WICKED: FOR GOOD PRODUCTION
I SAW THE emotional ARC OF BOTH MOVIES AS one whole ”
LOOKING GOOD Brooks used two different lenses for Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande’s contrasting characters
COLOUR-CODED When production rolled around, the team had nine months to shoot two movies. Filming at Sky Studios in London, Brooks used an ARRI ALEXA 65, Panavision prototype anamorphic lenses as well as thousands of lights – including Cineo Quantum IIs – provided by Universal Production Services. Again, colour guided the production design from costumes and set-builds to Brooks’ careful lighting choices. “Colour has always meant something in Oz, from the original L. Frank Baum books to The Wizard of Oz and Wicked . In the books, every single paragraph has a rich, poetic colour description. For me, the poeticism was what I was really leaning into.”
Brooks lit every scene in a different shade, assigning meaning to each one. “For instance, red meant wrong choices,” she shares. “You see it in the governor’s mansion and during the scene between Elphaba’s mom and her lover. In the second movie, you see it in her sister’s suite, when her shoes begin to glow. I used orange for Elphaba’s transformation,” she continues, “and in the second film, you see it in No Good Deed . In For Good , we used real flame and torchlight with this beautiful glow to it. There’s a scene called ‘the Melting of the Wicked Witch’, which is also orange.” Yellow corresponds to Glinda’s intuition, appearing when she creates the yellow brick road and, in For Good , during
her wedding to Fiyero and the final scene. Pink stands for popularity, while blue is the colour of love between Elphaba and Glinda, according to Brooks. “Colour tells you what isn’t necessarily spoken.” As for lensing, Brooks chose a 65mm anamorphic for Elphaba, played by a painted-green Cynthia Erivo, and a 75mm for Glinda, played by a platinum blonde Ariana Grande. “I found Cynthia’s lens first during a camera test. But when I put it on Ari, it didn’t quite fit with her more bubbly personality. They are incredibly different characters.” In Wicked , Elphaba and Glinda often appear in the same frame, while in For Good , “they are together very little,” Brooks reveals. “In the first film, we
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