06/08/2026
From
Tom Hanks has made five films set in WWII and has another one in the works…and a week ago, on Memorial Day, the History Channel dropped a MEGA, 20-part documentary series about the war narrated and executive produced by Tom Hanks
This is the making of the Key Art for “World War II With Tom Hanks” for the History Channel!
Back on a cold, rainy morning in January, we set up shot in a corner of one of the stages at Orbital Studios in Downtown LA, where Tom Hanks was shooting the promotional material and last few on-camera narrative pieces for the History Channel’s epic, 20-part docuseries on World War II.
Our mission was to create two lighting looks on one set; one for marketing and one for publicity…and get reportage coverage of the making of the promo videos and on-camera narrative pieces…all in one day, with no pre light!
So… and intern .co built and rigged eight strobes:
For the marketing set up we went with a grided octobank with a 40dgr grid (from the fabulous folks at ) as the main, at about a 45degr angle on camera right. The side fill came from a 12x unbleached muslin at camera left, with just a bit of help from a small strip bank up high, at back camera left.
For the PR set up we put a large umbrella right over the camera and the fill came from two more octobanks directly behind the camera. We added a medium, gridded strip bank as a hair light.
For both set ups, the 12x day grey muslin backdrop was lit by a gridded 7” reflector aimed downward at the muslin, but not before trying a collapsed umbrella, which just didn’t work.
And that other small strip on camera right, up high and in the back? We never used it.
And the fog? That’s digital tech attempting to control the hazer/fogger because we shot plates of ground fog with the left side gelled warm and the right side gelled blue that were never used!
And the bonus pix? Just to show that he is an incredibly good sport as a stand in and as a fog wrangler...
