Credits include True Lies, Men in Black, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, Godzilla vs. Kong, The Tomorrow War, and Megalopolis. One of the few gaffers operating at Marvel’s full scale—hundreds of fixtures, wireless control, entire city blocks.

From True Lies to the MCU: A Career Built on Scale

Murrell's career arc tracks the evolution of Hollywood lighting itself. He started on films like True Lies and Get Shorty in the mid-1990s, when tungsten and HMI were the only serious options. By the time he reached Men in Black, he was lighting massive practical environments with the tools and techniques of that era — big units, heavy cable runs, and the logistical muscle required to illuminate studio-scale sets.

The shift came with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Starting with Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Murrell began working with cinematographer Trent Opaloch and lighting programmer Scott Barnes — a collaboration that would carry through Civil War, Infinity War, and Endgame. That partnership pushed him deep into LED and wireless control technology at a scale few productions had attempted.

By Infinity War, Murrell was deploying hundreds of ARRI SkyPanels controlled wirelessly from a single console, programming dynamic light shifts across entire sets, and integrating custom LED ribbon into the architecture of the stages. It's a fundamentally different kind of gaffing than what he started with, but the core skill is the same: understanding light and executing under pressure.

Lighting the Edinburgh Battle (Avengers: Infinity War)

One of the most technically demanding sequences Murrell describes is the Edinburgh night battle from Infinity War — the scene where Vision and Scarlet Witch are ambushed. The production shot on location across multiple city blocks, and the entire environment needed consistent, controllable night lighting.

The solution: 80 ARRI SkyPanel S60s rigged across the Edinburgh streets, all connected via wireless transponders to a single lighting console operated by Scott Barnes. This gave the team real-time control over color temperature, intensity, and mood across the entire location from one position.

For ambient moonlight, they built three massive 20-by-30-foot soft boxes, each loaded with 24 SkyPanel S60s, mounted on cranes above the scene. Murrell developed a color formula that blended a natural night look with the mercury-vapor quality of real urban streetlights. The result reads as a real city at night, not a lit film set — which is exactly the point when you're trying to sell a superhero battle in a real location.

274 SkyPanels on Titan

Jeff Murrell and crew on set during Avengers production.

The Titan battle sequence — where the Avengers fight Thanos on his ruined home planet — required an entirely different approach. The set was built on a massive stage, and the aesthetic called for a fire-red, amber twilight atmosphere with constantly shifting light patterns to simulate floating debris blocking a dying sun.

Murrell rigged 274 SkyPanel S60s overhead, all programmed by Barnes to create dynamic light-fluctuation patterns. As debris passed through the sky, the lighting shifted in real time — not randomly, but following carefully programmed cues that matched the VFX team's previz.

Sparse practical smoke was added on set to give the light something to interact with while preserving the clean visual-effects separation the compositing team needed. The balance between atmospheric lighting and VFX requirements is one of the tightest wire acts in modern filmmaking, and the Titan sequence is a masterclass in getting it right.

Custom LED Integration: LiteRibbon and Beyond

One of Murrell's innovations on the Avengers films was integrating custom LED ribbon directly into the set architecture. Working with fixtures foreman Mike Visencio, the team used different LiteRibbon products for different environments.

For Earth-based scenes, they deployed VHO Pro 120 Hybrid Pro ribbon for clean, controllable output. For space and alien planet environments, they switched to Chroma RGBA and Cine 6 RGBATD ribbon to create what Visencio described as an "alien-esque celestial look."

The large Avengers headquarters "A" sign was built with multiple rolls of VHO Pro tungsten ribbon. Even set dressing elements became lighting instruments when the design called for it.

The control infrastructure behind all of this was equally custom: LiteGear 4x4 V3 controllers, LiteDimmer Wireless 4-channel dimmers, Cat 5 optics for data distribution, and LiteDimmer Studio 5x8 controllers for larger installations requiring smooth low-range dimming. Every fixture on every set was individually addressable and programmable from the console.

The New York Street: Practical Meets Massive

For the New York street battle sequences, the challenge was different: controlling natural sunlight on a backlot while creating a consistent base exposure for VFX compositing.

Murrell's rig included three helium-filled 20x20x3-foot SourceMaker Grip Clouds positioned overhead to block direct sunlight and create a soft, diffused ambient base. Two Arrimax 18K HMIs provided directional backlight from the ends of the street, while 12x12 and 12x20 diffusion rags with additional 18Ks filled the shadows.

The scale of these exterior rigs is worth noting: helium-filled light modifiers the size of billboards, floating above a backlot, supplemented by some of the most powerful HMIs in existence. This is the intersection of engineering and cinematography that defines blockbuster gaffing.

Control Is Everything

If there's one principle that defines Murrell's approach at the Marvel scale, it's control. As Visencio put it: the focus with Opaloch and Murrell is always about control — control of light levels, color, and individual fixture output so they can shape the look and mood of every scene in real time.

This is why LED and wireless systems have become so central to blockbuster lighting. When you have 274 fixtures overhead and the director wants a slightly warmer shift during a take, you need to be able to make that adjustment from the console in seconds, not send a crew up a lift for 45 minutes. Murrell and Barnes built workflows where the gaffer and programmer could reshape entire environments between setups — or even during them.

The evolution from Murrell's early career (True Lies, Men in Black) to his Marvel work illustrates the broader shift in the industry. The fundamental skill — understanding what light does to a scene, a face, a story — hasn't changed. But the tools for executing that vision have been completely transformed.

Advice for Filmmakers

Murrell's career offers a clear lesson: master the fundamentals, then stay ahead of the technology. He started with tungsten and HMI, adapted to early LED, and eventually became one of the primary gaffers pushing wireless LED control at a scale that didn't exist when he started.

The gaffers who thrive at this level aren't the ones who resist change. They're the ones who understand that new tools are only as good as the operator behind them — and who build the collaborative relationships (with DPs, programmers, and fixture designers) that make innovation possible on the set, not just on paper.

Murrell on set — the scale of rigging on Marvel productions demands precise wireless control across hundreds of fixtures.

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