by Bob Fisher
Unit photography by Rafy.
Additional photography by James Chressanthis, ASC.
Photos courtesy of ABC-TV.

Meredith Willson’s popular musical The Music Man, which originated as a Broadway show in 1957 and was later adapted for the big screen by Warner Bros., will be revived this month in a three-hour telefilm produced by Walt Disney Pictures for ABC. The new production, which will air on February 23, was photographed by James Chressanthis, ASC, and directed by Jeff Bleckner.

The Music Man is set in the fictional town of River City, Iowa, in 1912. Likable con man Harold Hill (Matthew Broderick) arrives and charms the entire town, persuading them that they need a boys’ band. "Professor" Hill takes the townspeople’s money, tells them that instruments and uniforms are on the way, and says he will train the boys to perform in the Fourth of July parade, which is a mere three weeks away. In search of an ally, Hill also woos Marion Paroo (Kristin Chenoweth), the town’s librarian and piano teacher. Among the show’s best-known musical numbers are "76 Trombones," "Goodnight, My Someone" and "My White Knight."

Chressanthis, whose recent credits include the telefilms Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows (for which he earned an Emmy nomination) and Brian’s Song, says that when he was first approached about shooting The Music Man, he didn’t exactly jump at the chance. "I had just finished shooting Life With Judy Garland, and the producers, Neil Meron and Craig Zadan, told me they had a couple of other projects brewing," he recalls. "One was Brian’s Song and the other was The Music Man." Warner’s 1962 adaptation of Willson’s musical, shot by Robert Burks, ASC, wasn’t among his favorites. "That film has sort of a bright Technicolor look, and it’s mostly a straightforward version of the stage play. However, it has some astonishing camerawork by Burks, including a 360-degree camera move in one dance sequence in the library that’s contemporary and beautiful today."

When Chressanthis met with director Jeff Bleckner to discuss The Music Man, "we agreed that it’s actually a very interesting story," the cinematographer says. "Harold Hill is a con man to beat all con men. He likes the townspeople and he even falls in love with Marion, but despite that he’s still going to cheat them and ride a freight train out of town at the last moment. In reality, he’s a pretty despicable character, which gives the story a dark side. On the other hand, it’s set during that very optimistic time before World War I – no one dies, no one is maimed and no one gets sick in this film."

After meeting Bleckner, Chressanthis began studying still photographs and paintings from that era. "I had a book of Jacques Lartigue autochromes, which were an early form of color photography," he says. "They were images taken in Paris from 1900 to 1920. That was a good reference because it took four to five years for fashions to migrate to River City, Iowa. One of the women in the film asks, ‘What’s de rigueur in Paris?’"

The cinematographer scan-ned images from the book and other period stills and saved the digital files on his laptop. He used Adobe Photoshop to play with the colors, contrast and textures, and experimented with adding a little grain and desaturating backgrounds to make the characters pop in the foreground. "The colors weren’t quite realistic," he explains. "They were very delicate, almost hand-painted, but the details were very precise. I also used another still photo that was more of an architectural shot. I think it was a Karsh – it’s a 1950s shot of the Bolshoi Ballet rehearsal hall. I liked the way the light influenced my feeling about the building. That picture reminded me of the elementary school I attended, which was built in 1914; it had tall windows, wood floors and high ceilings that ran the length of the rooms. It was an idyllic setting."

After Chressanthis was informally brought on board, in January 2002, he showed the images he had manipulated to Bleckner and production designer Stephen Hendrickson. Hendrickson had compiled other materials about Iowa in that era, mainly old pictures of festivals and other celebrations, including the Fourth of July.

The filmmakers decided that they wanted The Music Man’s color palette to be fairly muted at the outset and bright and saturated at the film’s conclusion. "There is a progression of costume design and colors," Chressanthis says. "I modified the palette a bit by flashing the film, which added a slight bit of warmth to the blacks and midtones. Toward the end of the film, we use a lot of greens and blues as counterpoints to the browns, grays and blacks that define the early portion of the film."

Chressanthis had four weeks to prep The Music Man, and he began by shooting film tests and taking them through telecine to experiment with different looks. He shot the first of these tests on the roof of the Panavision building in Hollywood and desaturated the images by doing a skip-bleach process on the negative. Later, in Toronto, Chressanthis shot tests with fully costumed stand-ins using the Panaflasher; he compared Kodak Vision 250D 5246, Eastman EXR 500T 5298 and the new Kodak Vision 500T 5263. "I tested 5263 for daylight exteriors and pre-flashed it 5 to 20 percent, depending on the contrast in the scene," he says. "Flashing opened up the blacks and made a little difference in the grain."