When Buzz Potamkin left for Hollywood and opened Southern Star Productions he commissioned Buzzco to create the opening and end credits for the CBS Saturday morning cartoon series, Teen Wolf.
And look carefully at our own werewolf - that's Vincent Cafarelli under that mask and hands!
When Buzz formed his studio in Australia, Southern Star, the first show he made was an animated series called Teen Wolf and he came to us to give him some hipper graphics like we had done for MTV.
We knew we had to shoot the live action of the wolf, but we definitely couldn't do an MTV-style film shoot with roto photos. Our photographer, Gilbert Ortiz, had recently acquired a motorized still camera that could shoot 8 frames per second-- we'd crank up the studio lights and shoot against a white scrim.
Vinny would play Teen Wolf-- we were able to find a Wolfman mask, get plastic teeth and find gloves, but we needed fur for the wrists. We went to a wig store in Times Square where a well-known actor was picking up a toupée. We tried to look cool.
The shoot itself was in the summer and under the extremely hot lights, Vinny lost about 10 pounds in sweat! I played "the girl".
It was fun to make up the skits that Vinny would play out and then animate on top of it-- I felt it was bringing MTV up another notch. This version is a compilation of both the opening and closing pieces with less of the show's scenes in it.
Southern Star Productions: Buzz Potamkin executive producer
Theme song composers: John Lewis Parker, Barry Mann
Animation: Buzzco Associates, Inc.
Directors: Vincent Cafarelli and Candy Kugel
Animation: Vincent Cafarelli and Candy Kugel
Design: Candy Kugel
Motorized camera: Gilbert Ortiz
Opening scene--
Animation: Vincent Cafarelli
Background: Linda Daurio
Camera: John Rowohlt
On Screen Talent: Vincent Cafarelli and Candy Kugel
