American Cinematographer - April 1986 - 55

"In my

mind I was flash¬
to On the Waterfront and
I said 'I know script supervising

ing back

and I know props and
and hair. (I do make-up

make-up
and hair
every day!) I know wardrobe. (I get
dressed every morning.)' I had
watched the script supervisor
enough to have a vague idea of
what they do. I knew I could get a
stop watch and look the part. He
said 'Well, come to my office to¬
morrow.' I thought, 'This was an

improvement
apartment.'"

over

"Come to

my

The producer's office was
Hollywood General Studio
and when Murphy arrived, she
was impressed by all the activity. It
looked legitimate. "In the corner
was a big monkey suit and on the
wall was a big production board.
It looked like something was
about to happen. He said, 'Okay,
can you do make-up, wardrobe,
props, hair and script?' I said,
'Yeah.' He said, 'Fifty dollars a
week on location and you can take
some stills if you don't take too
many, because I'll have to buy the
film.' I said, 'All right.' He said that
he would need me immediately to
work out some production details.
over at

was fine with me; I didn't
have the vaguest idea what he was

That

talking about."
But she

On

a

soon

found

$30,000 budget the

out.

pro¬

ducer was to make a movie about
the Abominable Snowman, among

others, and Murphy did every¬
thing. Every time she saw someone

doing something, she asked how
they did it and why and if they
needed help. Soon she was think¬
ing, and not for the last time,
"Hey, I can do that." She often
heard the producer complain
about the size of his budgets, but
to her, $30,000 was a lot of
money and one ought to be able to
make

two

features

for that

Especially if "one" was
Bri Murphy.
She explained to the
French backer for these quickie

amount.

movies that if he used the same
cast and crew, shot at two loca¬
tions that had completely different

looks, and shot back-to-back, he
could get two for the price of one.

The

next thing she knew, she was
making Virgins from Venus and
The Incredible Petrified Shrinking
World. "They are classics in bad
movie making, BUT they got made
and they got distributed and they
made money for the Frenchman. I
made both of them for $30,000.
That sent the original producer to

India where he became a monk."
Ever since then she has
worked steadily in the movie busi¬
ness. "I found that with each pic¬
ture I worked on, I met probably
ten

new

people. If

you

touch with the

ten new

couple of them

are

stay

in

people, a
going to know
about another project. Things
started snowballing. I was still the
only woman working on any of
these pictures. By this time I had
an
apartment on Beachwood
Drive in Hollywood. I insisted on
living right under the sign that said
Hollywood. Every day after work,
since my place was central, we
would all get together for a cup of
coffee or a glass of beer or some¬
thing and talk about the day and
what was coming up. The word
hadn't been invented for this yet,
but

we were

networking."

Murphy did not get
firmly fixed on a career as a cin¬
ematographer until she started
April 1986

working on industrial films, first
production manager and then

a

She started

as
as

by
convincing her producers to use
two cameras and they could save
money if she operated one of
them. That seemed acceptable be¬
cause everyone figured that they
would get the shot from the main
cameraman. Surprisingly, the sec¬
ond camera work began to get a
lot of attention. Murphy divided

a

cameraman.

out

From left: Landon,
Jr., Voigtlander,
director Bill Claxton,
camera

operator Ken

Hunter and
Lon

gaffer
Massey III set

for action.

her time between industrials and
any

kind of work she could

get on

non-union features.
Within her

network, peo¬
ple took whatever job they could
on the next non-union film. They
all kept their ears open for work
and the agreement was that
whoever had found the

pigeon could have

any

next

job he

or

she wanted. That was most often
the cameraman. Then the camera¬
man chose his or her own grips,

gaffers, and support crew from
among the network members. The
group grew to include many cur¬
rently well known cinematogra¬
phers - people like Vilmos
Zsigmond, ASC, Laszlo Kovacs,
ASC, Faoud Said, Mario Tosi,
ASC, and Jim Crabe, ASC. It was
this same group of people who
formed Local 531 of NABET to
American

Cinematographer

53
American Cinematographer - April 1986

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