‘Wicked: For Good’ cinematographer Alice Brooks breaks down ‘Girl in the Bubble’ scene, the film’s emotional core
Cinematographer Alice Brooks is ready for audiences to see the culmination of roughly five years of work. As the DP on Wicked and Wicked: For Good, the latter of which opens in theaters on Nov. 21, Brooks managed roughly 200 crew between camera and lighting alone on what was one long shoot, not two separate ones.
"What most people don't know is we actually shot both movies simultaneously. Not back-to-back, but on the same day we could be shooting one scene from the first movie and in the afternoon be shooting a scene from the second movie," she explains. "For instance, in the the Wizard's throne room where the Wizard's head is, we were shooting the end of movie one in the morning and in the afternoon we were shooting a number called 'Wonderful.' And the first musical number we shot was 'Popular' and the second we shot was 'Girl in the Bubble,' which is in the second movie."
Brooks, who was fresh off celebrating the film's U.K. premiere with cast and crew, reveals that they only recently locked picture. "We finished the movie four weeks ago," she says. "I'm very excited for people to see what we've created as a whole."
The acclaimed cinematographer spoke with Gold Derby on a "Meet the Experts: Spotlight" panel about key scene setters regarding emotion, intention and color palette, the cinematic magic tricks employed for the "Girl in the Bubble" song, and a fun fact about a lens change in the final scene of For Good.
Gold Derby: Can you talk more about your approach to shooting both films at the same time? It's a massive endeavor and production.
Alice Brooks: We treated it as if we were shooting one long movie, but each movie has its own distinct visual style and visual look. We shot primarily with one camera, but we always had two cameras on set. I had a team of 200 people between lighting and camera and my DI team that worked on this film and I'm so grateful to all of them. It was an incredible team effort and to get them all on the same page, we created weekly at-a-glance packets that would have the emotional targets. And then what I now call the color script, which is a term used in animation, which is a single frame per scene. So in my office, I'd have every frame, a single frame that would, a reference, a photograph or a painting or concept art from the art department or something from our camera tests. And when you stand back and look at the wall and soften your eyes, you can see the complete visual arc that starts in the first movie and ends in the second movie. And so I would put the color script in for the scenes we were shooting that week, our lighting diagrams, just to get everyone on the same page.
When we first started talking about emotions in the first movie, [director] Jon M. Chu would say, "Give me intentions, as if I were an actor for the camera." And the first movie was like dreaming, yearning, friendship. And the second movie was surrender, sacrifice, consequence. It became very clear early on that the first movie would live in the glow of effervescent daylight and the second movie would be steeped in maturity and shadow and density.
Can you talk more about that color palette for Glinda and Elphaba? The sunrise and sunset aspect?
Brooks: For the first film I had this idea where the sun would always rise for Glinda and set for Elphaba. 90 percent of the first movie is all daylight, day interior or day exterior. And the second movie is the opposite. It's 90 percent at night or in the deep shadows of the underbelly of Oz. And so it became, the last 40 minutes of the first movie is all one long sunset that ends with Elphaba finding her power and flying off into the sunset. And that sets the tone for the second film, which really place where the sunset meets the sunrise and the dead of the night.
What is your relationship with Panavision and what that has meant to Wicked?
Brooks: It's been a wonderful experience. They were the first people I called when I knew I was doing the movie. We developed lenses specifically for the film and it was a two-year pre-prep process. During our camera tests, we found that Cynthia Erivo's Elphaba was going to be shot close-up on a 65 millimeter lens and Ariana Grande's Glinda would be shot on the 75 millimeter lens. And so we did that, except the very last scene of the movie, slight spoiler alert, but when Glinda finds her own true power and finds out what goodness really is, we shoot her on Alpha with a 65 millimeter lens.
What is your collaboration like with your editor?
Brooks: Myron Kerstein, is our editor, who I love dearly. I've done five movies with him, mostly with Jon Chu, but also one with Lin-Manuel Miranda directing. We have a process where I call him at the end of the day while I'm in the car going home and we talk to each other. And on Wicked, he was set up on our stages. So I would just go into the editing room and we'd watch dailies together every day and talk about what was working, what wasn't working and what his concerns were. And one of the sequences that we talked a lot about was "Girl in the Bubble," which looks like one shot. We go in and out of mirrors throughout this three and a half minute song. And it ended up being five Steadicam shots and two techno crane shots that are all stitched together very specifically. Shooting in mirrors is all just one huge math problem, so that was one sequence Myron and I really talked a lot about before we ever shot it.
Do you think you'll be getting lots of questions about that being a oner or actually one shot?
Brooks: We just started screening the film. I think it's one that people are gonna wanna keep going back to see to try to figure out how we put it together because it took everyone's brain power to figure it out. Jon and I have been talking about shooting in mirrors and we Googled every great movie mirror shot of all time. Contact was one of our favorites, but we had a whole archive of mirror shots and we knew what we wanted but it was really hard to explain to everyone. And so one night at two in the morning I woke up and I grabbed my husband's shaving mirror, my daughter's princess bath toys, and two bananas which represent this mirror image of a set and I shot everything on my iPhone. And I went in the next morning to our production meeting with my props and we played around. Then we then storyboarded and then visual effects did a tech viz. But I love it because it took every single department to make it happen. The collaborative process on this movie is incredible. And that's one of the scenes that every single person really lended their hand to.
That sounds like a beautiful MacGyver math problem that you solved?
Brooks: I love that cinematography combines all my favorite things, right? It's art, it's storytelling, it's science, it's math, and that's why I love being a cinematographer.
This article and video are presented by Universal.
