Wicked (Stephen Schwartz & John Powell)

The screen version of "Wicked" was a long time in the making. It all started with Gregory Maguire's best-selling 1995 novel, itself taking inspiration from L. Frank Baum's series of "Oz" novels, but this time reframing the narrative on young Elphaba, who would later be known as the Wicked Witch of the West, centering on her school days, and the socio-political drama in Oz, revealing a much darker, complex and mature twist on the familiar world. Originally in development as a film adaptation, this was eventually sidelined when lauded Broadway composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz fell in love with the story and pitched to the film right's owners that the story should be adapted into a musical instead. With the blessing of the producers and the writer, Schwartz collaborated with writer Winnie Holzman to develop the musical (debuting in 2003), which went on to become one of the most successful shows of all time. It then took over two decades to finally bring the musical to the big screen, with various stars and names attached in the intervening time, but none coming to fruition until director Jon M. Chu finally took the reigns, with producer Marc Platt, Schwartz and Holzman all along for the ride, along with additional screenwriter Dana Fox to bring a new perspective to the script, with every line and moment reconsidered to best service the story for the new medium. The decision was made to split the story into to parts (split at the end of Act I), allowing the space for several characters and subplots from the novel to flesh out the narrative (and with some new musical numbers expected for Act II). In the end, the results were well worth the wait, the project clearly a labor of love for all involved. The film was a box office hit, receiving high praise from both critics and fans. 

Schwartz spearheaded the new versions of his original songs, building a team of orchestrators and collaborators to expand the sound for a bigger orchestra, while the lead characters performed their own songs live on stage. The team didn't skimp when it came to the original score either, hiring John Powell to collaborate closely with Schwartz, adapting the many melodies and motifs from the musical's score into an epic, symphonic film score, one that highlights Powell's bright and colorful signature stylings, while using an almost encyclopedic depth of knowledge in adapting and breaking down Schwartz's tunes into a richly layered, complex listening experience. Also thrown in for good measure were several more subtle nods to the original "Wizard of Oz" score by Herbert Stothart and songs by Harold Arlen, as well as a few new motifs by Powell, making for an incredibly rich listening experience that beautifully compliments and enriches the songs, but also stands strongly on its own.

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The original song album was released by Universal Studios/Republic Records, with a score-exclusive album released several weeks later (after a promotional version of the expanded score was released for awards consideration). The song album also received several vinyl releases and a Sing-Along version absent the lead vocal lines. As of yet, there isn't an official release combining all the music into one chronological package, though one can certainly make their own approximation at home (using the promo version for certain cues, as the score album combines many smaller sections that bridge larger song sequences into suites). Overall, I wasn't a huge fan of the secondary text stylings that were used on the albums, nor the rest of the film's marketing. To me, the main fonts were too modern, and some of the supporting fonts had a bit more of a deco look, but were a bit distracting for me. I ended up searching for a while to find my own font that would compliment the overall look, a bit more old-fashioned and classic, but still with a bit of personality. In the end, I created a total of twenty-five custom covers, with the first twenty all derived from official marketing artwork, and the final five fan creations. The next challenge was to figure out how to sort the large volume of art, and specifically how to credit them, given the mixed album situation. Ultimately, for the majority of covers, I ended up combining the song and score credits into one, and then broke off a several sets of paired Elphaba/Glinda covers for those that wanted the two separate albums in their collection.

Almost all of these covers involved a combination of my usual tricks--up-rezzing art when needed, merging several similar posters into one to widen and/or remove text, minor color tweaks, matting out characters over the title, etc. 

A few covers in particular took a lot more work, thus causing this project to drag on for weeks more than anticipated, until I finally had enough time to break the projects' back. Sometimes you know the source art is promising, but given different sizes or issues with the material available, you just know that it will require a great deal of heavy lifting, breaking the image up into multiple pieces and layers, matting, moving, re-blending, matching tones, etc., all in order to completely restructure the elements into the new cover format and try to make it all feel effortless. 

One such piece was Cover 7, the alternate of the main song album, using the primary theatrical poster. I actually had four different versions of this open, each trying different configurations of the elements. The problem is that each source, though using the same characters and background elements, was completely different, the main poster, an audiobook cover, the song album cover, various wallpaper versions... each one had all the elements reconfigured, and yet none of them very comfortably fit into my desired cover format, the diagonal character placing making for an oddly unbalanced image, and hard to fit the title and text into, with the space of their connecting arms creating a lot of negative space in the image to fill somehow. If I'd had all the clean elements in isolation, I might have tried my own composition, but even there, it would have been awkward. In the end, I ended up using the song cover as the base, painting out the title and text, replacing with my own, and then adding a secondary layer of the pink flowers up at the top to better balance the weight of the image.

Many of the paired covers posed quite a challenge too. Covers 13 and 14, the arches, required extensive editing, combining various different posters into one, bringing down the tops of the arches and blending it into the new position, and in the case of Elphaba's, using various elements to alter the left edge of the columns, all to try to get the two images to best match in terms of their sizes and centering, etc. 

Cover 15 and 16 use the matching vinyl character sets, to which I made my various edits. This including overlaying a better quality image of the two leads, using Korean posters, and then tweaking the levels of the background, and painting out the title and text credits, to use my own style and sizing. 

The final pair, which took significant restructuring was Covers 19 and 20, the fourth of the initial set of paired covers. These each used a very cool character wallpapers, but again, coming from such a wide design, I know I'd have to compress elements to fit into the square cover format. This meant sliding over the city landscapes behind them (Oz and Shiz/Munchkin fields, respectively), matting them out to bring them closer to the characters, and centered within the available space. The skies also had the giant title logo, meaning that I had to significantly paint out and move and blend different parts of the sky behind the leads. This was especially tricky on the right side of Elphaba's cover, overlaying various sky patches, as well as the tree branch overlays (as well as editing the right edge of her cape, to bring it a little closer in to her body, to allow more space for the city behind her). These covers were a royal headache, taking countless hours and returning over and over again, until piece by piece, it all came together into (hopefully) a smooth new presentation which should feel as if it was originally designed that way. Again, the real pain here is that I never have all the clean elements separately, as the original artist might have, thus exponentially complicating breaking the image apart and building a new version.

Finally, the last set of covers, 21-25, use my favorite pieces of fan art I found online. Cover 21 features gorgeous digital illustration by Prince Valenz Masong. Cover 22 uses a fun custom edit by Felipe Foster (for which I edited a version of the film's on-screen title custom font). Cover 23 uses original art by Pablo Vidal for the Poster Posse collection. Finally, Covers 24 and 25, feature another paired set, in this case with stunning artwork by Denver Balbaboco, known for tackling modern pop culture characters in the style of classical portraits by the old masters. 

This was a rewarding, though stressful and drawn out project. I hope you enjoy the end results, and let me know your favorites!