By TREVOR HOGGImages courtesy of Universal Studios.Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda (Ariana Grande) get a private tour of the Royal Palace of Oz.In recent years, exploring the backstories of iconic villains has become more in vogue with the release of Maleficent, Joker and now Wicked, a Universal Pictures production that brings the Broadway musical adaptation of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire to the big screen. No stranger to musicals is filmmaker Jon M. Chu, who has been making them ever since he was a USC film school student, but this time around, the scale is a throwback to Hollywood classics such as The Wizard of Oz, with the added benefit of the visual effects industry, which didnt exist back then.There is this grandiose nature to Wicked, but from the beginning, we always wanted it to feel touchable and immersive, director Jon M. Chu explains. We wanted to break the matte painting of Oz that we have in our mind. What happens if you could live in it? What happens if you can touch the dirt and textures? Visual effects are extremely powerful to be able to do that. Of course, we worked hand in hand with building as well by planting nine million tulips and having a real train and Wizards head, but were all in it together.Jonathan Bailey as Prince Fiyero performs in front of the rotating university library set, which was constructed by the special effects team led by Paul Corbould.Massive sets were built. I firmly believe youve got to build as much set as you possibly physically can, or do as much for real as you possibly physically can because the real photography on that set informs visual effects on how everything should look, states Production Designer Nathan Crowley. That is fundamental. You cant just put a bluescreen up because youre going to get enough of that anyway. Youve got to try to balance it. The act of physical construction is extremely informative. Crowley says, The thing is, if you do a concept and dont build it, then you miss out on the art direction of making it. Doing concept art in 3D was imperative. We will build, paint and finish a 3D model and will deliver it rendered to Pablo Helman [Visual Effects Supervisor]. Pablo has to rebuild it because visual effects have to go into a lot more specific areas, but at least he knows what it should look like. We also go scout places, and even if we dont film that place, well say to Pablo and Framestore, which does a lot of the environments, Thats what we need it to look like. We need to go to the south coast down to Poole and Bournemouth and get that set of cliffs, and that becomes Shiz. Emerald City is a hard one because youre going much higher [digitally]. I would try to build enough below 50 feet so he would have textures.Cinematographer Alice Brooks stands behind director Jon M. Chu as he discusses a shot she captured with custom-made lenses by Panavision.Cynthia Erivo decided to go with practical the stairs, and it all becomes this one long Steadicam shot that makeup for the green skin of Elphaba, which was then finessed digitally in post-production.Special Effects Supervisor Paul Corbould built the The Emerald Express, which was designed personal motorized carriage for the Wizard of Oz.Unreal Engine influenced the shot design. Emerald City was the last set that was built and was behind schedule, states Cinematographer Alice Brooks. We had this idea for when Elphaba and Glinda get off of the train, and we start to push down the stairs, and it all becomes this one long Steadicam shot that ends on a crane that lifts up. We had been working on this for months but couldnt get into the set to start rehearsals because all of the construction cranes and painters were in there. What we did do was take the game controller, go into Unreal Engine and start designing the shot. When walking the set in Unreal Engine, we realized that this big stepping-onto-crane move didnt show off the city in any spectacular way; that being low was the way you saw the city in this amazing way. Then, we threw out our amazing Steadicam idea, which our A camera operator was bummed out about, and we created something new in Unreal Engine that was perfect.Glinda, portrayed by Ariana Grande, makes use of her bubble wand.This aerial shot of Munchkinland showcases the nine million tulips that were planted.Numerous production meetings were held to discuss how to deal with the green skin of the future Wicked Witch of the West, Elphaba, portrayed by Cynthia Erivo. We wanted to have all of the options on the table then work with Cynthia herself to know what she needed as an actor, Chu explains. We did a lot of tests with a double to show Cynthia real makeup, semi-makeup where you only do the main areas, and completely non-green makeup because we knew that makeup every day for that long of a shoot could be grueling and would also take away time from actually shooting. Cynthia was like, I need the makeup. Of course, there is some cleanup that we needed to do because sometimes her hands were thinner on certain days than others. The green skin had to look believable and work in any lighting condition. David Stoneman, who is a chemist who makes products for our industry, took my green design, which was from products called Creamy Air and Illustrator, and the discontinued product that I had found, and put three drops of yellow neon into the base, explains Hair Designer/Makeup Designer/Prosthetics Designer Frances Hannon. It reflected off the dark skin tone and made it look like it was her skin, not like it was green-painted on the surface, and more than that, it worked in every light.A lens flare, rainbow and the Yellow Brick Road are incorporated into an establishing shot of the Emerald City.The head of the Wizard of Oz was a massive animatronic puppet hung from the ceiling of the studio.Prosthetic makeup was required to show the characters of Boq (Ethan Slater) and Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey) being transformed into Tin Man and Scarecrow. One of my most important things was working with Mark Coulier [Prosthetic Makeup Designer] again, Hannon remarks. For Tin Man, we wanted to achieve something sympathetic because it should have never happened to Boq. In our story, Elphabas spell goes wrong in Nessarose [Marissa Bode]s office, and everything metal in that room attaches to Boq; his breast plate would be the tray on the table, and his hands become the thimbles, salt and peppers. Then, the visual effects took over because all the joints were blue. With Scarecrow, Jon and Mark particularly wanted to keep Jonathan Baileys face shape. We also kept his nice teeth and natural eye color for Scarecrow. I used contact lenses on Jonathan for Fiyero, so we had a nice change there. Then, for his head element, I put masses of gold blonde through his look as Fiyero, which carried onto Scarecrow in a straw-colored wig; that kept Fiyero attractive because Elphaba and he fall in love.Most of the 2,500 visual effects shots were divided between ILM and Framestore, with other contributors being OPSIS, Lola VFX, Outpost VFX and BOT VFX. The CG creatures were difficult because they also talk, but they are mainly animals, Helman remarks. They dont walk on two legs. If its a goat that talks and is a teacher, its basically a goat if you look at it, then he talks. It was a fine line stylizing the talking so that it doesnt feel like a completely stylized character, but also finding the expression, the eyebrows, eyes and mouth, the phonemes, and how articulate those creatures are. We had an animal unit of about 10 people or so that would play animals on set, and we would shoot a take or a few takes with them. We had a transformation scene where the monkey transforms and gets wings, so we had the whole animal unit performing and being directed by Jon. Sometimes, the second unit would stay there to shoot plates. Besides the music, dancers, choreography and huge sets, then there were the animals.The mandate was to capture as much in-camera, which gave Nathan Crowley the freedom to construct massive sets.Magic was always treated in a grounded manner. Its not a cutesy, glowing, sparkling thing, Helman notes. There is nothing wrong with those kinds of things; its just that this version of Oz is not magical. You have to remember, when you go back to the original story, the Wizard of Oz is not really a wizard. Creative solutions had to be applied to achieve the desired effect. How do you make a book glow without making it look completely fantastical and cartoony? Helman explains, Maybe what you do is provide a language inside of the book with words that may become golden that wasnt golden in the beginning. So, you see a transition between a word that is on a black ink parchment to something golden that produces a glow and is completely grounded. Broomsticks are a form of aerial transportation. We worked with the stunt department to get the center of gravity correct and to be able to move the actors around. Cynthia Erivo wanted to do her own stunts, so she did. All of that wirework was closely planned. There are two things: Theres the center of gravity and what the body is doing in the air, and the lighting. If we get those two things right then were fine, Helman says.Water was seen as the key method of transportation to Shiz.Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) begins to master the art of flying a broom.An establishing shot of Shiz University.Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda (Ariana Grande) decide to take a more relaxed approach to flying by taking off in a hot air balloon.A major accomplishment was the practical realization of the Emerald City Express, which is the personal train of the Wizard of Oz. It was Nathan Crowleys vision, states Special Effects Supervisor Paul Corbould. We built the running gear and the track and motorized it. Its hydraulically driven. Construction clad it with all of the fiberglass panels. The motion was repeatable. The train could be programmed to drive to a particular spot, run down and stop at a position, and when told to start again, make its next move and run to the end of the track. You can take it back to the beginning and keep on doing that, remarks Special Effects Design Supervisor Jason Leinster. Equally impressive was the construction of the Wizards head. Jason reverse-engineered the scale model and changed the electric servos to hydraulic rams and a whole control system, Corbould explains. It progressed from that. The head was suspended from the ceiling of the stage. It was a civil engineering project to have something like that floating in the middle of space, Leinster notes. It was 22 axes and puppeteered by one person. Most of it was done live and was often changing.Anti-gravity architecture serves as the basis for Kiamo Ko, which is a castle located on the peak of Knobblehead Pike.Other complicated rigs included the rotating library. Because it was first up in the schedule, we built one wheel and ladder, and the dancers with Chris Scott [Choreographer] rehearsed on that one, Corbould states. As we built another one, they were rehearsing on that with more dancers, and we built a third one. It took three months. An amazing prop was the fountains. The petals opened up, and they wanted water to come out, Corbould remarks. Weve got these hydraulic motion bases, and in the middle is a slit ring that allows you to turn a rig round and round without winding the cable up. We had to take a slit ring off, which you normally run a hydraulic oil through, and put that on the fountain. It ruined it because we were running water through it; that was quite a challenge. A bricklaying machine gets pulled by a bison. There was no bison to pull it, so the machine was self-driven, Leinster reveals. You could sit back and steer it. We had a roadway of foam bricks rolled up inside, and as the machine drove forward, it unrolled the Yellow Brick Road. Eventually, it drove off into the sunset, being pulled by the bison. You probably wont realize that is an effect.Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) has the ability to control the weather, so there is a cloud motif to her hairstyle.To convey the impression of a floating castle, the concept of anti-gravity architecture was developed. Kiamo Ko isnt just a castle, Crowley observes. Its a defiant emblem of a bygone era, a testament to the forgotten magic that once pulsed through Oz. Its architecture, though ancient, utilizes lost principles of levitation, defying gravity yet remaining grounded in a sense of order and purpose. The key to Kiamo Kos defiance lies not in defying gravity entirely but in manipulating it subtly. Imagine a series of inverted arches, their points reaching skyward. These arches wouldnt be perfect mirrors of one another; instead, they possess a slight asymmetry, a calculated tilt that interacts with the forgotten magic of the land, generating a gentle, constant lift. This subtle slant would also provide a visual cue, hinting at the castles orientation even from a distance. By incorporating these design elements, Kiamo Ko transcends the trope of a generic floating castle. It becomes a character itself, a silent testament to a forgotten age and a beacon of hope for Elphaba and Fiyeros new beginning.Skies played a major role in setting the proper tone for scenesThroughout the whole movie, there is this idea that the sun is always rising for Glinda (Ariana Grande) and setting for Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo).Jonathan Bailey plays the role of Fiyero, who goes on to be transformed into the iconic Scarecrow.Lenses were developed specifically for the production (which evolved into the new series of Ultra Panatar II) that were paired with the ARRI ALEXA 65 cameras. Jon told me that he wanted Wicked to be unlike anything anyone had ever seen before, and the photography needed to represent that, Brooks states. I was on the movie so early I was able to design them with Dan Sasaki at Panavision in Woodland Hills. We called them the Unlimiteds after Elphaba singing Unlimited in Wicked because at the time they didnt have a name. Those lenses capture all of the pictures that Nathan, Jon and I put together for so many months, and they wrap the light beautifully on our actors. Usually, youre matching close-ups on the same lens, but on Elphaba, we shot her on a 65mm lens and Glinda on a 75mm lens, and we matched the size, but those two lenses did different things to their faces. Oz is a different place, and something is a little bit off everywhere. Our A and B 65mm lenses were not the same. It was a collage of lenses. Each one had such a different characteristic, and that made our movie feel different. Elphaba even has one line in the movie that goes, Some of us are just different. Thats what we want our Oz to be.Musical numbers were as complicated to plan and execute as action sequences.Various animals are part of the faculty at Shiz University, with Peter Dinklage doing facial capture and the voice of Dr. Dillamond.Apple Vision Pro is an essential part of the editorial process. I am overseeing the edit in the Vision Pro, Chu explains. Instead of being trapped in a monitor on a desk, which isnt the most creative, I can be like I am in the room with Myron Kertstein [Editor] where Im walking around or sitting on the couch. We can do visual effects approvals there too. I can bring it on and draw with my finger where certain areas need to be improved or whatnot. Hannon looks forward to seeing everything being brought together. For me, its seeing those finishing touches. The sets were 60 feet high. then we would have bluescreen. I do believe Paul Tazewell [Costume Designer] and myself, to the best of our abilities, gave Jon the spectacular, extraordinary and timeless look that he was after.Wicked is spanning two movies, with the first one centered around the song Defying Gravity and the second song For Good. Its in two parts, but we shot the whole movie in one lifetime! Helman laughs. I look at every project as a traumatic project where you develop these scars and learn from those scars, but you wear them proudly. Teamwork reigns supreme for Chu. Each department can make everything, but the reality is that we need to work together to make the thing that none of us can make alone. I feel lucky to be working with a team at the highest level, with the bar at the highest place for us to cross. It has been an amazing journey.