After our Top of the Hour launched the nascent MTV channel, the "I Want My MTV" national campaign advertising was awarded to Dale Pon of LPG/PON who came up with tag line encouraging folk to call their (newly formed) cable companies to carry the channel. He knew he wanted the biggest rock stars to interact with the MTV logo, but not knowing exactly how. He entrusted that to Buzzco and then Candy came up with the then innovative look of re-animated live action with hand coloring - later known as the 'MTV look'. And the national campaign ran through the early 80's.
Even though I have had a lifetime of work after these initial MTV pieces, this is what people seem to identify me with. It's not that I'm ashamed of them, on the contrary! But I was an employee asked to do what I was always asked to do-- come up with "something cutting edge! Something no one has ever seen before" and for a cable company-- one of dozens that were being formed in the early 80's. That MTV took off and things clicked, I was as surprised as anyone would have been at the time.
Then MTV hired Dale Pon for the advertising. We had worked with Dale before -- he was wildly creative but also uncontrollable. He wanted to shoot rock stars and put animation over the live action, but we hadn't discussed how it would be done or done any design tests-- I was to get the live footage and then play with it. When I showed up to go to the sound stage, Dale put me in the limo with Tom Freston, the MTV executive in charge of their advertising. Me, and not my boss at the time, Buzz Potamkin. Me and not Dale himself. It was me, account executive Leslie Fenn, and Tom Freston. Tom started right away-- "So Candy, what's it going to look like?" "Like nothing you've ever seen before!"
And that was Hall and Oates. Many stars followed. Whenever the shoot was in New York, I was invited to the set. Always exciting. I have written elsewhere about the technique used to make the movies-- if you can't find it, email me, and we always ended up at Princzko post production house with the editor, Mike Biondi, demanding more and more from the new video technology. Always exciting, always fun. And here are a few examples!
There were a lot of them-- I have no official records anymore, but it won the ASIFA-East "Special Award" in 1983; Creativity '85, Los Angeles International Animation Celebration 1985, and Annecy '85.
I wish I could give a definitive credit list, but back then no one wrote one and I'm sure I don't have everyone's title correct...
At MTV, Bob Pittman was the chairman, Tom Freston was in charge of advertising, Fred Seibert and Alan Goodmen were the creative directors.
On the national advertising campaigns I had the entire crew of Buzzco Productions at my disposal-- which was essential given the tight deadlines. With animation, both Vincent Cafarelli and Jan Svochak helped me out; with colorizing the live action photos-- Cotty Kilbanks and Lisa Fernandez-Geng and the ink and paint department, notably Rose Eng, helped with the logos and props.
At LPG/Pon, Dale Pon was the most hands-on person, but his partner, George Lois was also involved. Dale had many assistants, but the first was Jean Satti and the last was a lovely woman named Maria. And of course, Leslie Fenn and then Susan Kantor were the key account executives,
