Eat'n Park TV Commercials... 1990 to 2015

Just about every Saturday morning, my wife, Carol & I have breakfast at Eat’n Park. The restaurant is part of a chain of 57 restaurants in PA, OH & WV. They’re such a Pittsburgh tradition, that Eat’n Park virtually has “Historic Landmark” status.

For 25 years, I directed and photographed almost every Eat’nPark TV campaign. During that time, Cliff Miller was the driving force behind Eat’n Park’s advertising. First, as Creative Director at Ketchum Advertising, then as Eat’n Park’s own VP of Creative Services. It was Cliff’s idea to use Eat’n Park’s “Smiley Cookie” as a key part of the company’s image & logo. (Cliff retired from Eat’n Park in 2016.)

Our TV spots were always high-energy, fast-paced, music-driven fun with lots of smiling faces, sandwiched between tasty food photography.

From 35mm standard definition to HD digital, I thought it’d be fun to take a nostalgic look back at a few of my favorite Eat’n Park TV campaigns from 1990 to 2015. … Glenn Przyborski


Technical Info: Almost all these standard definition spots from the 1990’s were shot in 35mm using my Arri 35BL4 camera equipped with Zeiss Super-Speed & Angenieux zoom lenses. Most of the “Steelers” commercial was shot in 16mm on my Arri 16SR2. The HD commercials were shot on a Sony F900R, Canon 5Dmk3 & early RED cameras.

Early ads from the 90’s were edited in NTSC standard definition on Sony 1” BVH-3000 or DVR-20 D2 videotape using a machine-to-machine Sony timecode based edit system & Grass Valley video switcher. Almost all the HD commercials were post-produced with Apple’s original Final Cut 7, with some of the final masters recorded on a Sony HDW-F500 HDcam videocassette deck.