Wicked Cinematography and Return of Practical Effects with Alice Brooks

0:00 hi this is Alice Brooks the cinematographer for Wicked and this is the Go creative [Music] show hello and welcome to the Go creative show a podcast for filmmakers my name is Ben canoli and today we have Alice Brooks the Director of Photography for Wicked back on the show Alice you're you're like returning Champion to the Go creative show I'm so happy to be here thank you thank you for thank you for following me this is exciting thank you for coming on of course we got Connor our producer as well and I have Connor on specifically because he's always behind the scenes for all these interviews but for this one he's like I need to be on because of his overwhelming fandom for Wicked it's

0:47 out of control I think he's seen the movie more than you have Alice how many times have you seen it Connor I'm up to 7even times you and my daughter I have not seen it seven times but my I have a nine-year-old and she's seen it seven times as well wow how have you seen it seven times it's only been out like seven days uh well that's a great question um luckily we through our um our uh connections that we have we were able to get access to an early screening so I was able to attend that uh then I got to see it with my husband a couple of times with some friends and family a couple times so I just keep getting invited and pulled in to to viewing so up to seven so

1:32 far that is incredible amazing oh I'm so excited to talk to someone who's who's probably knows it as well as I do maybe better we'll see well I want to start with a conversation about just the general look of the film you've said many times it has this you were going for this Classic Hollywood Americana look obviously it's an adaptation from a play and of course the legendary Wiz Wizard of Oz at the very beginning of it all how do you describe the look of the film so we did when johu first approached all the creatives it was very much we want to make an old Hollywood movie like Cleopatra or benur just like these massively epic huge sets But

2:18 ultimately it's this love story between these two women these two best friends and um and so it is a it's a romance uh in many ways a friendship romance but it is it is a love story and so we wanted it to be romantic and worldbuilding and to immerse yourself in a new world that you have never seen before our our own version of Oz wicked is our very own version of Oz and what like when you think about okay now I get to interpret Oz something that has just been so legendary and iconic are you are you intimidated by this are you excited for this is it all things like there's got to be some kind of like you know hit in your stomach feeling when you realize you're creating the next and new Oz well John John Shu

3:06 called me when we were or when we were in post on in the Heights and he said Alice our next Project's going to be Wicked and so I go from like what I think it is like my ultimate dream job which I in the Heights is still one of my favorite movies I've ever worked on and then knowing and then I I had already shot Tick Tick boom Tick Tick boom was also in post and so now suddenly I get to do a third or fourth musical depending on if you count like it as one or two movies um and so it was it was everything I ever dreamed of I grew up in New York City to a playwright father and a mother who was a singer and a dancer and our house was filled with music and going to shows and we didn't have much money but my parents somehow figured out how to get us to live

3:53 theater all the time and it was just part of my life and so and John and I met 25 years ago um almost 25 years ago 22 and a half years ago we made his short film called when the kids are away at USC which was a musical also and we bonded over our love of musicals and we wanted to grow up and make musicals and it was at a time when Hollywood had stopped making musicals it was Prem Mulan Rouge pre- Chicago like the Hollywood musical was dead and the fact that here we are with Wicked and just this incredible success we we um we have with the film and just the love people have for this movie is incredible what do you think it says about you know the current like movie theater goinging

4:39 audience and maybe even the state of Cinema as it is that there's such a love and such an acceptance for practical sets you know real speal real effects that are not special effects you know there's just such a realism to this film despite how giant it is it's so real and it's so like practical that does what does it say about us as you know as a human race going to the movies what does it say about us wanting this and loving this so much well when we started this project almost four years ago it'll be four years ago in March that John called me and it was pandemic right we're still living in the world of the pandemic movie theaters aren't opened we everything has been shut and that's when

5:26 like we started talking about this movie and so when you start talking about this movie from a place where you couldn't leave your house and everything you see is on a TV screen with only your family only whoever is in your bubble and but then starting to dream about what is it going to be like when people go to the movie theater again what is it going to be like when the lights go down and you're sitting next to strangers and you can hear them eating their popcorn and you can hear them laughing and you can hear them crying and you can hear their gasps and what would that be like and what is going to bring people back to the theater and I think it is it is it is an experience like you would have 50 years ago when you'd go to movie palaces and

6:13 see films and movies were events and and you can see it this whole weekend this whole Thanksgiving weekend it was an event weekend people went to the cinema they went to see all three movies Gladiator um Moana 2 and wicked and it and and they want it people want to go have this sort of entertainment and I'm just feel so lucky to be part to be part of this experience and being be part of getting people into the cinema again it's so interesting to me that like the thing that brought people back to the movies is the thing that brought people to the movies at the very beginning like just good storytelling practical sets real classic

6:58 cinematography like it's amazing to see that our habits really haven't changed despite how far we've gone in the special effects realm not to say that there's no room for it there obviously is there's it's awesome but it's just so cool to see something like Wicked that is made so practically at the top it it just warms my heart it warms my heart too and I just hope that I hope that other movies that want to do do things on this level with these kind of sets and these this kind of Storytelling and the craftsmanship that went into this movie I there's this line in um in the Heights that says I always mess it up AUA says it but it's um the little details that tell the world We Are Not

7:45 Invisible and that's how I feel about our movie we had so many thousands and thousands of incredible crafts people making doing such detailed work every single detail was so thought out on Wicked nothing is arbitrary and you can see it in alphaba micro braids and on her F every single Freckle that was placed on her skin and you can see it in every pleat of Paul tazwell costumes and you can see it in every monkey feather that visual effects created or the eyes of Dr Dilan and you and and in the cinematography realm every lens we chose was specific and the lighting choices we made were to draw you in and we have oh we have about 6,000 lighting cues in

8:32 Wicked in the movie and it they're all very subtle right and you probably don't notice them and maybe some of them you do but you can feel it and that's the thing all these little teeny details all weave together from every single department and all thousand however many thousand people who have worked on Wicked those that is the that is the symbol that movies should be told by Artisans and crafts people and people who are so invested in a project and we're here and we're making this movie anyway that was sort of a tangent but but but it's the details that make Wicked I guess is what I'm trying to say we're all about tangents here Co creative show that's

9:19 for sure yeah actually so kind of on the note that you were talking about Alice um I know that um from my perspective at least watching this seven times um it seems like you're heavily using natural lighting when it comes to a lot of these sets like specifically the library scene um and and allowing that to kind of be your key and stuff like that um I'm curious what was your thought process when it came to the lighting of wicked how did you approach it so nature became this big theme talked among all almost all the department heads it nature was this um actually let me back check so John talks first of all when we break down a script everything is about emotion and humanity

10:06 and themes and and one of the themes we all kept discussing was nature and so um we would go location scouting and we'd stand in these huge barley fields or flower fields and suddenly realized like nature needed to be part of the production design and then and then Paul tazwell costumes are so infused in nature and and and and he's talked many times about that and so I started to think about about nature and then John and I started talking a lot about um the theme of light and darkness that in in Wicked the light is not the light and the Darkness is not the darkness the good is not good and evil is not evil our perception is all all different and when we and so as I started to think

10:53 about that but also wanted to be able to do lighting cues within this with whilst still feeling real and tangible and grounded in this nature suddenly I realized the sun could become our Spotlight and if the sun became our Spotlight I could have as many lighting cues as I wanted so we have these huge we have these huge sections of the movie that are either sunrise or Sunset shots because the sunrise is for Glenda and it sets for alphaba and alphaba finds her power in the darkness in the shadows and um and and so the last hour of the movie is one long sunset from wisam Mania to the end of the movie When She Flies off um at the end of Defying Gravity and and and Glenda's big number popular is a

11:40 long Sunrise I think it's about 22 minutes and that ends in this pink this pink Sunrise that the sun the sun Becomes Her Spotlight and um and so nature was infused in it and and the sun really became our became our our our our theme of life it seems like an overwhelming challenge to have to light sets as large as the sets are in this movie like they're just we're talking about football fields of of set and I'd love to hear from you first of all what it's like having to work with these gigantic enormous sets I'm sure it's super fun but also kind of like nerve-wracking a little bit because how do you light sets this big with

12:26 access to 360 which I know you had for a lot of scenes yeah John loves shooting 360 he wants I I mean it's one of the reasons the volume stages don't work for him is because he likes to go into a set he wants it fully dressed and it becomes his playground with his actors and he wants to be able to look 360 Dees and and not I mean and that's just on a whole the way he likes to work but then 360 degree shots became this became a part of our visual theme between alphaba and Glenda and it plays all throughout movie to as well and so when we're doing these 360° shots I then have to think about lighting in a whole different way because because we want we we you know we can't have camera Shadow I mean just

13:12 practical things like that um and you obviously want your your leads to look amazing you want alphabet of me the most beautiful green witch you've ever seen so um so so all of that and then we are we shot on 17 sound stages most of our sets were built from fire lane to fire lane and from floor to ceiling and we had four exterior sets um and and two of them were the size of four American football fields each and munchkin land wasn't that much smaller but shiz and Emerald City were our biggest and then munchkin land and then the train station um was our our smallest of our exterior sets but we planted that barley field as well I know everyone likes to talk about the 9 million tulips that were planted but we also planted a barley field so

14:00 for Wizard and I and for um the train station oh I forgot the Wizard and I set was also outside that actually was our smallest set do you like do you prefer a set with total control that's inside you don't have to worry about it or do you like the more variability of an outside set oh gosh that is a really hard question I love real sunlight you can't beat real sunlight the problem is that sheo in the UK real sunlight is very halfhazard so um so you then can't depend on anything um so so it is it's it is I don't have a good answer for that

14:45 it's it you can't be real sunlight but but but the fact yeah well what I'm curious about is knowing that you have sets that are this gigantic knowing that you're going to be shooting 360 and you need to to light it all like in your kind of the way that you're thinking what is the philosophy of how you approach lighting scenes like this where you don't just want it to look like a big Warehouse where it's just lights everywhere but you still you have so many limitations because you're looking everywhere no Shadows you can't put stands anywhere you're going your sets go up to the ceilings like how do you actually approach these types of scenes from a lighting perspective so everything goes into our dimmer board and so for instance the ozdust ballroom is a set that's made out of clear resin

15:31 walls and so we could backlight those resin walls any color we wanted and it's a club so we wanted it to have a pulse and a life to it as well but it's also the moment it's the heart of the movie it's when alphab and Glinda walk into or fall in love with each other and it's also the moment where um our theme of what does it feel like to be looked at is that its piest where everyone is laughing at her and so a a we have to light the space we have to light the walls because there's otherwise they just look like plastic you know a clear plastic box more or less and um so first we start to light the space and then we figure out okay where I I spend the weekends pre- lighting so I go in with

16:17 the electric team and I stand there and I start to feel what does alphabe feel like in the space but not just alphaba what does Cynthia Revo feel like playing alphaba as she walks down the stairs so I slowly walked down the stairs and at one point I just sat on the stairs for a very long time and I imagined all the people laughing at me and it was like okay how does that feel and what would the light feel like on my face and then as we start to do that I start to get a sense of how what the feeling of the light should be and then and then and then John wanted to do this 360 de degree shot because he wanted alphaba we knew we were shooting 360 degree shots for this because that's part of our theme but he wanted to shoot alphab closeup first which is a 65mm

17:04 360° shot where we're spinning around her for 10 minutes and sometimes we pause because it is in it there's these moments that are just very silent in that the music completely cuts out too and some people think we locked off the shot for those moments but it's actually we just have the most amazing steady cam operator on the planet and carsen yakobson and then we um so so we've got we've got one of the electricians and sometimes two who are on the floor as the steady camps going around with a light we have lights rigged in the SK Sky we've got we've got moving lights and we've got this water effect playing too so we've got water lighting through a water tray and and making this ripple effect through and

17:51 the water tray has these vibrators in it that's shaking creating the ripples on the ground and then um so there's like you know we're talking about 600 lights in this space and then we have two wireless um 12 channel Wireless dimmer Boards called mini desks and the gaffer is carefully choreographing lights going up and down but he only has so many hands so sometimes I'm doing some of the sliders and even the ad jumped in doing some of the sliders and then our dimmer board op has the iPad running lighting cues as well so I mean we had 17 sets and 17 stages and some of those stages were multiple sets so I'm just talking about the ozdust as one example but there is no there was no like okay we're

18:38 going to put 10 lights here or the sky and then we've got we've got a big soft Source here and a hard light here each set was different and we had to light each one in very very different ways and the movie goes from the brightest of bright worlds outside in Munchkin land and it gets to the darkest of dark faces in the lower attic um when alphaba finds out or is first called the wicked witch and so you've got a million movies in this one movie and and so each each set we lit feels differently and has its own unique thing the dorm rooms are smallest set and it was the most challenging to shoot in we have two musical numbers in there why was it the most challenging cuz it's so compact I mean like

19:26 massively massively Compact and it was the first set we shot on so that just alone presents challenges right we're all learning to work together but I I mean populars one of my favorite numbers in the movie so it worked out I'm getting like a panic attack listening to you explain all the responsibilities that you have like the trust that you have to have in your crew and obviously you're working with professionals but like people are people you have to trust so much that everyone is just locked in and is going to do everything flawlessly like the it's almost like the choreography on camera is just as important as the choreography behind the camera to pull this stuff off I mean I it I had the a most amazing crew and I literally could not have done this movie

20:11 without them you do you have to be able to close your eyes and know you can leap off a cliff and they will all catch you they are there they are your second set of eyes they are the people who are invested in making this movie with you I started something called Movie Club while we were in prep and I had never worked in the UK before I didn't know the gaffer the key grip the camera operator like we're all learning we're all getting to know each other during prep so on Wednesday afternoons I started Movie Club where we'd watch movies that had absolutely nothing to do with Wicked it just was I want to be invited to Movie Club it was let's throw on a movie I I I

20:56 I it took a couple of weeks but I got I got production to buy me an Apple TV and we we'd play a movie and then and we'd sit in the office and afterwards we just talk about it like book club and it was about what did you like what you know do you like the Shadows do you like the lighting do I mean or how was this storytelling or I thought this shot was beautiful and we each just would talk about the movie on a purely artistic level not and and forget about just forgetting about the prep on the specific movie We're making just getting to know each other as storytellers and artists so that we can we had 155 shooting days that we're about to go into and and we do we have to trust each other we have to be able

21:43 to to disagree with each other too and say I really think this is the wrong choice or okay we need to go fight for something together and so how do we do that and so and these are the people you're building your your community with and and making your movie with and it was I feel like Movie Club was like a very special time the gaffer told me in later on he's like when you told me we were having Movie Club I thought you were completely crazy he said I thought we had so much work to do there was no time for Movie Club but it was the most valuable time on this movie for sure that sounds like so much fun now I want to know and you don't have to answer it if you don't want

22:30 no now I want to know what what did you and your team fight for was there something that like wouldn't have happened had you not really fought for it oh yeah so um I I mean lots of things right you're making a movie that's there are you know every department has ideas no matter what you have a budget and a certain amount of time you have to make the movie and it it doesn't matter I mean I worked on half a million million dollar movies for most of my career and and but and and those and in doing those you're also right like you're fighting for things and you know different things have different priorities and ultimately it's about telling the best story you can so I I mean there were

23:16 every day it was something but um one in the idea that I had that the sun was going to set for alphaba originally wisam Mania took place during the day and the when she jumps and once they get up to the top of the tower it's night and so I asked John could I come up with different or suggest different time of days and the very last one I realized was that wisom Mania couldn't be couldn't be day that there's just no way to make it Sparkle that um that that stage show originally also that stage show was going to be done on a Sound Stage the one with um the wi Mia stage that was going to be done on a sound stage and then things changed and we

24:03 ended up building that theater on the on the Emerald City set and so suddenly we're doing a stage show in the middle of the day and there just would have been no excitement to the show we wanted fun effects so I so that that was what prompted me to come up with this idea that we should shoot that uh we should shoot it as Sundown instead but the problem with that is that we're outside so the only way to be able control the light is to shoot all night and shooting all night costs more money um in the UK you've got I can't remember what it's called but you pay the crew for the next day it's called AR rested day I think um after a night shoot I don't think that happens in the US so um so so then and then and and Dancer rates were different

24:50 and it's a huge dance number so just like escalating costs was one thing and so but the first person I called was David Smith or gaff um actually it was a Saturday when I had the idea um and we were at preite and I said mentioned it to him and I said can we start drawing drawing the lighting and figuring out how much it will cost and so um we finished pre-light me and um the woman who was doing research and development for us Marin um she the three of us sat in in David's office and we started to draw up the plan for what the lighting would entail and and just so that like we had a plan before before going anywhere else so then my next call was John and I told

25:35 him I had this idea and he loved it and he's like well we've got to get Mark plat to to want to do this and so he called Mark and Mark immediately saw his head he is the best producer in the world he is a Storyteller he's a filmmaker he stood in my tent almost all year long while we were making this movie Within enthusiasm and excitement and like in the trenches with all of us and I love him to death he is amazing and um and Mark was like yes there's no other way to do this and and so and then and then of course there's all then he has to go figure out how to make it happen but but that was just one of them but but when I said to David Smith I was

26:22 just like can you know is this possible he's like yeah let's figure it out and then and then we started drawing them you know drawing the lighting setup and then and then went from there and he started budgeting it to see what the extra cost would be for that as well so yeah you you can't even imagine it any other way it's it's so weird to think that something like that had to be pushed for but I imagine there's stuff like that all the time all the time I mean right like everyone comes up with creative ideas and then you go okay how do we make them happen yes exactly all I've heard is how amazing this film is I think it's amazing Conor start at a million times the feeling that I get when I watch the film is how rooted in reality it is even though it's like this unreal world but the fact that it's

27:07 inspired by Nature you're using the Sun as a primary light source it does feel like it's rooted in reality far more so than the original Wizard of Oz um and that's just something that I think was a really great choice and I think makes it much more relatable as you watch it yeah I mean we're it is a we want the huge uh we one of the things John and I talked about was like wanting this huge vast world of Oz but also this very intimate relationship between these two women and it became very much about what their close-ups were like I mean you've got you've got the two women in so many different in so many frames that occupy so many frames together and it was very very much

27:53 about about how do we create that intimacy how do we create that feeling of first meeting your enemy and then your enemy becoming your best friend and and I think when you hear the people crying during the ozdust ballroom and at the end of the movie that the only way to feel that is to feel that relationship between those women actually on that note I loved um the choice of how you have occasionally um close-ups where they're breaking the fourth wall they're looking directly at camera um I'd love to know what was cuz I noticed it a couple of times throughout what um what was kind of the the thought to choosing

28:39 that so that is I mean we actually played a little bit with that also and in the Heights um it is um it it um not that that has anything to do one way you know they're two very very different movies but um but but the idea that when alphaba and Glenda are connecting with each other and actually when they first meet the first time you see it is on the docket shiz they look eye to eye at each other and then and then um and then I don't think you see them looking breaking the fourth wall again until popular and they lay in the bed and they look right into each other's eyes and and this is also another theme that continues into the second movie but

29:25 there there is there are these moments where they break the fourth wall where you feel them penetrating that screen and looking right at you and it is incredibly personal and um and just a moment and popular it's a moment of pure love and staying on um you know camera and lens choices and stuff like that um I noticed that you you know with um Glenda uh Arana does an amazing job at bringing um comedic timing and and and whatnot to the character um and I noticed that you kind of extended the character and her comedy through some of the camera movement you did like when she raised the wands the camera you know would raise with her I just you know

30:10 curious thoughts on that anything um that you know you can think of that you want to add to that I mean we did we we play uh so choreography on this started I think I think Chris Scott got to London before we did cuz he had to he had he's our choreographer he hadn't done a movie in the UK either and he need to start fig auditioning dancers because in the US he like has groups of people all over the country he loves working with dancers so he had to start finding those people and then I brought on our steady cam operator carsten yakobson that was another thing I you know I went to bat for which was bringing him on so early so that he could start to learn the choreography and and so I mean Ariana in those dance rehearsals for popular just trying to figure out all that timing of everything

30:57 and she's hilarious and but but but right it takes time to find th th those things with physical comedy as well um but we had uh first we started in a dance rehearsal space and then um the set it was our first set so we didn't have the actual set to rehearse on they were still building it but they built a makeshift uh set out of plywood so that we had we had space to work in and and start to figure out those those those kind of timing CU popular is all about those those those moments and and even like with Cynthia and trying on the glasses um where they're looking right in the lens also at each other forgot about that moment but um th th that originally weren't that was something completely different and and it was

31:43 through trial and error that that section got figured out and so it was very much workshopping popular for a really long time and Ari bringing just these great ideas and Chris Scott also having these other ideas and then and then and then we could go oh can we like if we do this with the camera it's even funnier like even the shot the Top Shot as she's spinning around once I mean just that defining that too right like it's just this static shot above but it's it gets the biggest laugh in that number yeah I love oh popular was so well done I'm so happy with how I mean the whole movie obviously but popular was great think you do such a good job of creating isolation for alphabet 2 like in these in these big giant sets that's uh whether it's a close-up or a

32:30 big wide shot you know when she feels isolated you know when she feels afraid and scared and you know um uh what's the what's the right word like she's she's uh vulnerable I think you do a really good job of doing that and I I'd love to talk to you just a little bit about your camera approach to camera approach to creating that feeling of isolation yeah so we talked a lot about restraint as well right like we're a musical and we're a huge musical we can move the camera you know as much as we want and and it's but it's about The Silence in this movie it is about the moments where the characters aren't singing where the music completely stops I mean I think John Chu is so brave to make a musical where he stops and starts songs

33:17 repeatedly and lets the lets everything breathe and lets the character have moments of silence and and also that the fact that he's willing to be so close to so close to both of them with the camera so we we do these really tight tight shots that and sometimes it's completely silent or you don't hear anything and hands are also a massive close-up of hands are play throughout the movie and um and those those also um hands and feet there's something about both those things that give a character so much you so much more information about a character how do they walk how does how do two women grab

34:03 each other's hand or how does alphaba clasp Dr dillan's hand in her hands so I don't know if I answered your question but it really is it is those moment of Stillness and not moving the camera that I think are actually the most powerful parts of the movie I agree 100% I think that was the first thing I said to Connor is after I saw it I'm like I love it it's a huge spectacle but my favorite scenes were the small scenes like just the little dramatic scenes because they had so much power because everything around it was so gigantic that when you do strip it down to just the bare bones it's like wow you really can feel for these characters now on the total opposite side I do want to at least talk about one of the big giant dance numbers because they're they're all so incredible but I don't even know if this

34:51 is the one that you want to talk about and if you don't feel free to maneuver around but to me when I watched um dancing through and just the just the way that that clock operated and the way that there's Whimsy in the cinematography and the fact that it feels Carefree even though it's like the most rigid environment where everybody has to be perfect there was just so much to that scene that absolutely blew me away um I don't even know what my question is for it but I'd love to just get your general thoughts on that scene in particular that was our first major dance sequence that we did and that was a and and so and that was one of the ones where we're constantly going back into the rehearsal space and we're all shooting different shots with our iPhones that the way John Chris and I

35:36 work is we each film different angles or we go into rehearsals at different times and explore the ideas explore different camera ideas and um but and then and then carsten our our our steady cam operator was doing the same thing and then we airdrop everything to John and then JN starts to cut everything to the music um either the Broadway track or at some point we then had pre-record as well um so so then we um but it's very very different shooting this number with this wheel idea on an iPhone versus a huge Alexa 65 camera with a huge lens and on a 23t crane with a M7 head I mean

36:22 the reality is very different and the thing was with our iPhones you know we kept like spinning them around and and and then and we have this one shot where we're spinning spinning spinning and the wheel spinning and you don't know which way's up and you don't know which way's down and suddenly a parkour dancer comes and jumps and leaps over the camera and the camera head while it's spinning has to find you know not even find keep that dancer in frame while he's doing this flip and then find Jonathan Bailey on top of a library cart and and then you know and then and and have and then it's just all all these elements have to come together and it was a day John Shu was having a baby and

37:08 so he wasn't onset so Chris Scott and I you know we're there we have we've got the list of shots we need to absolutely 100% get on the day the director is not there and this is one of them and um and then Chris comes up and Whispers in my ear he's like okay we've got four chances to do this shot I'm like what do you mean four chances he's like he's like I talked to the dancer he can do it four times safely without hurting himself I'm like okay great so I go talk to the carsten I'm like okay you've got four four chances take one we missed it two worse than take one three was okay and then take four we nailed I love I thought for sure that shot was stitched that flip shot when I saw that it wasn't

37:54 I'm like there is no way but I guess there is away and it takes four times now that we know so in our in our last couple of minutes I just we want to talk about the Emerald City and that for sure and Connor's got a question for you on that but just briefly just if you could take a couple of minutes to talk to us about the way that you prevised this in Unreal Engine because I heard you that there was a clip of you online talking about your experience with Unreal Engine uh sort of creating the lighting scheme for this can you talk a little bit to the way you prevised the film yeah so we used Unreal Engine in two different ways one is like these sets didn't we couldn't build these sets on any back lot that existed any Studio about that existed they were just too big so we ended up running Turf Farm in ivanho

38:41 north of London to build these sets and so there were no pads or anything so we could very carefully place um place these sets on the Backlot according to where the sun was going to be so we used unreal for that I used unreal to pre-light sets um and and and test out different lights on sets um before they were built as well and then the last thing was was that Emerald City was our last set and we knew we were coming up to the SAG strike like it started to look like the SAG strike was going to happen it was our last set um and um and it and and because it's the last set you know construction's behind it wasn't ready so you've got all these construction cranes building on on the days that ch was

39:27 supposed to rehearse on the set and that John and I were going to walk through the set and figure out exactly where all our cameras were going to go and and early on we had when we were in dance rehearsal space we had thought we' one short day would be like this big steady Camp shot that ended up being on a crane and you'd pull up and you'd see the big epicness of Emerald City and since we couldn't get into the set I mean we sat on a steps I've got a picture of the three of us sitting on a on on the Emerald City below the train um on a Saturday trying to imagine what it was going to be like but there's huge cranes in the way we can't see anything and then uh and then so we go into Unreal Engine and we start to move the camera through the space and fly the camera with the game control through the space

40:14 and we realize being high is not the answer that you actually want to be low and you want to see the vastness of what's up right and we're actually moving the rest of the movie is all about going up and so that's that's where we're headed so so that changed everything but it also changed the set dressing because there were these big sort of stalls and when we were low you couldn't then these stalls were blocking all our dancers so then suddenly the set dressing had to start moving and so that that previous process was was great and so in the end I I'm actually really glad that we didn't have this actual physical set to work on that unreal actually was probably a better tool to use um for for this purpose yep yep all right lightning

41:00 round we've got a couple of questions from the audience uh we have Lily uh. Tif I guess that's interesting and a couple other people too Sophie go hrdp is here BP productions3 they all want to see if you have advice for female cinematographers oh we lost our friend well that he'll come back uh I mean being a female cinematographer is its own Journey we um it is it is complicated and but any any um you know the film industry is hard no matter what gender you are and I think you just need to stay focused on what

41:48 your dreams are I I've been at this for 30 years and this is my dream and I have been in the face of no almost my entire life and to then get to go make Wicked has been incredibly it has just been a complete dream come true I have always wanted this right like I've always wanted to work on these big movies that felt like women didn't often get the opportunity to shoot and um and I think that that I don't know what I'm trying to

42:35 say um but I feel very grateful and in this in these last few months as the movie started to escalate and started to build sort of the success that it's built the best part of this whole thing has been meeting the women that I have met and them coming up to me and telling me their stories and their Journeys and just seeing how many amazing female storytellers there are in the world and I can't wait to hear their stories I love that I love that um what's next for you any other musicals you're gearing up for that's from Alana Torres on Instagram um I I I I'm working on

43:21 something but I'm not allowed to say what it is unfortunately it is not a musical though I can say that much oh you must be is that an exciting thing for you something different yeah I mean I hadn't done musicals in a long time and then I mean I had and so it I mean and then suddenly the last six years I've been doing only musical so yeah no totally fun excited oh that's awesome and Conor's back but we've got one last question for you and I think this is probably the most the most important and maybe even the most controversial because both Ariana and Cynthia have admitted to stealing something from set I want to know have you stolen something from the wizard from the wicked set I didn't steal something from the wicked set but I asked for two things

44:07 and I got them which are two light fixtures from the shiz sets I got two light fixtures from the sets so um that was what I wanted and that's what I got I love it well thank you so much for coming back on the show Alice you're you're so fun to talk to you really are an inspiration for all cinematographers but of course we've got so many questions about uh being a woman in cinematography so you're certainly inspiring there too and the film is just incredible all your stuff is awesome and I can't wait to see well you're going to be coming back for part two I hope I hope so too that's U that's one year from now I I'll talk to you in one year we'll save the date thank you so much thank you so much

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