wild tigers by 2022, the next Year of the Tiger.

The Kardashians are letting the fur fly, too.

This week, Khloe Kardashian helped promote the WWF’s Texting for Tigers campaign:

“By texting TIGERS to 20222, your $10 donation will help WWF save the tiger in its vast range–from India to China, to the Russian Far East,” Khloe tweeted, spurring a flood of donations.

So hey, why not start 2012 with a roar? Join 99 Tigers, Leo and Khloe…and save a tiger today.

1992. National Video Center. NYC.

One day Mark Pellington called and said he wanted to come over and play 2 songs for me that he would be directing Music Videos for. I could choose which one I wanted to edit. I had been working with Mark for a number of years while he was a writer/producer/director at MTV and he had made the transition to full time director by this time. The songs were “Beautiful Girl” by INXS and “Jeremy” by a new band called “Pearl Jam.”

After listening to both songs I decided on “Beautiful Girl.” INXS was huge at the time and I had not heard of Pearl Jam nor did I think they were going to be very popular. (When I was a kid I also though that “The Dave Clark 5” were going to be bigger than “The Beatles”)

The song was written by INXS composer Andrew Farriss about how wonderful having a newborn daughter was. It was basically a love song to parenthood.

Mark was always challenging preconceived notions in popular culture and this Video was not going to be an exception. He intended the music video for “Beautiful Girls” to call attention to the increasing cases of anorexia in young girls. Mark remembers, “Michael Hutchence and his girlfriend at the time, supermodel Helena Christenson, were supportive. (it was) ironic because the video bashed models and the entire culture of dismorphia, female body image etc.”

The footage of the band was shot in London by Nick Evans shooting multiple exposures in camera. The 7 layers were created by back-winding the camera on one roll of film. Mark shot the girls or as he said: “real girls- not models” with Christophe Lanzenberg in NYC.

The edit was very straight-forward. Mark had great footage so very little editorial trickery was needed. Straight-cuts and juxtaposing his iconic footage alongside text got the message across very effectively. We did some layering of footage and also used the Abekas A62 to loop sequences. We also shot some magazine tear sheets under the title camera. The opening 40 seconds of the song has no lyrics and no drums so I used the single-note piano line to create a rhythm. It looks a little out of sync here because I got the video from YouTube but I assure you it was not.

The Video was nominated for a Grammy award.

Mark’s “Jeremy” Music Video won four MTV Video Music Awards in 1993, including Best Video of the Year, Best Group Video, Best Metal/Hard Rock Video and Best Direction. And “The Beatles” are still bigger than “The Dave Clark Five.”

National Video. 1989

In 1989 most MTV producers were trying to out-cut each other using blinding-fast edits. There was one exception. John Payson. John had come to MTV from the Harvard Lampoon so the majority of his work was comedy based. He was less concerned about “being cool” and concentrated more on linear storytelling. (but with a decidedly MTV feel) Between 1987 and 1990 John was responsible for helping make “Randee Of The Redwoods” the face of MTV.

Mysterious Man

When John shot the “Mysterious Man” promo he intended it to be one long 60-second shot. Sadly when we got into the edit we had to put a few cuts in just to bring it in on time. We created the soundtrack in the edit stealing bits of music from classical CDs that John brought in. (in those days no one was worried about licensing music)

He shot the “Mysterious Man” in color but wanted it to have a “noir” feel. We turned it black & white but John felt it needed something else- some strange “Randee” kind of thing. We put some color back into his hair because, as John said, “Not even Film Noir could contain Randee.”

Randee Gets a Job

While working at a gas station Randee has a run-in with a “yuppie.” The most hated stereotype of the 80s and his obvious archenemy. The edit is pretty straightforward with the exception of Randee sucking the car into the gas nozzle. Doing it today it would be simple. Just shoot the car separately against a green screen. But MTV shoot budgets in those days wouldn’t allow that so John shot the car in the gas station. In order to separate the car from the background we cut mattes by feeding the shot into a TV monitor under the title camera. We then traced its outline off the face of the monitor onto a piece of paper with a sharpie. We cut the shape out and put it under the title camera and used it as a matte to separate the car from the background. Using an ADO I shrunk and distorted the car frame-by-frame to get it into the nozzle

Note: The explosion at the end was borrowed from a UK show called “The Secret Life Of Television” that I had lying around the edit suite. In the show they dynamited a stack of televisions just to see what would happen. The explosion found its way into many, many MTV promos over the years.

Bonus. As part of a marketing stunt, Randee became the dark horse candidate for President and John had Artist Peter Max do the campaign poster. I got a signed poster for working on the project. Sadly mine is gone but it looked just like this one.

Posted by Glenn Lazzaro for his series “Adventures in Television”

“I am a blackhole supernova, colliding with a proton, genetically-engineered from a hooker, mutated into a circus clown, riding on a unicycle. What I mean is: my words make me extra powerful.”

Patrick Anderson. Poet.

In 2000 ESPN was bringing the Winter X Games to the east coast for the first time and they were looking for an entirely different way of packaging the show. The games were going to be broadcast on the ABC network for the first time and they wanted to make a big impression. I had been attending “Poetry Slams” at the Bowery Poetry Club for a while and thought that Slam Poets were similar to extreme athletes in many ways. Both groups push the limits of their chosen field, both are misunderstood by the general public and both compete as individuals.

I had been doing quite a bit of work with ESPN at the time so I presented the idea of using poetry as a way to package the show to VP of Event Production, Jamie Reynolds. The concept was to take five young poets from the streets of New York City, and ask them to write poems for the Winter X Games. The poems would celebrate both the games and the people and lifestyle associated with it. I chose Sage Francis, Patrick Anderson, Beau Sia, Laurel Barclay and Amanda Nazario- all nationally recognized Slam Poets to write poems specific to the games.

We set off to film on location at Mt. Snow Ski resort in Vermont. We were hoping to shoot on top of the ski mountain with vistas of the valley as a backdrop. Of course when we arrived in January a huge cold front swept thru the area dropping temperatures to 10 below zero with wind chills on the mountain-top at 30 below zero. Mt. Snow closed the mountain the day we arrived. We though we would have to reschedule the shoot but my Cinematographer Trish Govoni was undaunted. We scouted the area and found great snowy landscapes that could only exist in Vermont. We made an old barn with hubcaps nailed to it our home base. We also used the forest behind the motel to shoot. (On that location we were able to use hair dryers to warm up the Poets between takes)

Everyone in the action-sports world at the time was “cut crazy.” I was also “cut crazy” but felt as a Director I needed to do something different with the Poets. I really wanted showcase their intense performances. We shot the poems in their entirety without worrying about how long they would be. We did very little coverage because I did not want the poems to be “edited” after the fact. (We did have to do some cuts because the poets were freezing and had trouble doing the long poems without making some mistakes) Somehow we got it done and no one froze to death.

ESPN had expected the poems to be inter-cut with action sports so when I showed them the pieces they were entirely surprised. To their credit they realized that they had a great opportunity to do what they had wanted to do all along. That is: to do something unexpected. The poems formed the framework for the 4 days of live programming and ran unedited just as I hoped.

On February 6th, the X-games began with a haiku by Patrick Anderson.

There is a snowman

his eyes are two perfect x’s

the snowman is me

BONUS: A cut featuring all the Poets reading their haikus.

I am very proud to have been included in a new book  entitled “Inside Pee-wee’s Playhouse: The Untold, Unauthorized, and Unpredictable Story of a Pop Phenomenon” By Caseen Gains. Its a great read about the making of the original CBS television show and filled with great-behind-the-scenes stories and photographs.

Believe it or not, this “Connect-the-Dots” segment I edited for the show was  considered “state-of-the art” in 1986.

If you are interested in reading the book you can get it here:  http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Pee-wees-Playhouse-Unauthorized-Unpredictable/dp/1550229982/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321373227&sr=1-1