🎧 'Wicked': How John Chu's Squad Made Magic
Rob Legato, ASC, talks to cinematographer Alice Brooks, ASC, editor Myron Kerstein, VFX supervisor Pablo Helman and supervising sound editor John Marquis
Welcome to the latest episode of Art & Crafts, The Ankler’s podcast series dedicated to bringing audiences behind the scenes to examine the careers and contributions of the talented artisans who create and craft the movies and TV series that we love. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts.
Beyond the spectacle and behind the music, what’s really great and powerful about Wicked, Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of the Broadway megahit musical, is the emotional bond between Ariana Grande’s Glinda and Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba. To help him capture their complex friendship, the director recruited friends of his own, including three collaborators from his 2021 musical In the Heights: cinematographer Alice Brooks, ASC, supervising sound editor John Marquis and editor Myron Kerstein.
On Nov. 12 the trio joined Chu newbie Pablo Helman, one of Wicked’s VFX supervisors, to discuss their shared process on Universal Pictures’ epic adventure. Their conversation, part of The Ankler’s Art & Crafts Live event at the American Society of Cinematographers Clubhouse in Los Angeles, was moderated by Rob Legato, ASC. It was Legato who launched the discussion with the theme of collaboration, paraphrasing an Alfred Hitchcock definition of cinema, “where all the art forms come together as one piece and it creates one art form, which is this movie.”
What came together on Wicked followed decades of team-building — Brooks and Chu made their first musical together 25 years ago at USC film school, and Marquis has worked with the director on features going back to 2013’s Justin Bieber’s Believe. “With each movie we do, you could feel the train building steam, and you could feel the confidence in the team that he was putting together, the family that he was creating,” Marquis said. “So by the time we get to Wicked, the confidence was high.”
Still, the project’s ambition and complexity were daunting. “The first thing Jon said to me was, ‘We want to make this film to be The Wizard of Oz meets Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings,’” Kerstein recalled. “I was intimidated by the sheer scale of it . . . My task was just to never forget that it was about this relationship and about character and about emotion.”
Among the film’s 150-plus days of shooting, there were some very hard ones, Brooks recalled, adding that Kerstein found a creative way to make them a little easier. “Myron was amazing,” she said. “He started cutting together little sizzle reels and inviting anyone in the crew to come up to the editing room, so that they could get reinvigorated, seeing Cynthia Erivo sing or Ariana Grande. His incredible team-building spirit just kept boosting us up.”
Helman felt instantly welcomed by Chu’s tight squad, he said, especially during the eight months of post-production. “Something else that I haven’t done before,” he said. “Editor and cinematographer in dailies with the director for visual effects, through 2,200 visual effects shots, working with all the wonderful work that they did on set.”
Erivo’s and Grande’s performances provided a true North for all four artisans. “I had two thoroughbreds just crushing it every day,” said Kerstein. “Whatever my choices are, is all based on that performance. And if I’m leaning in, I’m hoping that the audience is also going to be leaning in.”
Very early in the process, Brooks recalled, Chu asked his cinematographer what her goal for the movie was. “I said that it would be the greatest, most beautiful love story ever told between these two women, these two best friends. And that became my intention for the entire movie — that even though we are in this vast, huge, epic world of Oz, and we are doing a musical, it’s actually about the close-ups,” she said. “It is about these two women connecting.”
Transcript here.
