‘Wicked’ Ways: How the Post Team Helped Bring the Musical to Life on the Screen

By Kristin Marguerite Doidge

When making “Wicked,” the filmmakers wanted to be sure audiences saw — and heard — the wonders of Oz. 

“Delightful” was the word the acclaimed director Jon Chu (“Crazy Rich Asians”) mentioned most often when collaborating with the editorial team on the feature film “Wicked,” which became a leading Oscar contender even before it hit theaters last November. The film is based on the generation-defining musical stage play of the same name, with music and lyrics by Grammy- and Oscar-winning composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz.

“Using the touchstones from the original [L. Frank] Baum ‘Oz’ books helped us expand the world-building of Oz in the movie,” said picture editor Myron Kerstein, ACE, who has collaborated with Chu on five other films, including “Tick, Tick… Boom!” for which he received an Academy Award nomination in 2022. “Anytime there were references to the delightfulness of Oz, we would try to jam pack it into every frame of the film, and that would inform my choices.”

Kerstein said he worked closely with the visual effects, production design, music, and sound teams to capture both the darkness and the comedy in the retelling of the origin story of the witches of Oz — Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Galinda (Ariana Grande) — based on the “Wicked” book by Winnie Holzman from the bestselling novel by Gregory Maguire. “It’s a great mashup between those two source materials,” he added. “It is not a ‘Disney’ retelling of [the stage musical] ‘Wicked.’ It’s a fully immersive, emotional juggernaut of an experience.” 

CineMontage got a chance to meet with Kerstein and supervising sound editors Nancy Nugent Title and John Marquis as they put the final touches on the first of the two films. (The second is expected to be released in November 2025.) The team shared their favorite musical sequences (they all agreed on “Dancing Through Life,” among several others) and discussed how hard they worked to bring the beloved story to the screen. They wondered when they won’t have the music still stuck in their heads. And they shared what they hope audiences will take away from the film.

CineMontage: Aside from its massive scale, how did this project compare to others you have worked on with Jon Chu?

Kerstein: On “Crazy Rich Asians,” I think we had maybe four visual effects shots; on “Wicked,” we had thousands, so the learning curve on the movie was huge. I didn’t know “pre-vis” from “post-vis” until I started this show. I remember visiting Wyatt Smith in his edit room for “Little Mermaid,” and I said, “How in the f*** do you do these things? I know how to cut a musical. But this…” And his advice was, “Nothing’s changed. You’re cutting. You’re an editor and you’re building towards a story.” Then I had the luxury of having two of the best visual effects vendors in the world, ILM and Framestore. Pablo Helman was my visual effects supervisor and Ed W. Marsh was my visual effects editor who guided me and taught me.

Of course, the music side of it was also another big part. It’s great that I’ve worked on films like “In The Heights” and “Tick, Tick… Boom!”, but here I’m editing a musical number, “Defying Gravity,” in which Elphaba sings while flying on a broomstick. I’m doing things at a different scale. I have two incredible performers who can also sing live, and I have a superb sound mixer in Simon Hayes, who did “Les Misérables” and can capture live vocals.

Marquis: This is my 10th project with Jon. I’ve done six movies, including the Justin Bieber “Believe” live concert tour he directed, as well as the movie documentary about the tour, and a handful of commercials. I’ve worked with him for 10+ years and it’s been fantastic. I forget we’ve spent that much time together and done so many varied projects. This has been one of the best experiences that I’ve had on a movie. This one by far is Jon in his prime. It’s the type of storytelling where he is in the zone, and it shows across all the different crafts.

Nugent Title: I think Jon has made a conscious decision to make projects that matter, that put good things into the world, which makes the work so gratifying. Everybody on the film is putting their all into it. You can see it on a day-to-day basis. Everybody’s working at the top of their game and feels strongly about it.

I started last September, so it’ll be just over a year when we wrap up all our mastering and deliverables. We’ve been in post-sound on film one for about a year, which is a little longer than typical. Obviously, strike issues extended our schedule a little bit. I had my first talks with Simon Hayes during pre-production, and Myron was talking to us about the film long before they were shooting, so it’s been in our lives for a while.

CineMontage: Could you talk a little about the unique ways you collaborated with various department heads for this particular project

Kerstein: Besides the visual effects work, we needed to figure out how the music editor’s temp mix could work both with and between songs, because Jon likes to start and stop songs a lot. He likes to build out a score — John Williams meets “Harry Potter” meets “Les Mis” meets “Sound of Music” meets “Gone With The Wind.” I needed a musical editing team to help me find the tone, so I brought them in very early to temp the movie completely before Jon even saw it. I wanted him to have something that felt like a complete movie before he even started.

We needed to avoid anything that could destroy the rhythm of a scene and take an audience out of it because of one false move in the choice of the lyrics or how we mixed something. At the same time, we needed to discover how to keep the audience feeling euphoric or sad. These complex connections between the music and editorial were more important than on any other project I’ve worked on.

Marquis: Even though it was a lot of work, it flowed smoothly from the page and how it was shot. From the sound perspective, the way Myron and Jon worked the cut made everything creatively come together pretty seamlessly. It was a joy the whole time because of that. It wasn’t like we were trying to put a square peg in a round hole. Everything fit from the beginning, and it was all about making the story better.

I filled a few postproduction roles in this film. I’m a supervising sound editor along with Nancy. I’m in charge of the sound design of the movie, as well as being the effects re-recording mixer, and Nancy handles all the dialogue and ADR. We work with Andy Nelson, who handles the dialogue and music when we’re mixing.

Jon wants to be surrounded by talented people and people who share a vision, but there’s a much deeper connection than that. We’re all friends; it feels almost like a family. Myron was adamant about us having a presence at the picture department, and so we had rooms set up over there. We’d do mixes over there. We’d have all our sound meetings in and out of our rooms there. I could pop next door to talk to Jack (Dolman, music editor) about a music cue, or I could bounce into Myron’s room to say, “Hey, when you were talking about this thing, did you mean this?” as opposed to sending endless emails and texts and things like that. Face-to-face communication is so important.

Not every director and/or picture editor fights for that and makes sure it happens, but that was definitely part of the agenda from the beginning: this is a team, a family, and we’re all going to be here together.

Nugent Title: We resisted this at first because we have these amazing studios at Warner Brothers where we’re based, but we set up remote systems there so we could go back and forth, and it ended up being fantastic. I was working so closely with the music department whose music editors were there. We’re in the same building, so we can walk down the hall to ask “Hey, what are we doing here? How are we crossing over here?”

 

You’re in the conversation constantly, whereas traditionally, sound is exiled to our own location and we get information unexpectedly, like “Oh, a new reel showed up in our inbox.” That constant dialogue made the team cohesive, and that worked for the film.

CineMontage: What do you hope audiences will take away from seeing the films?

Kerstein: “Wicked” is a very special film. It’s not just a musical fantasy, [a] skip in the park. It’s a movie that re-engages with the audience. It has what Jon and I loved about growing up and going to the movies: It’s a fulfilling, immersive experience.

Ultimately, this movie is about a relationship, and it’s about the greatest love story that’s ever been told. Powerful emotions that swept us off our feet made us fall in love with movies. I think we captured a bit of that in “Crazy Rich Asians,” and I think we captured a little of that in “In The Heights,” but I think we really have the goods here with “Wicked.”

Nugent Title: It’s a joyful film about the power of women, of sisterhood and friendship and what these women can accomplish together. I love that. I have two daughters. I hope when it comes out, people will walk away with a big smile on their face.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.