00:00My first real involvement with Wicked was saying to Stephen Schwartz, I'm really sorry,
00:10I hadn't seen the show.
00:12What?
00:13And I asked, is this a problem?
00:16And we kind of all agreed that maybe it wasn't.
00:19The wizard will see you now.
00:22So as I started to write new things, I absorbed all of Stephen's material into my muscles.
00:29It's very much a cinematic version of his language.
00:39John Powell, he didn't even want to watch the movie with any of our score, he just watched
00:42it with no music at all.
00:45And so that helps him wrap his mind around what the movie can be without music, so he
00:50can build on that and help enhance those things.
00:53And so I think that was kind of my job, to be a bit of an outsider in this world.
01:06How to create the sound of pink.
01:09John kept saying that, so you walk into a room and it's pink, what does it sound like?
01:15I mean, you look at the film, it's like there's candy.
01:19So I'd played around with trying to be fanciful, I even had recorder ensembles.
01:25And it was really just trying to find the right level of what I call, in animation,
01:29I call the stalling number.
01:31So all of that Bugs Bunny stuff that's incredibly tight to picture.
01:39People's eyebrows and their expressions changing and timing.
01:42So getting that right was quite hard and just trying to make John laugh.
01:56And then we get to the train station and they're doing the kind of the movement, the hand movements
02:01from the dance.
02:02That was a bit of a shock to John because I just put the biggest, giantest version of
02:07No one mourns the wicked.
02:12And he did not expect it.
02:21I didn't know she was going to get on the train and I needed to say that.
02:24Because that's, in the storytelling, that's how I felt.
02:27It's like, Linda's going to stay there and Elphaba's going to go off to Oz.
02:32I didn't know she was going to get on the train.
02:34So why were the audience?
02:41And then there were moments when we had to find sort of something that just didn't exist
02:47in that sort of subset of thematic material that was, you know, was in a way new to how
02:54John was making the film.
02:55Well, she doesn't need your help.
02:57Stop.
02:58I just need to find my room.
02:59I'll bring you there myself.
03:00The scene when we first see Elphaba and her powers, that's where I first wrote the kind
03:06of this dark magic theme because I needed something that would follow her all the way
03:10through in these moments.
03:11Let her go.
03:12Let her go.
03:32And then we developed one tune, which we called The Green Toy.
03:36Hey, you know what I had, man?
03:37Look, it's special.
03:39And that was very important for John because he needed something that talked about, you
03:51know, the first time she was able to be authentic.
03:55Later on, the way it shifts as she falls, that's the bit where we really found The Green
04:01Toy tune to be the most effective, was that she's seeing herself as a child and she sees
04:07who she really is.
04:10Sometimes you can alter how people perceive these performances, the subtleties.
04:15That's a language that I see and I read and I just try and react to.
04:19Here.
04:20Put this around you.
04:24In the end, it actually turned out to be much more about just the actual storytelling.
04:29And it wasn't that it was song.
04:31It was just that the story kept going.
04:40And so all of the elements I put in there were really about being so tightly attuned
04:46to those performances.
Comments