“We definitely wanted Wicked to be our own version of Oz. Jon kept saying, ‘I want to create a world that is ours and for it to be a unique experience. Let’s avoid the obvious choices and make bold ones.’” #Cinematographer Alice Brooks ASC (@_alicebrooks_) details her latest collaboration with #director Jon M. Chu (@jonmchu), for the feature 'Wicked'. The movie was the first to use the prototypes of what would eventually become the Ultra Panatar II 1.3x anamorphic lens series. “As soon as I knew I had the job, Dan Sasaki was my first phone call. As I started showing him pictures, he started getting a feeling for the world we were building, and he said, ‘Well, we can design these lenses with any flare color you want,’ which was amazing because a blue flare with our green and pink [subjects] was not going to be the right choice for this movie. In the end, we went with an amber flare. I love the imperfections of the lenses. They were very subtle, making our world feel a little different. Early on, we talked about, ‘How do we create this world without relying heavily on bluescreens or virtual production while still having a huge scope?’ Production designer Nathan Crowley, VFX supervisor Pablo Helman, Jon, me and the whole team decided to try and capture as much as we could on camera. The sets were giant; our Emerald City and Shiz University sets were each the size of four American football fields. Munchkinland wasn't much smaller. We also built a barley field with a train station and a functioning train that ran through it. No place in London could fit these sets, so we rented a turf farm and installed our sets there. It felt like we were Dorothy, Tin Man, Scarecrow, and Lion with our arms linked together, saying, ‘There's going to be a lot of risks we have to take, but we're taking these risks because we’re doing something no one else has done. And it's worth going for it.’ The fact that we were all linked arm-in-arm made all the difference because we had each other's backs.”