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How Wicked Director Jon M. Chu Makes Movie Magic
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Nine months before Wicked became a box office sensation and cultural phenomenon, director Jon M. Chu added a new tool to his creative arsenal: “When Apple Vision Pro was announced, I knew I was going to be the first one to get it.”
“What I loved about being first on the block with Vision Pro was discovering what ways it could really help us,” he says. To start, Chu fired up a familiar favorite: 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. “When you blow something up, it changes what it looks like. I watched the whole film in 3D, which is insane.”
When it came time to collaborate with his team, or brainstorm how a scene would feel, or block an actor’s movements, he turned to spatial computing.
“My blood was pumping,” Chu says. “I felt like I was in a boxing arena with my movie. I had the same energy, the same juices flowing that I have in the edit room itself. I felt free.”
Jon M. Chu talks about Vision Pro’s impact on Wicked
Bringing Wicked to life
Soon, Vision Pro’s infinite canvas was revolutionizing his editing flow with teams in Los Angeles, Vancouver, and London.
“I could have a screen that was bigger than the one we had in the screening room, and I could be talking to all the people on all the different continents,” Chu says. And this was all while he worked with his “five kids running around.”
“Sometimes you get locked in because of the constriction of physical things—of a physical monitor, of physical light. With Vision Pro, that physical world went away, even though it still felt physical,” he says.
Chu’s essential movie-making apps
Freeform
“Usually I put a script on a giant board with sticky notes all over it to figure out what emotion I want in every scene,” Chu says, but Freeform on Vision Pro shifted his approach. “I shared a Freeform board and made it like a giant wall that I could write on with my finger; it was an endless whiteboard of creativity.”
Polycam
Polycam enabled Chu to experiment with a 3D model of heroine Elphaba that he’d scanned with his iPhone: “I used a couch as the castle and slid Elphaba around to see what moves I wanted her to make, so I could communicate that to our visual tech department.”
Evercast
When it came to implementing changes to the film ahead of its release, Chu and his team relied on Evercast to edit, review special effects, and listen to the score:
“I would watch the playback and I could draw on the screen itself through Evercast. You can actually use a pen—I used my finger—and draw like ‘Hey, this ear looks weird on the goat’ or ‘This flying monkey’s wing feels weird to me.’”
ClearView Flex
The secure streamer ClearView Flex was Chu’s go-to player for reviewing footage and audio. “We could use ClearView Flex to hear the orchestra in surround sound—as if I was there watching them—and hear how our movie was being scored,” he says.
For Chu, this is only the beginning of all the creativity Vision Pro can unleash. “I really don’t know what the possibilities are yet. This is a new way to play.”
Step back into Oz
Wicked is now available to watch in the Apple TV app. And with Vision Pro you can experience the musical in 3D to see it in a new dimension.