WICKED: FOR GOOD

Commencing with the Ribbon Cutting Ceremony, a celebration for the dedication of the iconic Yellow Brick Road, the practical Munchkinland set required extensive enhancement and redressing from what was seen in the first film to elevate the occasion and present it as distinct from what had been seen previously. The director wanted vibrance and joy, a festive nature for the event, which the RSP team began addressing immediately.

The practical stage was reconstructed in CG to allow for augmentation with additional floral dressing and planters, as well as to cover for a re-used plate from the first film which featured a different stage design. It also allowed for the placement of a CG banner of woven emerald and gold to add a regal touch. This was complemented by additional freestanding banners placed around the town centre, heralding the opening. These banners were rigged for dynamic wind simulations to add some visual interest while also matching the visible wind displacement in the photography due to the outdoor setting. The surrounding environment featured the tulip fields and trees beyond Munchkinland as seen in the first film, which was a combination of a CG terrain merged with digital matte paintings for distant vegetation and sky. The sky was populated with an assortment of ‘banner balloons’; CG balloons in an Ozian fashion, each brandishing a banner suspended beneath heralding key story points for the opening of the Yellow Brick Road, announcing the engagement of Fiyero and Glinda, and denouncing the wickedness of Elphaba.

The challenges facing the RSP lighting and compositing teams were to maintain consistency of the key light and shadows across the sequence given the changing lighting conditions of the open-air shoot, as well as to work with extensive environment replacements where the background sky exposure made edge extraction complicated when preserving finer details of the set and props, and the characters’ hair and costumes. A key contributor to this sequence was the FX team who provided simulations of drifting petals through the air to commence the sequence, magical bubble bursts, and two occasions of erupting confetti, the second of which evolved into a deeper creative development as the director envisioned the confetti in a state of nearly suspended animation in the air surrounding Glinda and the crowd as she performs “I Couldn’t Be Happier”. The FX team enveloped Glinda in a confetti bubble that framed her without distracting from her melodic soliloquy, before returning to real-time with the accompanying crescendo that returns us all to the celebration of the moment.

The next task also involved extending and enhancing a key story moment, this time in the Hall of Grandiosity within the Emerald City for the wedding of Fiyero and Glinda. The key addition here was a shimmering aisle of golden-yellow butterflies to complement the dream-like nuptials. The butterflies were created for a more elegant and ethereal performance than the more erratic, insect-like movement more common in nature. They remain sedate, resting in the aisle until Glinda begins her walk towards the groom at which point they begin to flutter, rise and part, allowing her to pass before swarming around her and continuing into the cavernous reaches of the hall; remaining present, above and surrounding the ceremony, until the sequence concludes in diabolical fashion when Elphaba releases the captive animals of Oz who promptly, and quite literally, crash the ceremony.

The challenge for the FX and animation artists was to keep as true to the nature of butterflies while allowing them to be selectively directed in their performances. The lighting and compositing teams used volumetric lighting cues from the plate photography to provide variance in the shimmer and reflectivity of the butterflies as they passed in and out of spotlight sources. The compositing artists provided additional vibrance with some colour and saturation boost to the practical set flora as well as integrating the large ornate CG windows into the missing frames on the practical set. Glinda’s performance, including her veil and train, were matchmoved to allow for shadow casting and catching for the surrounding butterflies.

For the conclusion of the film, RSP was tasked with taking Elphaba and Fieryo into the Place Beyond Oz, the boundless desert on the edge of Oz that had only been glimpsed previously in wider shots throughout the first and second films. The director had a vision for dunes running to the horizon, occasionally pockmarked by irregular rock formations that emerged from the sandy floor. While naturally foreboding, Jon wanted to end the film on a hopeful note for the characters, having them walk hand-in-hand towards the sun across bejewelled dunes with sand wisping about in an ethereal manner. Drawing upon existing classics such as Lawrence of Arabia, the team selected an assortment of reference for the sparkling sand, the dunes running to the horizon, and the variety of wisps and eddies that would sweep across the terrain and around the characters as they travel. The existing sandy floor of the blue-screen enclosed sound stage was replaced completely with CG dunes which required some detailed extractions from the RSP prep team, given some intricate costume detail as well as varied transparency in the fabric of Elphaba’s veil.

The actors were matchmoved to allow footprints to remain in the digital sand, as well as some provide some interactivity with the wispy FX elements. The FX artists closely matched their simulations to the reference while allowing for some creative adjustments to shift directions and timings as Jon desired. The look and tone of the sky was developed in tandem with ILM who were responsible for the intercut shots of Glinda in the Emerald City looking out towards the same sunset. The result was a newly conceived desert that drew inspiration from the classical films of the Hollywood golden era and provided the desired uplifting ending with a promise of new beginnings.