Name: Wicked: For Good | Creating the Sounds of Oz
Uploaded: 2025-12-10T05:47:54.000Z
Duration: 4 min 51 s
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Every single filmmaker on Wicked in every single department is at the top of their game.

And so what we've got is a huge collaboration on the set.

Adverbs of degree

We've got people that really want to help me and my team record great sound.

This is between the wizard and I, because they know that what we're trying to do here is not just record live dialogue.

They know that we're actually trying to record live vocals in every song.

So effectively, our movie set is also a recording studio.

It's a really rich visual in the world that John's created, and

he's very much into bringing that world to life and showing it to the audience.

But he's also very meticulous in regards to what we need to hear versus what we need to just feel every day.

The terror comes from a craft point of view.

I treat the vocals and dialogue exactly the same before I even bring the music tracks into the mix, because to me, that's the foundation of it.

The transition is seamless and everything grows from that.

Good news now at last, all roads lead to the Wizard.

Even the two leads, you know where they are in age and in their experiences, they're changing the style of their singing to match what their character is going through.

And so I like to think we're doing that as well with the sound.

Everything was made for Wicked for good, from scratch.

When it comes to the music and sound of Wicked, we always tried to find what was the Ozian version of anything.

Something that wasn't obvious, something that felt true to the world of Oz, but

also have them evolve into something so new and so cinematic to challenge the audience, to give them something that they might not be expecting.

To me, is just one big movie that we just got to do in two sections.

But there's certain things that there's more of.

There's more sonic kind of signature things, like there's a lot more of Elphaba's cape in this one.

Get to develop a bit more of the language and all that kind of stuff that goes on with the monkeys, the sound of the Tin man and the squeak and those types of things.

There's a lot of subtle stuff going on in the sound effect realm throughout all of the movie, just in regards to the timbre, the tone, the rhythms.

Anything you're hearing is always in service of the music that we're hearing.

You know, there's always machinery behind the wizard.

Those machines are always ticking along in time to the score.

Kind of maintaining a level of abstractness with that.

It's such an iconic moment that we can capitalize on to defy people's expectations of what it's going to sound like.

So I was looking for a singular sound that would convey this type of growling vocal terror.

But what's been pleasantly surprising is we've ended up shooting more live than we ever thought we were going to, because John Chu, Stephen Schwartz, the whole music team, and

Ari and Cynthia have just been 100% behind the live vocal vibe.

Every single time we've recorded live, there's been something jumping out of the screen.

Not only does it support the live performance, but it also supports the film making.

So that we're not tying a camera move to a pre recorded piece of music.

We're doing the camera move that is best for the performance that we're seeing visually as we shoot.

So what we've been able to do with sound is open up the world of Oz, make it bigger, make it more believable, make the audience just be able to fall into it and become part of it and believe it.