Kennywood Park - Freddy Cannon (1986)

Here's the story behind this video... In 1986, I was contacted by Andy Quinn one of Kennywood Park's marketing people. He asked if I was interested in creating a TV spot for the amusement park. As it turns out, Kennywood was in the middle of a "divorce" with their advertising agency.

Kennywood wanted a fun commercial to capitalize on the fact that girls go to the park to meet guys and vice versa. They also wanted to feature as many rides as possible.

I immediately thought of the classic summer song, "Palisades Park" by Freddy Cannon. By chance, a music producer friend, Dave Bernard, happened to know the phone number of Freddy Cannon. (There was no email, internet or Facebook in 1986)

I spoke directly to Freddy at his home in Tarzana, CA. He offered to fly to Pittsburgh to re-record a new version of his 1962 hit, "Palisades Park". Chuck Barris of "The Gong Show" fame had written the original hit song. Barris had sold the licensing rights to MPL, Paul McCartney's music publishing company. After a few days of long distance phone calls and FAXes, all parties agreed to allow me to re-record the song for a Kennywood Park TV commercial.

I re-wrote the lyrics of the hit song, substituting the names of Kennywood's rides. A week later, Freddy Cannon arrived in Pittsburgh and recorded, "Kennywood Park" at Jeree's Recording Studios, with musicians from the oldies group, "Solid Gold".

The location film 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 TV. Deb Docherty, my AD on the project, had to move our film crew through the crowded amusement park, without alienating park guests.

I used an Arriflex 35mm BL4 camera to photograph the commercial. The first day, we shot all the afternoon and night scenes. The following day we picked up missing shots and the rider's rollercoaster POV footage using an Arriflex 35mm 2C camera, hard mounted to the front car of the coaster. I remember that both shooting days were overcast requiring HMI back and edge lighting for many 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 facility. The commercial was so popular that it aired for 2 years in '86 & '87. This long-form version is from the original 1" analog tape master.