‘Wicked’ Cinematographer Alice Brooks On The Interplay Of Light And Darkness In New Featurette

EXCLUSIVE: “In Wicked, the light is actually the darkness and the darkness is actually the light,” says cinematographer Alice Brooks in a new Wicked featurette. “All through movie one, the pink sun rises for Glinda, and the sun is always setting for Elphaba.”

In the cinematic retelling of the Broadway show, Brooks knew that a large focus was going to be on the relationship between Elphaba and Glinda, so creating the color coordination for the characters was essential to tell the story. “Every lighting choice, every camera choice, lens choice was about how does it feel to find your best friend in the world… and then be pulled apart.”

“I started reading the L. Frank Baum The Wizard of Oz books, and every single paragraph has this very vivid color description that was so inspiring,” she says in a separate interview with Deadline. “Somewhere through prep, I decided that I would intentionally pick scenes and light them with every color of the rainbow.” Each color is representative of something in the film, like orange being hope and excitement or pink as the continued theme of love between Glinda and Elphaba.

While Pink was the theme of love, as well as Glinda’s color, Brooks found Elphaba’s color while lighting the Ozdust Ballroom. “The blue of the Ozdust Ballroom was something we found when we started doing lighting tests and put Cynthia with her green makeup against the wall. That blue just made the green so much more beautiful and there was something about it that made you just completely drawn to her. This is the moment where Elphaba and Glinda fall in love with each other and finally see each other for the first time… The closeup of Elphaba just melts your heart and blue became her color.”

Past the color choices, Brooks’ focus on light and darkness for Glinda and Elphaba was essential for their biggest performances. “Through ‘Popular’, you witness a full 20-minute sunrise from the dark scene of them on their bed, all the way to where we have the pink sunrise and Elphaba is the opposite. The last 40 minutes of the movie is all one long sunset through ‘Defying Gravity’.”

“I think we all were allowed to dream bigger than any of us had ever dreamed before,” she says, “and we were invited to do that and asked to push our imaginations to the absolute maximum.”