Idlewild Park 1993 TV Campaign

Idlewild Park is a traditional, children’s amusement park located about an hour east of Pittsburgh, near Ligonier, Pennsylvania. It’s the state’s oldest amusement park. Today the park is owned by Palace Entertainment, but in 1993 it was owned by Kennywood Park.

In 1993, I directed and photographed this TV commercial for the park’s advertising agency, The St. George Group. The ad’s basic concept featured young parents enjoying the park with their children. Agency creative director, Brad Wucher produced the project and was responsible for the ad’s creative concept.

With a few exceptions, most of the on-camera talent were actual park guests who were selected prior to the shoot and asked to return on our scheduled shoot day.

The standard-definition commercial was filmed in 35mm then transferred to 1” analog videotape for editing. This Youtube video was copied from the actual 1” master, then upsampled to 1080P. After the commercial, there’s a video of “selected scenes” from the 1993 production.