#Marc Karzen

[fredfilmsblog]

Best of Original Cartoons: HA! TV Comedy Network [1990-1991] 

Has anyone ever heard of HA!? Tough luck, it’s one of my favorite projects that my partner Alan Goodman and I developed back in the day. 


The short story is that MTV Networks (original home of MTV and Nickelodeon) got sideswiped by HBO starting The Comedy Channel, so they decided to fight back with their own. It was all hands on deck including Fred/Alan, our branding agency (more here). What to do about branding? I worked with the promotion group to develop their promises and spots, while back at the farm, we persuaded MTVN management to use a name –HA!– developed by their own staff, but somehow passed over. The Fred/Alan creative director, Noel Frankel, liked our approach of moving/changing/mutating trademarks and created a logo where the faces could morph constantly, right up our alley. 


As much fun as we had making advertising and promotion for the network, it was in the motion graphics and animation for the channel branding that made it one of our favorite, if now completely forgotten projects.

Alan and I had spent the past decade honing our point of view about how to identify a cable channel –like MTV, Nickelodeon, Lifetime, VH1– with increasing confidence. Along the way we’d created relationships with the world’s most innovative young filmmakers making short form, commercial animated films. In fact, I can say, with great pride, that we’d been responsible for helping some of them make their greatest early work that introduced them in a big way.

The late 80s and early 90s was also a period where technology was rapidly evolving, in particular how desktop computing and video were coming into their own as primary creative tools. Just take a look at the first 10 second spots at the top of this reel (only a smattering of the total number of films we produced for HA!) to see what I mean.

Ultimately, HA! was one of the last of these branding IDs that we made before closing the agency in 1992, and in my case, moving on to the cartoon business. But, truth be told, I don’t think I could have ever made the leap without my experience making almost 1000 of these 10-second network identifications, my personal film school. 

. . . . .

HA! TV Comedy Network Network identity IDs Winter/Spring 1990

Logo design: Noel Frankel Production: Drew Takahashi/(Colossal) Pictures SF, Alex Weil/Charlex NY, Marv Newland/International Rocketship Vancouver BC, Lou Brooks/Jerry Lieberman Productions NYC, Marc Karzen

Produced by Albie Hecht, Howard Hoffman, Tom Pomposello, Chris Strand Executive producers: Alan Goodman & Fred Seibert

[shoesandsocks]

great album art? Or *greatest* album art?

[rickchung]

Late Night with David Letterman x “The Story of Late Night Bumpers”.

Letterman staffer Marc Karzen talks about how he, Bob Pook and Edd Hall created the iconic commercial bumper photos for Late Night.

[fredfilmsblog]

Network Branding 1988-1990 The Best of Original Cartoons

TV Heaven and HA! TV Comedy Network

Fred/Alan, Inc. New York

For a quick minute in the late 1980s, Nickelodeon's ad sales group could not sell Nick-at-Nite advertising ("no one wants black and white reruns!"), so they decided they'd promote themselves as a comedy network.

So, my Fred/Alan partner Alan Goodman and I brought our original idea of TV oldies to a broken down UHF channel in St.Cloud, Minnesota, and renamed Channel 47 "TV Heaven." We got more publicity in three weeks than Nick-at-Nite got three years. Nick-at-Nite parent MTV Networks threatened to fire us from all their networks and we had to resign TV Heaven.

But not before we made some awesome station identifications with our indie animation friends.

In 1990, MTV Networks revived the idea of an all comedy network in a panic after HBO launched the Comedy Channel. Fred/Alan convinced MTVN to brand theirs as HA! The TV Comedy Network, and we went to work.

(Neither The Comedy Channel or HA! succeeded and they merged, Fred/Alan named the venture "Comedy Central" and the rest is comedy television history.)

.....

Creative directors: Alan Goodman & Fred Seibert

Producer: Tom Pomposello Logo design: Noel Frankel ..... TV Heaven station identifications 1988

Production companies: International Rocketship, Vancouver BC; Fred Mogubgub, NY. . . . . . HA! network identifications 1990 Production companies: Lou Brooks & Jerry Lieberman, NY; Charlex, NY; International Rocketship, Vancouver BC; (Colossal) Pictures, SF; Marc Karzen, NY.

.....

Pages 256-259 “The Best of Original Cartoons-Produced by Fred Seibert”

#7 The FredFilms Professional Library (Amazon)

[arlenschumer]

This Wednesday, March 23 @ 6:00pm est: LATE NIGHT with DAVID LETTERMAN free webinar! 2022 marks the 40th Anniversary of the debut of “Late Night with David Letterman,” the NBC nighttime talk show that put the young comedian from Indiana on the pop culture map, one who would shape the style and tone of late night television for decades to come! On the occasion of “Late Night”’s 40th, photographer Marc Karzen, who shot all of the show’s “bumpers,” the still graphics of New York City scenes branded with the words “Late Night with David Letterman,” has published a handsome coffee table book containing the “greatest hits” of the “bumper” crop—and pop culture historian Arlen Schumer (author/designer, The Silver Age of Comic Book Art) will showcase Karzen’s book in this new webinar! Schumer was one of the handful of graphic designers who hand-lettered the type treatments of “Late Night with David Letterman” integrated inventively into Karzen’s photographs, and thus will provide a first-person account what it was like to work on the groundbreaking late night show! ZOOM MEETING: https://bit.ly/3MoC0Db MEETING ID: 864 9710 7532 PASSCODE: 567719 #davidletterman #latenightwithdavidletterman #lettermanbumpers #marckarzen #arlenschumer #tv #television #tvhistory #televisionhistory @dgareps @dbbushman @adamschumer @richard_syrett @marckarzen https://www.instagram.com/p/CbaY5QdL0Qt/?utm_medium=tumblr