On Tuesday, 24 hours before one of SCAD Savannah Film Festival’s most anticipated panels, “Wicked: A First Look,” someone approached to inform that they would be in line at least an hour before. The anticipation was palpable. When “Wicked” cinematographer Alice Brooks, editor Myron Kerstein and costume designer and Variety’s 10 artisans to watch honoree Paul Tazewell stepped onto the stage Wednesday, they were welcomed like rock stars, with fans screaming at a deafening decibel. Based on the crowd’s enthusiasm, Kerstein wanted to see who was Team Glinda and who was Team Elphaba. Applause wasn’t enough to distinguish the two, but a show of hands suggested the audience skewed towards Glinda.
The artisans didn’t pick sides (they love them both equally), but that friction-turned-friendship between the two young witches was the filmmaker’s north star while developing the movie.
Brooks recalled her first conversations with director Jon M. Chu, who approached her as they wrapped up on 2021’s “In the Heights” to say he’d be tackling “Wicked” next. As they discussed the film’s themes, visual style and language, Chu asked what her goal for the film was. “I said, ‘That it would be the most beautiful love story between these two women, these two best friends,” Brooks said.
Set before “The Wizard of Oz,” “Wicked” follows the story of Glinda (Ariana Grande) and Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and how the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion and all those Ozians who Dorothy meets came to be. The musical, which opened on Broadway in 2003 based on the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel, has a 2 hour and 45 minute runtime (plus a 15 minute intermission). For the two-part film version, Kerstein had over 250 hours of footage to watch and edit.
“I had to figure out how to put that together,” Kerstein said, sharing that he and Chu’s key conversations were about the dynamic of the relationship between Glinda and Elphaba and how it evolves. “I had a real opportunity to create this relationship very quickly: within 30 minutes, you have these enemies who become roommates and then they become friends and then drama ensues.”
Pacing the arc of their friendship was challenging, Kerstein explained. “We have to fall in love with them, each as characters and then together as this beautiful friendship. That’s hard to do quickly, and be invested, and then have the drama pull them apart.”
The crowd assembled at SCAD were treated to a first look at two of the film’s musical numbers: “What is this Feeling?” (where Glinda and Elphaba express their “unadulterated loathing” for one another) and “Dancing Through Life” (where the dashing Fiyero, played by Jonathan Bailey, takes center stage).
Fiyero’s riding boots recently caught the internet’s interest when Bailey revealed that he has a photo wearing only the boots after a mishap with his luggage. Asked about his approach to their design, Tazewell explained that he wanted to align Fiyero’s look with an “iconic, heroic and princely demeanor.” He said, “Underscoring that in his riding boots was important and finding a shape that spoke to that.”
Tazewell said he designed the film’s costumes to emphasize each character’s humanity, so that audiences would be more easily able to access them. He began by creating rules for how the people of the fantastical Oz saw themselves and contextualizing what that would look like coming from different lands and tribes while staying in the context of a university. “There was a lot of pulling together different images,” he said. “Some were based in nature. I was looking at a lot of spirals and how does that carry through.”
Tazewell also saw the film as a chance to expand on the musical. “I had the opportunity to design a full wardrobe for these young women — you see their sleepwear and their [Shiz University] uniforms and different versions of their uniforms as they go through their days at school,” Tazewell said. “Each of those still needed to define who that character was, and it was just a lot of fun to do the do when we look at Glinda and Elphaba.”
Nature was also key part of the film’s visual language. Tazewell previously told Variety about how the underside of mushrooms (aka mushroom gills) inspired his designs for Elphaba’s witch dress. His idea was to “create a look and have it spring from a place of naturalness and groundedness which would contrast with what her power is and that she can defy gravity.” He explained: “It felt appropriate and how I wanted to represent her. She’s an advocate for animals, and because she’s marginalized, she finds solace in nature more so than in the people surrounding her.”
Similarly, Brooks anchored her lighting in the sun. “I had this idea that the sun would always rise for Glinda and set for Elphaba,” Brooks explained. “Because one of the themes we talked about was that light is not the light and the darkness is not the darkness. Good is not good and evil is not evil. So how do we give tribute to a theatrical stage show, but make it our own?”
Case in point, Brooks lit the Glinda-led number “Popular” as one long sunrise scene. The third act of the film, though, is largely driven by Elphaba’s arc. “The last 40 minutes of the movie is one long continuous sunset that starts with ‘Wizomania’ and takes us all to the end of ‘Defying Gravity,’” Brooks said.
According to the artisans, Chu’s vision of Oz was that he wanted the film to be “timeless,” “classic” and an ode to Old Hollywood. Thus, “Wicked’s” grand production shot in 17 stages and on four backlots, two of which were the size of four American football fields. “Part of the goal of making one of the greatest love stories of all time was that we captured as much in camera as possible,” Brooks said. Added Kerstein: “We were making ‘The Lord of the Rings’ meets ‘The Wizard of Oz.’”
Asked about their most satisfying scenes, both Brooks and Kerstein landed on the Ozdust Ballroom scene, which Brooks described as “the heart of the movie.” She explained: “This is the first time these women see each other for the first time. This is where they fall in love with each other.”
The Ozdust Ballroom scene is part of “Dancing Through Life.” It’s a part of Shiz University where animals who currently live in fear of being silenced feel free and even perform in bands, and of course, the Shiz students hang out. Fiyero leads the sequence to this moment. Meanwhile, Glinda has invited Elphaba along to the soiree and even gives her a black pointed hat to wear.
Brooks shared that the scene was one of the hardest to light because the set had clear resin walls all around it. Furthermore, Chu wanted to capture a closeup of Elphaba using 65 mm lenses, with each take running 10 minutes long. “He wants her to have the time to perform that scene, to feel the emotion of that scene, and for everybody to be watching her,” Brooks said. “One of the other visual themes throughout the movie is, ‘What does it feel like to be looked at?’ So, as she walks down the stairs, how does it feel when everyone is laughing at you?”
Kerstein said the footage was “terrifying” to edit. “Every single take made me cry,” he explained. “How do you start piecing together something that feels like every frame feels magical? And I wonder if I captured that emotion in my edit. Cynthia and Ari just crush it.”
Cinematographer Alice Brooks, editor Myron Kerstein and costume designer Paul Tazewell speak onstage at Universal’s “Wicked” First Look, moderated by Variety senior artisans editor Jazz Tangcay.
Getty Images for SCAD