American Cinematographer - November 2002 - 26

feel. In his

design for the early scenes,
James Chinlund used all sorts of bright,
primary colors, and the light was mostly
white."

Murphy used a variety of Kodak
throughout the film. For early
scenes, he gravitated to Vision 200T
5274 "so things would be super-sharp"
for exteriors and most day interiors.
Vision 500T 5279 was used for night
interiors and exteriors during these
scenes. Crane's Hollywood home is
rendered as an almost idealized portrait
of American family life in the early
Sixties. To create this inviting sense of
home and hearth, Murphy used a lot of
soft sources positioned above and
stocks

behind the camera, as well as banks of
HMIs aimed through the windows.
Because these

scenes were

rather small house in the

squeaky-clean
public image
and

which is

designed for lighting in limited

spaces. "There was an article about
these in American Cinematographer

happy
marriage with
wife Anne (Rita
Wilson, right),
developed an
appetite for
promiscuity,
using Heroes costar Sigrid Valdis
(Maria Bello,
above) to
temporarily
satisfy his
hunger.
a

shadows

deepen and highlights wash
day and
say, I'm going to become addicted to sex
or alcohol or drugs,'" Schrader points
out. "It happens over a period of time,
until one day the person finds that
there's a big problem. I wanted this to be
reflected in the style of the film, from
production design to cinematography to
editing. At some point, viewers become
aware that they're no longer watching
the same film they were watching an
hour ago, but they're not quite sure when

out. "You don't just wake up one

it shifted."

Murphy elaborates, "The film
starts out like Bob

22 November 2002

a

Hills, Murphy also used a Satellight-X,

Crane, who had
a

shot in

Hollywood

Crane did

-

very

open, direct and uncomplicated - and
then proceeds to get more and more

murky and shaky. Crane starts to lose

[Jan. '02] right around the time we used
them," Murphy recalls. "It's a unit with
four 1K HMIs inside a kind of folding
umbrella. You can put it up against a
wall and it takes up very little space. You
can use one, two, three or all four of the
lights at once. It casts a very soft but
extremely powerful light."
Crane, who has been looking for
an opportunity to get in front of the
camera, reluctantly accepts the role of
Hogan in an improbable comedy series
set in a Nazi POW camp. This takes him
into the heart of show business: the big
soundstages where Hogan's Heroes is
filmed. The budget for Auto Focus didn't
allow for shooting on real stages, so the

Crane in his pre-

production used a warehouse in the San
Fernando Valley for those scenes. In
recreating scenes from the popular
series, Murphy used Bardwell &

Hogan days as a budding radio performer
and churchgoing family man. Murphy,

similar to the hard sources that would

with

have been used at that time. The cine¬

primes and 4:1 and 11:1 zooms,
explains his approach to these scenes:
"Everything's sort of front-lit. The shots
are rather bright and the compositions
are very open, with a lot of headroom.
The lighting in general has a soft, inviting

matographer decided to give the
Hogan's Heroes scenes a slightly differ¬
ent look by filming them on Kodak Vision
Expression 500T 5284. "It was an exper¬
iment, but I wanted a different look for
those scenes," Murphy says. "I wanted

control of his situation, until he eventu¬

ally becomes totally out of control.
Everything starts to disintegrate."
Viewers first

see

who used Panavision XL
Primo

cameras

McAlister 2Ks and 5Ks, which were
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