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The age-old question of who will be able to adapt the beloved Broadway hit ‘Wicked’ for the screen was finally answered the day Jon M. Chu was brought on board to deliver the wizardly magic behind one of cinema’s most iconic lands, Oz. His world-building vision of this subverted origin story extends to his department heads to craft one all-encompassing saga of female friendship that travels into the psyche of Oz like never before.

A key part of any musical is the sound and Offscreen Central had the opportunity to talk with Production Sound Mixer Simon Hayes on the decision to record live vocals of Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo to capture authentic emotions, the importance of close-ups in cinema to enhance connections, and blending live and pre-recorded elements, including ensemble vocals and sound effects.

Jillian Chilingerian: I’m very excited to talk about this film. I’ve seen it five times now. I’m probably gonna go again. I’m obsessed.
Simon Hayes: Wow, five times. That’s amazing.
Jillian Chilingerian: I love the story so much and everything about the cinematic adaptation of it was so perfect, and everything I could have wanted as a fan.
Simon Hayes: We wanted to stay true to the Broadway show, but I know Jon Chu intended to open it out and to do things in the cinema that you can’t do in the theater, for instance, surround and immerse the audience with the score, with the orchestra, so that you’re just sitting in the middle of an orchestra, which you obviously can’t do in a theater, and also be able to support these emotional performances with close-ups because they were singing live. We got these fantastic nuances, the breaths in between the words, and by singing live, we were able to capture these emotions in a way that I don’t think we would have been able to had they been pre-recorded vocals that they were lip-syncing to. I’m sure you’ve seen the way that Ariana Grande riffs with stuff, especially in Popular where she’s going from from dialog into singing back to dialog. We wouldn’t be able to do that if we had to click a mouse on a keyboard to play back something for her to lip sync she could do that by literally having the ability to sing live. Effectively, we’re wrapping those performers in a comfort blanket and saying, whatever your emotions and whatever your acting decisions are, we’ve got you, and we want the cinema audience to be able to have that. We didn’t want anything technical to hold them back. We wanted to say to them, yes, you can do whatever you want to do. There are no technical limitations and the only way of doing that is by having them sing live.

Jillian Chilingerian: When you’re watching it in a theater, as in the play, everyone is in different areas, like some people are closer and can see the actor’s faces. People can hear the orchestra like it’s so much more displaced where what the film has done so beautifully in bringing new levels to the already emotional story, is that we’re all in one place, being able to hear and see those like moments up close and sit with them.
Simon Hayes: A really good example of that is Madame Morrible suddenly being close and being able to see her emotions and what she’s thinking. It brings a nuance to her character, which is pretty difficult to capture in the Broadway play because we can get into a close-up and be there with them. Cynthia and Ari, being able to watch them as they’re performing live and to hear every breath that they take. For instance, “I’m Not That Girl” is just the most exquisite emotional performance, and we’re in so tight on Cynthia’s face. One of the things that we did on that, by the way, was instead of playing back the pre-recorded music for her to sing to, she said, I feel like I want to take my rhythm here. I want my rhythm to be led by what I’m feeling in my heart. Can you give me some freedom here? We accompanied her with a live keyboard, and the keyboard player was explicitly asked not to lead her to accompany her and let Cynthia’s vocal lead the keyboard. As we get into the rhythm section, we crossfade into the pre-record, because we have to stay very, very respectful and true to the rhythm of Wicked, which is part of its musical DNA, and a whole load of emotions comes from that score, but it was lovely being able to give Cynthia that freedom to go into a very, very deep emotional space until we got to that rhythm section.

Jillian Chilingerian: A lot of the songs do feel so much refreshed because the actors really made it their own. I love all the songs because of the performance matching with the vocals, it adds an extra nuance. And so In that aspect, these are amazing singers, like the best of the best, and working with them to figure out in spaces they wanted to bring themselves a little bit more into.
Simon Hayes: Even when we’re into the pre-recorded music, they’re still singing live. They sang all of the solos live. Of course, when we talk about the ensemble we captured some of the ensemble live, and we also had a fantastic ensemble come in afterward and sing for us, and that’s blended to support those solo vocals. What we did do, 100% was record all of the solo vocals live, because we wanted them to have that emotional integrity and that authenticity that you don’t get with a pre-record or a re-record. What we’re looking for is that every single nuance vocally matches the facial expression on the screen, and the only way you can do that is if the vocal that you’re recording is recorded at the same time as you’re using your camera to capture their performance. There’s something that the audience believes and what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to keep the audience in this story. We never want the audience to feel like they’re sitting in a cinema watching a film. We want them completely immersed and invested in this story.

Jillian Chilingerian: For the ensembles of one of my favorite scenes that like, it’s the highest the high songs, but then also, like, when you listen to the lyrics with these two women, I’m like, Oh, it’s so sad, because it’s the beginning of the end is “One Short Day”. You’re dealing with a lot of moving pieces, and you have your vocalists with the ensemble.
Simon Hayes: Anything solo, we go live, but what we will do is we will shoot some takes with our dance team and any background actors singing and knowing that will be blended later with a team of ensemble professional singers, the best of the best, people that had been in the Broadway show. What we get is a blend of the ensemble on the sets, which gives us the correct acoustic of the set, and then we blend it with the fantastically re-recorded ensemble to create something that’s much bigger sounding. I would say, at the end of the takes, guys, can I please get a recording without anyone singing of all of the footsteps and all of the movements that you do, whether it’s spinning chairs or clapping down the lids on desks? On each number, we would do that so that we also had the ability in the sound post to be able to lay that to the ensemble recording to bring it to life and to give it the correct sound effects, rather than synthetic sound effects. We’re not only going to use the real sound effects that I’ve recorded on the set, but my colleagues in the sound post are also going to do overlays and overdubs of their effects to build a sonic soundscape that completely matches what we’re seeing on screen. When they’re building that sonic landscape, any sound effects that they that they’re putting in is in tune with the music, so that it’s the correct sound effect, but it doesn’t bring you out of the music, because it’s tuned in the right key as the music so that’s one of the tricks. The way that we get the sound recording without playing the music out of the speakers of the footsteps is we playing a subwoofer on the set to keep our dancers in rhythm. It is well below the human vocal at about 50 hertz, and we can tune that out afterward. We’ve got the subwoofer track that’s kept them in sync so that they can dance, and then we’ve recorded all of their footsteps, and all of them playing with the props and using the props to move around and making noise with them, and we’ve got those authentic sound effects that we can then put into those ensemble vocals. It’s taking loads of recipes, the best recipes for each track, which is the meal we’re going to eat, and choosing the correct recipes and blending them. The underpinning rule of that recipe is that if it’s a solo vocal, it’s live.
Jillian Chilingerian: That song specifically, like the bustle and the hustle of the city, and like, how do you authentically get that rhythm? The DNA of the show is so much of the rhythm, and it’s so fascinating the different levels it takes of layering that and making sure you have all those individual pieces to make that final sound.

Simon Hayes: I’m so glad you’ve been five times. I’ve spoken to several journalists that have been three times. You’re the only one that’s been five times. So I know that I’m with a real fan.
Jillian Chilingerian: I just took my mom to see it.
Simon Hayes: And have you been to the same theater each time?
Jillian Chilingerian: No, I’ve been to different theaters.
Simon Hayes: You need a great sound system that hasn’t been turned down for some action movie two weeks previously. It needs to be played at the correct volume because it’s so important when you’re seeing a musical, there’s so much dynamic range between numbers, like, “I’m Not That Girl”, and the bigger, more bombastic numbers.

Jillian Chilingerian: you’ve had such an illustrious career in musicals, which is so insane. It feels like for everyone who was working on this movie, everything was leading to this moment, like the stars aligned with this team of people who knew exactly what needed to be done to solve a 20-year problem of putting Wicked in the cinemas. How was that journey for you?
Simon Hayes: Well before I answer that, let me tell you you’re right, because that, that’s the story that Marc Platt tells. He was like, we’ve been trying to work out how to do it, and to quote him, he said, I’m so pleased that we didn’t try and do this before I met Jon Chu because Cynthia and Ari were born to play Elphaba and Glinda and Jon Chu was born to direct this movie. I’m telling you now that on the set he brought joy to the set, and he encouraged a playfulness. It was a set full of fun and exploration, and I think that comes across in the movie. In terms of my background, I stumbled across the fact that I love making musicals. I was a normal movie production sound mixer, and I went and did a tiny movie called Copying Beethoven, with Ed Harris playing Beethoven. I just loved the musical elements, and I realized that it was something that I was passionate about that led to me doing Mamma Mia which was my first big musical.

On Mamma Mia we were doing pre-recorded lip sync vocals, but there was a moment where it all changed. Meryl Streep said, Simon, is there any way I can have a meeting with you and the director, at the end of the day? I went to meet her, and she said, look, we’ve got this scene next week where I’m climbing as I’m singing. I had no idea that that’s what I would be doing when I did the pre-record six months previously, and the director just said, but your pre-record sounds fantastic, Meryl. Meryl said, yeah, that’s the problem. It sounds like a pre-record. I’m going to be climbing, and I want my vocal efforts to come across in my vocal. She said, Simon, you can do this live, right? And I was like, yeah, no problem. I started thinking, okay, how am I going to deliver? That was the embryonic moment of me realizing that life is the way to go and that there is something within a live vocal capture in a musical that is so much more authentic than doing it to pre-record, and that’s that scene in Mamma Mia.

In Mamma Mia that was so successful that Meryl wanted to do another scene later on, which was sung live so there were two live songs, and that gave me the confidence when Tom Hooper said, with Les Miserables, the whole movie is sung, there’s no dialog. Normally, if you think about it, in musical movies, we have a bunch of dialog scenes interspersed with a bunch of singing scenes. In Les Mis, it’s sung from start to finish and he said, I’m worried that if we do it to a pre-record before we even think about emotions and performance and authenticity. Let’s just think about the fact that we’re going to have actors lip-syncing for two hours. It’s going to be like watching a two-hour music video. The audiences just will not buy it and so that was what started the conversation about why we should do Les Mis live. That led to us realizing that if we were going to go live, we didn’t have to lock Les Mis to tempo, and we could let the actor’s emotions drive it. I’ve done a bunch of other musicals, but we arrive now at Wicked We know with Wicked, as I say, there’s a rhythmic DNA that we have to respect, because that is also part of our emotional journey within this story, as much as the vocals. When we could allow the actors in a more emotional moment to take a moment and be led by a live keyboard and not locked to the tempo we were able to do that, and then at other times we knew we were into a big dance routine. This is one where we’ve got to be true to the tempo of the stage show, and that’s what we did. So it was almost like I’ve cherry-picked different parts of different musicals that I’ve learned from along the way and created this workflow that’s unique and specific to support the story, the DNA, musically, but also to get these emotional performances in close up onto our screens with real authenticity.
Jillian Chilingerian: I know it’s so crazy, because sometimes people are like, oh, like, I don’t know if something with like live singing, like, how that’s going to be. If you watch something like this, and you’re like, why would you not want it because it says so much about their performances? These two singers, like I would love to be in the room where they’re live singing.
Simon Hayes: I’ve just realized, as you’re saying, that there’s something very important that I haven’t mentioned. When you say it sounded so perfect, and it was live singing, and you think to yourself, Well, why wouldn’t anyone do this? Let’s remember that I technically support something, that the creative side is out of my hands, and the vocals of these actresses. When we have Cynthia and Arianna singing, it brings a whole new level, because they can perform live perfectly again and again and again for 10 hours. They have the vocal stamina to be able to do it. That’s what they do, as well as being fantastic actresses. They’re recording artists in their own right. There’s another layer on top of this, which was, that I knew that Cynthia was a fantastic singer. I knew that Ari was a fantastic singer, but what none of us could know, and this was just the gods aligning, was that when they sing together, there is something magical. Their vocals just work and just because we’ve got two great vocalists, it doesn’t mean that their voices are going to do something magical like Cynthia and Ari’s did when they first sang together. I had my headphones on, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I got spine tingles. Something within those voices that is like, okay, these two were born to sing together, just like Jon Chu was born to direct this movie. The other thing that I know, because they spoke about this, was they have this intrinsic ability to read each other, and they’re almost just not just harmonizing with the key that they’re in, but they do it with the volume that they’re singing to each other at the same time when they’re duetting. What I can tell you is, is that when we’re on the movie set, we don’t have any of this backing track coming out of the speakers, because it would ruin their vocal acquisition. The music for everyone is in their headphones and what they’re hearing is a blend of the musical backing track and the live vocal. If you take the headphones off for a second, you’ve got Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande singing acapella live in front of you, and it’s just and it’s like going from you take them off, and it’s like you’re listening to the unplugged album. You put the headphones back on, and you’re back listening to the sound of Wicked it’s just amazing. We were very, very fortunate to have these two voices because not only did they knock it out the ballpark, from an acting perspective, to have those two vocalists with such talent and precision and their voices working together, it just feels like all of the stars aligned at once.

Jillian Chilingerian: I love everyone’s voices, Jonathan Bailey in “Dancing Through Life” is everything. What were the conversations like with the other actors especially for the numbers with stunts and movement?
Simon Hayes: It’s the same as what we did for “One Short Day”. The conversations with Jeff Goldblum and Johnny, for instance, Johnny’s like, Okay, so we’re going live, right? And we’re like Johnny if you want to go live, and he’s like, Cynthia and Ari, they’re live the whole time, right? And Johnny’s like, well, I’m all in. I’m going to do this, he said. What that also means is I can play with it, I can sing a bit, and then I can do a bit of dialog, and I can go in and out. Is that okay? And Johnny’s like, Okay, I know how I’m going to do this. Then Jeff Goldblum arrived on the set and said, You know, I’m hearing from across the pond that you guys are going live. I was like, Jeff, we’re 100% live and he said, that is the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard. All I’ve ever wanted to do is to sing live in a film. Are you sure we can go 100% live? And I was like, Jeff, we are 100% live. He said, so you’re going to give me the backing track in the IMS, and I can do what I want to do. And I was like, Jeff, that’s how we’re doing it. He was like, oh my god, this is the most amazing thing. I know exactly how I’m doing this.

He did it like a showman, what I can tell you about Jeff was he had so much fun singing that song. He was like, literally at the end of every take like, let’s just do it again. I just want to do it again. This is so much fun. I think that that comes across in his performance. Michelle Yeoh was like I’m not a singer, but by the time we got there, I think that everyone was brimming with confidence, and we just found our way of doing things. With Michelle Yeoh, what she did was she didn’t push her vocal too hard, you know, it was from the heart, and it worked. Every cast member found their version of how they were going to sing live.
Jillian Chilingerian: : They’re part of a long lineage of people that have been in these roles, cinematically they made these characters their own. What you mentioned of someone like Johnny being able to expand more, allows more room to fully become people.
Simon Hayes: When Johnny kicks that book, and you hear it hit the floor in the background. That’s the real book and there’s also a truth in that, you know, that’s not the sound effect of a book hitting the floor that had been recorded three months later. That’s Johnny kicking a book, and as he starts singing, the book lands on top of his singing. There’s authenticity that you can’t put your finger on and articulate. That’s something that you get in the theater, that reality that we’ve brought that. What John Chu has done so skillfully is put it into close up so we can see their facial expressions, something that you can’t see so much in the theater.

Jillian Chilingerian: “What Is This Feeling”, which is one of my favorite songs, the use of montage expands the relationship of these two girls. In the theater, you can’t do that, but here you can show them over time how this relationship is not the best because they don’t like each other. For montages does it change how it’s recorded with the starting and stopping and the different setups?
Simon Hayes: Jon always shoots as if he wants to give himself choices. He doesn’t lock himself into a decision on the set so that he can best support the performances in the editing room, rather than making decisions that don’t give him any choices in the cut. We’re not just shooting tiny little bits, we’re going further than that and giving those choices. What I would say on “What Is This Feeling”, it felt to me like we were shooting a cool music video. When we shot that, it felt like it was we were now in musical music video land, and we were making the best music video ever, but with live vocals. One of the things that I can tell you that I didn’t want to do as a production sound mixer, is there’s always a desire as a sound mixer to say, Okay, we’re on Cynthia’s close-up now, Ari, would you please not sing over Cynthia, because I want to get her clean so that we can re layer it later. Now the problem is, when you do that, you do potentially get a higher quality vocal that you can blend more creatively later, but what you lose is those girls singing to each other and using their voices to affect their emotions and what they’re feeling as they sing. So what I wanted to do as a production sound mixer, specifically on that track was, even if we were on Cynthia’s close-up, Ari would sing with Cynthia. If we were in Ari’s close-up, Cynthia would sing with Ari. So in other words, we’re letting their emotions and their performance as a duo and the story drive our sound recording, rather than what is going to sound more perfect from a recording studio perspective, which I think is the right move. I think the moment we start to look too much for audio perfection, we’re going to lose something in the emotion. In that track, they’re hating each other, and they need to feel each other as they’re singing for that to come across. I’m proud of the fact that I ignored my technical instinct there, and just went with my heart and my creative instinct and just really let those actresses use their emotions to sing at each other, rather than just trying to do vocal overdubs like we were recording studio. On that number, it was particularly a important decision, and apart from anything else, that’s how Ari and Cynthia wanted to do it, and I’m there to support them and their wishes 100% and that’s how Jon Chu wanted to do it. It’s my job to support that and the moment I heard them singing together, I was like, yeah, it’s gotta be like this. We can’t start having one of them not sing over the other to try and get vocal recording studio perfection. The perfection actually, is in the emotions.
Jillian Chilingerian: I love hearing this collaborative nature of what this film was, and emotion-fueled so much of it. You could lose so much emotion by doing other things, and then the story wouldn’t work.
Simon Hayes: Exactly, exactly.

Jillian Chilingerian: Honestly, I could talk all day, because I love this movie. There’s just so much more to dive into and I love that everyone is feeling the film right now.
Simon Hayes: You’re right. It is the film we need right now. I also just want you to know that on the set, even though we knew that we could expand, we could make this experience more immersive, we could go in close, there was also a deep respect for the theater show and the original story and everything that came before us. Jon was very sure about that. All of his heads of department were aware of that. Although we wanted to bring new elements, we didn’t want to disrespect what has worked so well in the Broadway, you know, it was a case of bringing something extra but not taking anything away.

Jillian Chilingerian: We’ve talked about how it just brings you into a new world with the close-ups and the music and the sound. It’s a fascinating connection of how you adapt something from that and bring it into the cinematic world and you’ve done it a few times.
Simon Hayes: I think it’s using cinema to expand on the story and be able to get into the actors’ faces because there’s so much emotion. We’re all human beings, and we look into each other’s eyes as we’re talking to each other, and that is what cinema gives us, and that’s something that I think that we can do with cinema that is bringing something additional to the story. The story is still respected, and I know that one of the reasons why Jon and Marc Platt went with a part one and a part two on Wicked, is because to try and cram this into one movie, they would have had to have made tough decisions, and some of the story would have gone missing. Some of the crucial parts that the people who have seen Wicked in the theater would have missed and felt short-changed. One of the massive motivating factors for having two parts to this is to stay respectful of the story and be able to expand upon it and add to it, but not take anything away. The key answer to your question is what can we bring in a cinema as well as huge sets colors something that is much bigger scope. The most important thing is, we can look into the actor’s eyes as they’re telling the story and that is something that unless you’re in the front row of the theater, it’s very hard to get that, and that’s what I think the use of the cameras and getting into close up. Specifically, if we think about Ozdust Ballroom, that’s a really good example. I don’t know about you, but at Ozdust Ballroom, I had tears streaming down my cheeks. That’s because we’re looking into Cynthia’s and Ari’s eyes, and we can feel Jillian Chilingerian: I feel like the meanings of even “No One Mourns the Wicked” and “The Wizard and I” have completely changed with being able to see their close-ups and like the way that they both perform those songs so beautifully, and it makes your heartache.
Simon Hayes: Jillian, all I can say is, buckle up, because you’ve got “For Good” coming.
Jillian Chilingerian: The way that you build it up to “Defying Gravity” and we’re already so emotional. We’re not ready for part two. I love that we’re left off on that, not like a cliffhanger, but we’re left off on that peak.
Simon Hayes: Exactly.

Jillian Chilingerian: Thank you so much for just having this amazing conversation with me. I love the film, so I’m, like, anytime I can get to learn more things and talk to the people behind it, it just makes me happy.
Simon Hayes: Thank you, Jillian. From my heart, I’m so happy you enjoyed the movie because we put everything into it, me and all of the other heads of the department. That was film number 65 for me and it’s almost like every other movie leading up to Wicked was giving me the ability to deliver Wicked and when I watch it, I’m so proud of it. There’s something very special that happened on that set. That’s why I think you guys in the audience absolutely could feel that in the cinema theater.

Wicked is available on demand.
You can find our review of the film here.