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By Ellen Shaffer
Photo by TCF Holidazzle
When Murnane isn’t illuminating runway models or 200-plus Holidazzle storybook characters, he lends his touch to touring shows throughout North America and Europe, creating compelling effects for performers such as Rod Stewart, Justin Timberlake, and Tina Turner.
Michael Murnane grew up in New Hope and got his start lighting high school theater productions. “It’s just about all I ever did,” he recalls. “I became an intern at the Children’s Theatre Company in 1980, and I started getting paid in 1981.”
He launched his own business that same year, later naming it Foot Candles, after a measurement of light. “It’s like calling your business ‘Inches’ if you’re a carpenter,” he explains.
Murnane was working with Dayton’s when he was asked to help determine the cost to mount a spectacle like the Disney Electric Light Parade. Taking the inaugural parade, held in 1992, from the dream stage to the pavement was tough work, he recalls. “From a lighting perspective, we built the parade in two months of very little sleep. And then my son was born four days after the first parade.”
He and his crew have worked on every parade since, designing all the lighting systems for the TCF Holidazzle floats and costumes, as well as executing the timing of the lights. His son, now 14, and his 10-year-old daughter help by getting batteries for costumed characters.
Each year, new characters or floats are introduced, including Cinderella in 2005. The characters have become more dazzling with time as Murnane switches over to light-emitting diode (LED) lighting, which makes the costumes 45 percent brighter.
Since it’s his job to light fairytale princesses, opera divas, and rock stars, you might expect that Murnane’s home would be a lighting showcase. But he leaves his work at work. “My house is very normal,” he chuckles. “It’s a sanctuary from all that.”
Ellen Shaffer is a St. Paul writer.
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