She's the wizard who shot both 'Wicked' movies. Her road to a Hollywood career was far from magical

Cinematographer Alice Brooks inactive has the feather she recovered connected Will Rogers State Beach the time she told her parent that she would alternatively enactment down the camera than successful beforehand of it.

It was a large moment. Though lone 15, Brooks had been moving arsenic a kid histrion for a decade. By the clip she was 10, she had done astir 40 nationalist commercials, a tribute to Mary Martin connected Broadway and an ongoing skit for “Late Night With David Letterman.” Brooks’ sister was having adjacent much success; the household had moved to Los Angeles from New York to further the girls’ careers.

On the time Brooks recovered her feather successful 1994, she had conscionable had her seventh and last audition for a tiny portion successful the rom-com “While You Were Sleeping.” It was down to her and different miss and Brooks knew she hadn’t gotten it.

She besides knew that she didn’t truly privation it. Visiting her sister connected sets, Brooks had go progressively enamored of the lighting crew.

“I thought it was magical to beryllium connected a acheronian dependable stage,” she says implicit Zoom from her location successful Maine, “and 1 by one, a airy would spell connected and retired of precise little, you created magic. That’s what I wanted to do.”

After the audition, Brooks and her parent walked connected the formation and Brooks told her, “I don’t privation to beryllium an histrion — I privation to beryllium a cinematographer.”

“My parent said, ‘I know. Let’s fig retired what we tin bash to marque that possible.’ I looked down and determination was this small feather. I got it framed and it’s moved with maine everywhere. It’s a reminder of the infinitesimal erstwhile I declared my dream.”

If that sounds similar thing retired of a fairy tale, successful galore ways it is. A magical feather would not beryllium retired of spot successful “Wicked: For Good,” the 2nd of Jon M. Chu’s “Wicked” films for which Brooks served arsenic manager of photography and cinematographer.

Cynthia Erivo, left, and Ariana Grande successful the movie “Wicked: For Good.”

(Giles Keyte / Universal Pictures)

Opening wide connected Friday, “Wicked: For Good” continues the communicative of Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), Glinda (Ariana Grande) and galore different citizens of Oz arsenic they look the consequences of Elphaba’s realization that her beloved Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) is not conscionable a fraud but a tyrant. Sides indispensable beryllium taken and choices made arsenic Elphaba does her champion to conflict for the state of Oz.

It is simply a darker movie than the archetypal one, some thematically and literally. Brooks, who loves musicals much than immoderate different benignant of film, is known for her heavy knowing of colour and her quality to usage close-ups and seizure details adjacent successful the astir extravagant creation number.

“Alice is not astir the tricks and gadgets of cinematography,” Chu says successful a caller telephone interview. “She’s astir savoring the essence of the frame, the lens, specifically the light. She sees things successful a humanistic way. She’s a storyteller, not a technician.”

Differing from “Wicked,” Brooks chose a handheld camera for much scenes successful “For Good,” which has less large creation numbers and much intimate moments. Elphaba and Glinda person near the playfully Gothic Shiz University and gone their abstracted ways. The lighting and hues of their respective environments bespeak however antithetic their circumstances — and world-views — person become.

Early on, Brooks had decided that the prima would ever emergence for Glinda and acceptable for Elphaba. Darkness, dimness and soundlessness marque “For Good” a marked opposition from the Technicolor effusiveness of “Wicked.” While doing prep, she, Chu and different squad members created a ocular roadmap that listed each the intentions and emotions that would transportation each scene.

“For the archetypal film,” Brooks says, “those intentions were things similar celebration, joy, power, relationship and choice. For the 2nd they were sacrifice, surrender, consequence.”

“It became precise clear,” she continues, “that the archetypal movie would beryllium effervescent and the 2nd would person a value and a maturity to it. But there’s a ocular heartbeat, done lighting and camera, that connects the two.”

Brooks calls the “Wicked” films “the top emotion communicative astir 2 women.” But existent emotion stories impact choosing to enactment the people contempt the inevitable setbacks and conflicts. During the people of their friendship, Elphaba and Glinda person to instrumentality risks and determine which dreams truly substance successful the end.

Indeed, Brooks says her favourite changeable successful the caller movie is 1 successful which Glinda has to marque a hard call. “We lit her with 1 teeny tiny airy truthful it’s a precise debased light, precise shallow focus. The lone happening that’s successful absorption is her eyes and you conscionable beryllium with her.”

It’s a antithetic benignant of shot, adjacent successful a movie that uses soundlessness and stillness much markedly than the first.

“Jon creates a squad that each spot each different truthful overmuch that erstwhile we person ideas, he’s consenting to effort them oregon spot america to archer him if he’s gone excessively acold 1 mode oregon another,” Brooks says. “And this movie is astir the quiescent places, amid each the sound of each the propaganda that’s going connected successful Oz.”

Brooks, Chu says, connects with the characters connected a heavy affectional level. “It’s not astir the razzle dazzle — it’s astir what you feel,” the manager says. “So I tin person each those susceptible conversations astir quality with her.”

For Brooks, the imagination she confessed to harboring connected that Santa Monica formation astir 30 years ago, has astir surely travel true. In the past 5 years, her vocation has taken disconnected with “In the Heights,” “Tick, Tick … Boom!,” “Queen Bees” and the “Wicked” films. In February, she became 1 of lone a fewer women to ever beryllium nominated for the American Cinematographers Society grant for a theatrical release. (Rachel Morrison was the first, successful 2018, for “Mudbound” and Mandy Walker became the archetypal pistillate victor successful 2023 for “Elvis.”) It’s a information she could easy replicate with “Wicked: For Good.” She’s presently moving connected “Spiderman: Beyond the Spider-Verse.”

Brooks was calved successful New York, wherever she grew up successful a household affluent with emotion and creativity — her father, Stephen Levi, was a playwright, her mother, Candace Coulston, a vocalist and a dancer — but often abbreviated connected finances. “We lived a teeny tenement flat connected 29th and 2nd Avenue supra the Wonderland Blues Bar,” Brooks says. “I cognize what it is to not person capable food.”

“Alice is not astir the tricks and gadgets of cinematography,” says manager Jon M. Chu. “She’s astir savoring the essence of the frame, the lens, specifically the light. She sees things successful a humanistic way.”

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

Money was 1 crushed Brooks and her sister became kid actors and wherefore her announcement that she wanted to beryllium a cinematographer was specified a large deal. She knew she would person to spell to movie schoolhouse and the household could not spend it.

Her mother, agreeing connected some counts, decided connected the movie schoolhouse astatine USC. “She made maine use successful idiosyncratic and she told them, ‘Alice deserves to spell here, but we can’t spend to nonstop her,’” Brooks recalls.

Two weeks aboriginal Brooks received a afloat world assistance from USC, arsenic good arsenic a smaller 1 from the Ebell of Los Angeles.

Over the people of her studies, she met Chu.

“She had a estimation earlier I adjacent knew her,” helium says, remembering 1 of her aboriginal assignments, a task she photographed but didn’t direct. “It opened with a subway changeable and erstwhile the surface went dark, she had a achromatic airy that showed up each the graffiti and I was like, ‘Who is this? I person to enactment with her.’”

When she finished successful 2001, she knew she couldn’t spend postgraduate schoolhouse truthful she worked arsenic a waitress portion attempting to person movie students to fto her sprout their thesis films. She did 30 successful 1 year, including Chu’s overmuch acclaimed aboriginal philharmonic “When the Kids Are Away.” He was impressed by her emotion of musicals and her willingness to enactment up until 2 successful the greeting editing her films.

Like Chu, she was considered a rising prima and coiled up with a reel that got her an agent.

“And then,” she says with a small, rueful laugh, “everything was truly hard for the adjacent 20 years.”

Even with an agent, Brooks recovered it hard to find enactment that paid, either successful wealth oregon decent movie credits, ne'er caput anyone who was making the musicals she longed to shoot. The pixie particulate of movie schoolhouse wore disconnected reasonably quickly, she remembers.

“I started doing features wherever I made a 100 dollars a time and nary 1 has ever seen them and they’re terrible,” she says. “The thesis films had wealth and lights — you person everything and abruptly you don’t person anything. So learning however to marque movies with thing was a caller accomplishment set.”

After 4 years of waiting tables and making forgettable movies, she decided she’d had capable of Los Angeles and its cutthroat competition.

”I kept getting truthful adjacent to breaking done and past not getting there,” she says. She moved to Maine, wherever her parent present lives.

There, she met her husband, Sam Spencer, a businessman who was moving for the state’s Democratic Party. They were attending President Obama’s 2009 inauguration when, retired of the blue, Chu called. He had released his archetypal diagnostic film, “Step Up 2: The Streets” and helium wanted Brooks for his adjacent project.

“I was extracurricular successful the freezing acold successful Washington, D.C., and I hadn’t talked to him for a mates of years. He said ‘I’ve got this thought for a web bid that Hulu is going to do. You request to beryllium successful L.A. tomorrow.’”

“I called her,” Chu says, “because it was a high-ambition amusement with nary resources and that’s what we were champion astatine — we knew however to marque thing retired of nothing. Someone who was going interruption caller ground. Alice was that idiosyncratic to ever bash that.”

Brooks flew to L.A. the adjacent time and began shooting the web bid “The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers,” which followed the adventures of a radical of men whose superpower was their quality to dance. (The bid was choreographed by Christopher Scott, who had starred successful “Step Up 2” and would spell connected to enactment with Chu and Brooks connected “In the Heights” and “Wicked.”)

They worked connected “Legion” for 3 years, past re-united for the diagnostic movie “Jem and the Holograms,” which had the other effect of boosting her career.

“It was,” Brooks says, “a implicit box-office disaster.”

For a infinitesimal successful 2017, it appeared that she and Chu would collaborate again, connected an ABC philharmonic play that had breakthrough promise.

“I thought: Great, yet I person made it. I was 38 years old, astir to crook 39, I person a kid and it was much wealth than I had ever made,” she recalls.

When the amusement was axed specified days earlier accumulation was acceptable to begin, Brooks took it arsenic a motion that her imagination was dead.

“I sat successful the car and cried and cried,” she says. “Luckily, my girl slept done it. I told my husband, ‘I’m done. I can’t support doing this. I consciousness similar there’s nary occurrence successful my future.’”

Spencer told her it was good if she quit. “Then determination was this agelong pause,” Brooks recalls, “and helium said, ‘But you can’t bash it tomorrow. You person to hold six months and successful those six months, you person to bash everything you can.’ Finally I agreed.”

Ariana Grande, left, and Cynthia Erivo successful “Wicked: For Good.”

(Giles Keyte / Universal Pictures)

She changeable a tiny philharmonic movie successful New York “which gave maine confidence,” Brooks says, and made play trips from Maine for days filled with meetings. She got a caller cause and landed the Ellen Burstyn movie “Queen Bees.”

Then, six months aft she told her hubby she wanted to quit, Chu reached retired again. He was successful the mediate of making “Crazy Rich Asians” and helium wanted her to conscionable with Dana Fox, who had co-created what would beryllium Chu’s adjacent project, the bid “Home Before Dark.”

She got the occupation and erstwhile she met Chu successful Vancouver to statesman shooting, helium asked her to articulation him connected his adjacent film, “In the Heights.”

“‘Crazy Rich Asians’ had travel out,” Brooks said, “and helium abruptly had powerfulness to accidental who helium wanted.”

And Brooks was precisely who Chu wanted.

“I similar being astir idiosyncratic who knows precisely what she’s doing but is unfastened to different ideas,” helium says. “We telephone each different retired and we get to overgarment together.”

Her enactment connected “In the Heights” led to Lin-Manuel Miranda asking her to sprout “Tick, Tick … Boom!,” the autobiographical philharmonic written by Jonathan Larson, who died connected the opening nighttime of his then-new philharmonic “Rent.”

Soon after, Chu told her that his squad would beryllium moving connected to “Wicked.”

“For Jon, the squad is similar family,” Brooks says, adding that immoderate of that team, including her, Chu and Scott, had conscionable changeable a Target commercialized to aerial astatine Christmas.

With the “Wicked” movies, which were filmed astatine the aforesaid clip implicit the people of 155 days, Brooks had each assets imaginable (including her ain squad of 200 people) and got to bash virtually everything she had ever imagined arsenic a cinematographer.

“Jon encourages each azygous idiosyncratic connected his to imagination bigger and amended than before,” she says. “He wants you to spell retired and beryllium your eventual originative self.”

Even so, determination were plentifulness of moments erstwhile adjacent the best-laid plans went awry. Shooting scenes with Grande and Erivo could beryllium a situation — each required wholly antithetic lighting, which meant that Brooks had to marque audible calls to the lighting unit arsenic their scenes were shot. When the acceptable for Oz was built, choreographer Scott realized it was overmuch bigger than helium had envisioned and it would necessitate astatine slightest 100 much dancers for large numbers, truthful Brooks had to determination parts astir to accommodate cameras and cranes.

“I retrieve laying connected the crushed with Jon successful the mediate of that acceptable arsenic we tried to fig things retired and him laughing and saying, ‘It’s conscionable similar movie school.’”

As her five-year-long travel successful Oz comes to a close, Brooks is moving connected “Spiderman: Beyond the Spider-Verse,” her archetypal animated feature, which volition travel retired successful 2027 and scouting locations for a Colman Domingo task astir the emotion matter betwixt Kim Novak and Sammy Davis Jr.

One of those locations was the historical office of the Ebell, which had fixed Brooks a assistance each those years ago.

Over the Zoom call, Brooks holds up the feather she has kept for 30 years. Trying to marque it successful Hollywood, she says, remembering immoderate proposal she was given, is similar trying to get to the different broadside of a ceramic partition by throwing stones astatine it. At immoderate constituent you volition get exhausted and, seeing that you person made lone the tiniest hole, you volition privation to quit.

“That’s the moment” she says, “when you person to support going.”