What makes a great musical?
The immediate things that come to mind are obvious: singing and dancing.
Thats where the cinematographers come in.
Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande in ‘Wicked’Universal Pictures
The musical films of this year show off the best versions of what the genre can be.
Wickedtakes themes of light, dark and color to the extreme for a unique vision of Oz.
Musical numbers take control of the images inEmilia Perez.
Glinda (Ariana Grande) and Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) during “Popular”.
And anything goes inJoker: Folie a Deux, where fantasy and reality meet in the middle.
As a cinematographer, I then get to do it through light and camera and movement…
I got my camera operator in there to learn all the choreography so it was ingrained in him.
ForWicked, the main themes became focused on light and darkness.
The last 40 minutes of the movie is all one long sunset through Defying Gravity.
The closeup of Elphaba just melts your heart and blue became her color.
Its all about exposing people, says Guilhaume.
Thats something that was only possible to do in the studio.
The most important aspect of thecinematographyto keep consistent between the firstJokerand the sequel was the enhanced realism.
Our philosophy was to let them work the environment and for us to discover it in real time.
We didnt want the camera to control things, and we didnt want the choreography to control the camera.
It was a little bit unique in that regard.
The fantasies introduce more theatrical lighting, he says.
Therere spotlights, much more vibrant color, more saturation.
Its still dirty, but its more expressionistic lighting introducing them in a black void.
It basically changed the lighting from being completely naturalistic to more expressionistic and much more colorful.
