An ISU alumnus in architecture has traded blueprints for bluescreens and is now making a name for himself in the television and motion picture industry.

Fourteen years ago, Scott Murphy graduated from Iowa State, planning to pursue his childhood dream of being an architect.

Today, he is the twice Emmy-nominated art director of the HBO series “The Sopranos.”

Murphy is also the art director for the upcoming movies “Spider-Man” and “Signs.”

After graduating from Iowa State in 1988, he went to Los Angeles to attend graduate school, still planning on becoming an architect.

While in California, he took a summer job with a company that did theme park design, he said, where he “worked with people who worked in TV.”

This led to a year and a half stint working on the soap opera “Sunset Beach.”

“Then I ended up working with someone who designed award shows,” Murphy explained. “I wasn’t crazy about that; it seemed a little hokey to me.”

“[But] within a six-month period I had done maybe 12 TV award shows,” Murphy said. “Which added a lot to my resume in very quick order.”

That resume eventually led him to New York and to his job as art director of “The Sopranos.”

“I’m really responsible for the sets and the architecture on the show,” he said. “For example, if we’re building a house, I would be responsible for the drawings and the design.”

Mostly he designs interiors for the soundstage.

“I’m designing buildings and spaces,” Murphy said. “My training in architecture really has to do with laying out spaces . lots of things like laying out proportions.”

Murphy’s work on the show has earned him two Emmy nominations, he said.

In addition to his work in television, Murphy has also worked in the art departments on numerous feature films, including “Unbreakable” and “The Sixth Sense.”

“Spider-Man” was the first film for which he was the art director, he said.

Murphy was the art director for the New York portion of the film. A separate art director handled Los Angeles, where the bulk of “Spider-Man” was shot, event though the film is set in New York.

Murphy said that most of his work on “Spiderman” involved getting what are called “plate shots.”

These plate shots are “dropped in” behind footage of the actors, filmed separately in front of bluescreens.

The New York backgrounds, many of which included the Twin Towers, were edited digitally in the wake of Sept. 11, he said.

This included the trailer, which had already started playing when the terrorist attacks occured.

“The trailer had Spiderman on a web in between the two trade towers; they decided to pull that,” he said.

But that digital editing was the work of the post-production crew, he said. “I don’t really know much about it.”

By that point, Murphy was already on to his next project, a movie called “Signs,” which is currently in post-production.

The movie, starring Mel Gibson, is about “aliens in the Pennsylvania countryside,” he said.

While he would like to do more features, he said, he currently has none lined up.

That’s because until May, he will be working up to 14 hours a day, 5 days a week on “The Sopranos.”

The pace of work on “The Sopranos” is “real fast and furious,” Murphy said. “We run around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to get everything done.”

“TV really burns people out quickly,” Murphy said. “I find features more rewarding.”

In addition to time frames, one other difference between television and film is the opportunity to include more visual symbolism, he said.

In the movie “Unbreakable,” Murphy said, the production designer had the idea to use the arches in the set as a metaphor.

“Lots of the sets are designed with archways,” he said. They started shallow, but “as the movie progressed, they arches started to get more round.”

“By the end of the movie the arches disappeared,” Murphy said. “They were broken.”

So as the main character discovered who he was, he said, “the architecture kind of opened up at the same time.”

Audiences can look for symbolism in “Signs” also, Murphy said.

“Mel Gibson plays a priest who has kind of lost his religion,” he said. “There’s some religious imagery in there, but I don’t want to give too much away.”

Murphy said his dream project would be to do more with aliens, some sort of “giant science fiction project,” like “Star Wars” or one of the “Alien” movies.

Students who dream of following in Murphy’s footsteps should take “any kind of film classes” they can, he said.

They should also read books on the subject of art direction for film.

He also recommended taking classes in theatrical design.

“a lot of people who do what I do in New York started out in theater design,” Murphy said.

The ISU English department currently offers a class in film, and the theater department offers a variety of classes in theatrical design.

Linda Pisano, assistant professor of music who teaches one of those courses in theatrical design, said theatrical design students often go on to work in film.

And it’s not unusual for architecture majors, like Murphy, to show an interest in scenic design, she said.

“As a matter of fact, many of our students are from art and design . and architecture,” Pisano explained.

Calvin Lewis, professor and chair of architecture, agreed it’s “not really that rare” for architecture students to go on to do work like Murphy’s.

“The multiple careers that are really available to you with an architecture degree are innumerable,” he said.

Murphy worked at Lewis’s firm in Des Moines while he was an undergraduate, before Lewis became a professor at Iowa State.

“He was very creative and had a very unique style and method of thinking,” Lewis said.

Murphy’s designs were “very crisp and clean – very strong, simple images” he said. “But there was always a story behind it, always a strong story.”

Even though Murphy is now telling stories on film instead of on blueprints, he said that his architecture training was still a good place to start.

“I think my background in architecture gave me a really strong base from which I could go off and do what I’m doing now,” Murphy said.

Ultimately, though, Murphy said the key to his success goes beyond any sort of education. “I try to do the best that I can and do what I feel is right.”