00:00There's that beautiful girl.
00:06Girl in the Bubble is this pivotal moment for Glinda.
00:09It is the moment where she actually needs to look in the mirror and see who she's become.
00:13And so John and I, as we talked about intentions, we realized we wanted to tell this in mirrors.
00:19It feels like one long shot as we move in and out of mirrors,
00:23and you never know if you're in the mirror or out of the mirror.
00:25It's five Steadicam shots and two 45-foot Technocrane shots that are stitched together,
00:31and the stitch points all happen inside the mirror.
00:34And so the camera had to push through the mirrors into what would be a mirror image of the set.
00:39And what does that mean for the set? It means the set has to be symmetrical.
00:42So we have to have a mirror here and a staircase here and another staircase here.
00:46It all has to be equal.
00:48So we had to flip her just to be correct together with the whole world.
00:52It took about, I'd say, two and a half years.
00:54She's the girl in the bubble, the bright, shiny bubble.
01:03John Chu and I, we did two years of pre-prep.
01:05We just started building our team and we share images with each other.
01:09We have this huge, what we call the war room, which had a big table in the middle.
01:14Nathan was putting models or concept art. I could put images that were inspiring me.
01:19Paul was putting his hand drawings of the costumes.
01:22And we just built and built and built until we could see the whole world we were creating together.
01:28Some of the process is collaborative where, you know, I create the design and create a sketch,
01:35choose fabrics that I think are most appropriate for representing the costume.
01:40The whole time I'm observing how they're reacting to what the shape is and then asking questions.
01:46Does this feel appropriate for Elphaba?
01:50Does it feel appropriate for Glinda at this moment within the story?
01:53It very early on became clear that the first movie would live in this effervescent daylight.
01:58And the second film would be steeped in maturity and density and shadow.
02:02It's much more of a sort of journey film and we head west.
02:06We've got to deal with how Elphaba becomes the Wicked Witch of the West.
02:09We have to crash through the forest and her nest, her secret hideout in Winky,
02:14all the way to Kiamako, which is as far west as you can go.
02:17It's a complicated set because it involves an enormous amount of visual effects,
02:21but the core of it is in the design.
02:23How are we going to find a new look for a castle?
02:25We have to find something that belonged to Oz.
02:27And I also was determined to do something that connected it to the Grimmery
02:32and the land and magic because it was so ancient.
02:36It could have connected to the time of the Grimmery,
02:38which I always thought was the time of the land
02:40because that's where the magic comes from.
02:42So I really wanted to do a floating castle.
02:45I wanted to let it defy gravity, you know, there's all these themes,
02:49which is a dangerous thing for a designer to go down.
02:54I have to be at this perfect blend with VFX, otherwise the audience feels there.
02:58We took everything that Nathan did and we just brought it into visual effects
03:02and we designed a space that was two or three times larger
03:06than what we thought originally.
03:08Production design builds interiors to, let's say, 20-25 feet,
03:12and exteriors to about 50-55 feet, and then visual effects takes over.
03:17All the effects that we are doing are organic.
03:20The reason is, I think it's everybody's intention to have as much in-camera as possible.
03:25John always said, I want this movie to feel handmade.
03:28I don't want it to feel technical or rhythmic in some sort of computer way.
03:33He said he really wanted human touch.
03:36In my department, in lighting and camera, we did things like live lighting cues
03:40instead of having our cues timed into time code on the dimmer board,
03:45so that there's a level of imperfection.
03:47And I lit these films with every color of the rainbow,
03:50and you really see it in the second movie.
03:53Color means something in Oz, and I play with two colors.
03:56It's the blue, and blue is the color of Glinda and Elphaba's love.
04:00And you first see it in the Ozdis ballroom,
04:03and then we use the same color for the moonlight in For Good.
04:06And then orange, orange is the color of Elphaba's transformation.
04:09The color of the orange flame, we used real flame light.
04:12And we see it in For Good when she ignites the fire,
04:16and then all the monkeys start lighting the torches.
04:18We used real flame.
04:19We were covered in soot at the end of the day,
04:21because the torches were huge.
04:23But you can't replicate flame light that way.
04:26And the orange color on Elphaba's green skin was just gorgeous.
04:29And it was really discovering that color that had the fluorescent,
04:33that threw back the light, which with Alice's input,
04:36it really left Cynthia to shine through
04:39and never left her looking slightly removed from the audience in any way.
04:52I'd have to say the biggest challenge was really
04:54giving the changes for Tin Man and Scarecrow,
04:57making those characters still be real.
05:00What I loved about them both was,
05:02along with John and Mark, the collaboration,
05:05and Mark Cuglio, who was co-designed on him,
05:07made the prosthetics for us.
05:08We kept them so fine that you could really see
05:12that it was Bock that had turned to Tin.
05:14And you could really feel that it was Fiero
05:18that was still in love with Elphaba,
05:20even though he was covered in a burlap prosthetic.
05:23But with Bock's in particular, it was the fineness.
05:26It gave the angular and it gave the vibe and the feel of Tin,
05:30but it really left that anger and that sadness
05:35that Bock was living, showed through it all.
05:37And as the tears ran down his face,
05:39we added rust to leave the tracks of the tears, so to speak.
05:43And just as time passed within that room,
05:45everything metal in that room attached to him.
05:47And when you look, there's the finest details.
05:50His ears are jug handles, you know.
05:52His teeth I had made of metal, they were cast,
05:54and they were just a very thin skim of metal.
05:56And then the blend from the eyes and the prosthetic,
05:59and keeping those little angular cheeks,
06:02it all enhanced the storytelling, really.
06:06You know, it was a lot of fun to envision
06:08what actually happens for these characters.
06:11Because we have Fiero, who becomes the Scarecrow.
06:15It was starting with his uniform,
06:17which is based on a Hussar uniform,
06:19covered in bullion,
06:21bullion banding and embroidery.
06:23What is a heroic wool and gold braid turns into sackcloth,
06:29and then the gold braid transforms to straw embroidery.
06:34It all translates into the Scarecrow language.
06:38And then his skin turns to sackcloth,
06:40and his hair becomes grass and wheat as well.
06:43In the first Wicked film, you see on his sleeves
06:46there's embroidery that is wheat as well.
06:50So it's a little Easter egg that, you know,
06:52kind of acknowledges and suggests
06:54where he ends up going in the second film.
07:11What does the Scarecrow sound like?
07:13Designing the sounds of the Tin Man.
07:15There was some expectation
07:17and just some real pinch-me moments with that.
07:19Some of my favorite sounds in both movies
07:21are just the seemingly mundane, you know,
07:24like a wheelchair or a typewriter or something like that.
07:27What's the Ozian version of that?
07:29They seem simple, but they tell a little story there.
07:32I think that sound, our hope is that it's a transparent art,
07:48so it doesn't pull focus from the story
07:50and allows just the film to be enhanced in a way that's not obvious.
07:55I mean, it's a sneaky crap.
07:57You don't really realize in our day-to-day how sound communicates a story,
08:01how it communicates an emotion,
08:02how someone walks into a room with the sound of a beat,
08:04and someone slams a door.
08:06There's all these seemingly, like, normal sounds,
08:08but, like, they're packed with a story and an emotional imprint.
08:12You work with that.
08:13The quality of Glinda's clicky-click footsteps
08:15versus Elphaba's, you know, solid, really grounded boot
08:19that she's walking in.
08:21And also, Wicked For Good has some larger,
08:23more challenging sound design set pieces
08:26than maybe in the first one.
08:28The Cyclone, for sure, for many reasons,
08:30but it's also, you think about The Wizard of Oz
08:32and you think about all these things that, like,
08:34my gosh, we've all grown up with The Wizard of Oz
08:36knowing about this tornado,
08:38and, like, here we are.
08:39We get to design what this thing sounds like,
08:42what it looks like.
08:47The very end, right after For Good,
08:49there's a split screen of Elphaba and Glinda,
08:52and it harkens back to the first musical number
08:55they're in together.
08:56What is this feeling where it plays on split screens?
08:59And those split screens we shot individually,
09:01they weren't even in the same room sometimes doing them.
09:03But this one, John wanted it to be,
09:06them to be able to say goodbye to each other,
09:08together at the exact same time.
09:10He told Nathan that, and Nathan's like,
09:12well, we're shooting this tomorrow.
09:13The only way to do it is to completely rip the set apart.
09:16And John said, okay, that's fine.
09:18And Nathan's like, but if you pull the set apart,
09:20you can't shoot anything else here.
09:22And John's like, we just shot For Good,
09:24we have to shoot this tomorrow.
09:26And so overnight they ripped the wall out,
09:28and we put our camera there,
09:29and it's just this still static shot,
09:31and it's an in-camera split screen
09:33where Glinda's on one side in the coolness of the closet,
09:36and Elphaba is on her left side of screen
09:39with the warm torchlight.
09:41And we don't move, and we just wait and sit
09:44in just like this restrained silence,
09:46and I love that we got to do it that way.
09:49When I'm cutting For Good,
09:51and I'm crying while I'm watching these dailies,
09:53and I'm seeing two incredible actors in Cynthia and Ari
09:57showing how much they long for each other
10:00and what this friendship means to each other.
10:02And they're saying goodbye to one another,
10:04and that's affecting me.
10:06I'm trying to make sure that the audience feels the same way.
10:09I think landing the plane and the ending
10:11was probably the hardest for me.
10:13It's like, how do we end this saga?
10:15How do we make the audience feel satisfied
10:18with the conclusion of this journey with two characters?
10:22That took a lot of experimentation.
10:23We ripped this thing apart so many different times.
10:26There were scenes in there with more dialogue
10:28that we pared back.
10:30We restructured quite a bit.
10:32The last shot of the film wasn't scripted that way,
10:34and so we were just trying to find the power,
10:38the operatic nature of that ending.
10:48Wicked is a unique experience where it really felt
10:51the collaboration between each department
10:53was so informative to each other.
10:56You're really inspired by the excellence
10:59that everyone else is bringing to the table.
11:01It was maybe the best collaboration I've ever had artistically
11:05in my career, and it's been pretty long,
11:07so it's really great to be able to say that.
11:09It's very rare that you get the people, the project, the resources.
11:15This one, we got three.
11:17One of the things that I think after doing visual effects
11:20for 30 years that I realized is that it's about the people
11:24that you work with.
11:25When I met John on Crazy Rich Asians,
11:27it was like meeting my cinematic soulmate.
11:30And then I was, of course, meeting Alice Brooks.
11:33And I think with every film that we've done together,
11:36we just get better at our craft.
11:38So John Chu and I first met over half our lives ago
11:42at USC Film School.
11:44He asked me to shoot his short film,
11:46a musical called When the Kids Are Away.
11:48And we bonded over our love of musicals.
11:51And this was pre-Moulin Rouge, pre-Chicago.
11:53The Hollywood musical was dead.
11:55And we were just these two kids who had this dream
11:58of one day growing up and making musicals.
12:01For good.
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