American Cinematographer - June 1995 - 24

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ADVANSTAR
EXHIBITIONS

No Hair Shirt Needed

on

Clothestime Shoot

by Mary Hardesty
No one runs around with dulling spray on
director/cinematographer Joe Murray's
set. "It's totally passe now," explains
Murray, who has just completed shoot¬
ing the new Clothestime campaign. "First
of all, the film stock is so good now and,
second of all, it's the little burns and
kicks that give the magic and put life into

the set," says Murray, whose recent
work includes spots for Mazda Trucks,
Sara Lee and Giorgio Perfume.
In Clothestime's "Hairy Man,"

the second
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for the
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industries

Meet the

professionals
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M, O, C, - Munich
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Some of the whites

can even

be

overex¬

posed and out of control. That helps put
reality into a scene."
Murray, whose first photogra¬
phy job was shooting the New York Mu¬
seum of Art's entire Roman glass col¬
lection, wanted to be a cinematogra¬
pher ever since his Catholic school
days when he had to collect magazines

a young man with no shirt but
profusion of body hair, coyly suggests
that women have two ways to keep
warm this winter. They can bring home
a sweater from Clothestime or bring
home a hairy man.
Murray chose to use Kodak's
high-speed 5296 color negative and
Clairmont's special swing-and-tilt lenses
for the spot, even though the final aired

for fundraisers.
"In fact, it was a discarded box
of old American Cinematographer maga¬
zines that first got me thinking I wanted
to be a cameraman," recalls Murray, who
shot his first student films while study¬

version was to be in black & white. "I
took the color out in post and put the con¬
trast in approximately where it would be
for black & white film," he explains.

program.

Matthew,

a

European

they're shooting a low-key set when all
they've done is underexpose. I want my
sets to have deep blacks and whites.

Keeping the finished spot in
mind, Murray lit for a black & white film
contrast. "I like my light to look real. I
don't want it to be coming out from un¬
der chairs

or other places it doesn't nor¬
mally appear. I start by finding one light
to light the set beautifully."
According to this 22-year pho¬
tography veteran, who always serves as
cinematographer on the spots he directs,
what separates the masters from the
apprentices, besides their number of
years of experience, is where they don't
put lights.
"I had the privilege of meeting

of the all-time great cameramen, Bill
Fraker, [ASC,] and he said he spent more
time turning lights off than on. Now, if I

ing industrial engineering at Kean Uni¬
versity. These short films brought him to
the attention of Long Beach State Col¬
lege, which invited him to join its film
After graduation in 1 978,
Murray got a job at MCA working on the
then-revolutionary video disc. "I come
from the technical end of filmmaking,"
states Murray. "What happened was we
had gotten one of the first Ranks that had
come into the country and my job was to
do an in-depth study comparing film to
video. This was before anyone was talk¬
ing much about it. I did a lot of work with
electronic definition and the photochemi¬
cal process and got to meet a number of
brilliant people. My criteria for picking
my next job was to work for a company
that had a Rank and did camerawork,
because I knew by then I wanted to be a

cameraman," says Murray, who went to
work

as a

Rank

operator/editor/cinema¬

one

tographer for Northern California-based

eight or nine lights on the floor, I
know we're in trouble," he observes.

One Pass Films from 1982 to 1986.
As his reputation as a post
engineer/cinematographer started to
grow, opportunities began to appearand

see

"When I look at the walls, I
see one

shadow. A lot of

June 1995

only want to

cameramen

say

Murray switched to Los Angeles-based
Film Fair. "At that time, commercials
American Cinematographer - June 1995

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