Why Defying Gravity was Wicked's "most difficult sequence" to film

Defying Gravity is an iconic song but its scene in the movie adaptation of Wicked is crucial to the entire film. Getting this right played on the minds of the film's VFX team at ILM as well as the filmmakers, including director John M.Chu. Below VFX supervisor for ILM Pablo Helman reveals what it took to make sure Defying Gravity, well… defied expectations.

On release Wicked smashed the box office, and since earned more than $718 million worldwide and now has 10 Oscar 2025 nominations, including in many of the crafts categories, such as visual effects, production design, sound, costume design, editing and hair and makeup styling. Unlike Disney that has been snubbed at the Oscars, Wicked could sweep the board.

In our previous feature we looked at how ILM brought Oz to life and how the success of the Wicked and the vision rested on getting once scene right, the Ozdust Ball, but equally making sure the Defying Gravity musical sequence worked was just as pivotal for many other reasons.

Speaking with me about making the Ozdust Ballroom scene, the moment that ushers in the famous song, Pablo Helman, ILM's Visual Effects Supervisor on Wicked, reveals how this moment is the pivotal point when relationships between the characters change. And for the VFX team, getting it right was crucial. "If that scene worked then the rest would fall into place," says Pablo.

He explains: "I would say that Defying Gravity was one of the most difficult sequences that we worked on because it is very difficult to make someone fly, and we have seen it before and so how do we do it differently and how do we allow for that tactile process, and organic process, for Jon and the actors, to feel part of what it is that we are making."

Adding, Pablo says the work began with building Emerald City. "We started with references from production design and usually the way that it works, at least for me, right after the shoot we download everything that production has done as a reference for everything that we do. We start looking at that stuff and we take it from there. So that gave us a language for the movie that we were making."

Some of what happened next was dictated by lead actress Cynthia Erivo and her commitment to the role. "After that, Cynthia Erivo wanted to do her own (flying) stunts and sing at the same time. That’s really difficult," says Pablo. "In a sequence that has to be made from the vision of the director, we worked on previz for months but because this is also a musical everything is tied to a specific sandbox and the fact that they are singing live opens the sandbox a little bit."

“Jon M.Chu is a great filmmaker,” notes Helman. “He takes previz into consideration but only as a starting point and an exploration. I think that the movie finds us as we define it and explore things. For Jon, it was a matter of getting us in a room with a table and a model of the tower, which was supposed to be seven storeys high. And then we gave him a little stick with an inch-high Elphaba on it that was very small."

Pablo continues: "We played the music from the Defying Gravity sequence and he started moving the stick and we documented that and filmed it, and started thinking about the dynamic between wires and environment and how they were going to move the actors around to work out what was going to be possible and what wasn’t."

Elphaba’s cape was going to be its own character but because of the wires involved in making Cynthia Erivo fly the cape had to be made in VFX. Pablo explains how it was achieved: "Our Director of Photography Alice Brooks was taking care of the colour of the light and the moving of the camera, and we blended [it] together. We took all that into consideration and we shot in a specific way, and we combined shots, too. Sometimes there were like an A part (shot) and a C part (shot) and the B part (shot) was a digital transition between A and C so that we could get the cameras around. It was a lot of work to make it look as ‘climaxy’ as possible."

Pablo goes on to define the aesthetic and practical connection between the Defying Gravity sequence and the larger effort, noting that, there are always editorial needs, meaning that the team needed to move an actor from one place to another, but it may not happen on the shoot because it cannot physically be done.

"So, all of a sudden, the actor is moving at 700 miles an hour in the CG space," says Pablo. "You have to have materials and lighting. At the end of the movie, Elphaba becomes bigger than life: there is an almost religious or spiritual sense to that character."

Creative questions ensued for Pablo and his collaborators: "How are we going to mitigate her cape growing in the middle of a sequence where she’s flying around and where, physically, through the sequence, the cape is five or six feet long? When we got to that shot that was when we had to suspend disbelief, right?"

A further question and opportunity presented itself for Pablo and his team in the visual nuance and heightened reality of the sequence: “If we light that shot from the back, we make it a transition into a kind of Italian Renaissance sense of cloud and colour and a bigger-than-life experience. And the second part of the work is that because Cynthia [Erivo] was singing and doing her own stunts, she was mitigating the forces of gravity.

"If she is being moved around through space and trying to sing, there is some physical mitigation that happens there and that is the part that makes it different from maybe other versions of someone flying. She is making the effort of getting there with her body and her voice. We are 100% using her face. We have to replace parts of her body, and also the cape, but her face is there, and her intention is there and the way that she moves around, and the centre of gravity, is always there."

If you've seen Wicked then you know ILM, the film crew and actress Cynthia Erivo, and the desire to be in the moment, to go the extra distance, in all directions, makes Defying Gravity a memorable moment.

Inspired by ILM's work? Then read our guide to the best 3D software and the best animation software for an insight into the tools VFX artists use. Some apps cost nothing, our best free animation software lists reveals what you can download and try.