Wicked has been an undisputed smash hit at the box office since it opened in November, packing in fans of the Broadway musical (obviously) but also rekindling interest in The Wizard of Oz. As you likely know, Wicked reimagines the story of Dorothy in Oz, making us see the classic characters of Glinda and The Wicked Witch of the West in a new light. This time around, we actually start to symphatize with the latter, now called Elphaba (and played to perfection by Cynthia Erivo). But there are still massive staples of the Wizard of Oz mythology that need to appear in Wicked, even if they cause technical headaches for the production team.
One such classic from the source material is the black, pointy hat that Elphaba wears in The Wizard of Oz, with Wicked giving that article of clothing some backstory. It turns out that Glinda (Ariana Grande) passes the hat down to her roommate, Elphaba (Erivo), after it’s deemed too hideous for the “Good Witch” to wear. Maybe the hat should have been the inspiration for the Wicked popcorn bucket? Because when Wicked director Jon M. Chu appeared on CinemaBlend’s official ReelBlend podcast, he spoke about the hat, the important emotional qualities that it had, and the challenge he had simply keeping the tall hat in frame!
Jon M. Chu told ReelBlend:
That hat is complicated. Paul (Tazewell) had to design a hat that was the iconic silhouette of it. But not BE that. And also, we worked a lot with (cinematographer) Alice (Brooks), because once you have a hat that’s tall, now my framing is like, ‘Oh, wow. What do you give room for? Everything’s going to be all this negative space. Can you cut off the hat? Can you cut off the hat in this shot? I don’t know! Let’s give it the room.’ Or, ‘Yes, you can. The hat’s not the thing here!’ And luckily, Cynthia and Ariana are the same height, so that at least gave us a baseline.
Now this has me wanting to go back and re-watch The Wizard of Oz to see how original director Victor Fleming handled the challenge of framing the iconic black witch hat in his frames back in 1939. It had to be a real issue. And I didn’t even think about the challenges a director might face if and when their lead actors are different heights. Though, based on this photo, Jon M. Chu figured out how to line his ladies up.
The more Jon M. Chu talked about the hat, he started to unearth other obstacles that came with it. He discussed the “complicated decisions” that had to be made early in the process, up to and including the brim of the hat. As Chu elaborated to ReelBlend:
In the Oz-Dust, we had to do that in one take. Because she couldn’t perform it in pieces. It was conjuring too much. So we would do 15-minute oners to get these performances – in close up, in mediums, in wide, and following her. And so we’d have over 700 lighting cues that are switching as we are going around her. We do a full 360-degree (turn) around here. And so Alice and her team … are working their butts off to adjust every time that that camera’s moving to one side. And then, ‘What size is the brim?’ And we have to see her eyes all throughout that. So there were a lot of technical… even though it seems simple, there were a lot of technical things going on.
These behind-the-scenes stories on the making of Wicked are magnificent. Like, “Why are Fiyero’s eyes blue in this movie?” We need answers from this! Unfortunately, we are going to have to wait until Wicked: Part 2 for that, and more details. But we will wait patiently, so long as the sequel is every bit as good as Wicked: Part 1 managed to be.
