Cinematographer Alice Brooks Talks
In the Heights Dailies, LUTs, Look

By Iain Blair

Cinematographer Alice Brooks is having a monster year. First was her inspired work on In the Heights, the film adaptation of the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical directed by Jon M. Chu. Next up is Tick, Tick…Boom! for Netflix, which comes out later this year. Also a musical, it’s helmed by Miranda, in his feature directorial debut, and produced by Ron Howard.

Brooks (Queen Bees, Home Before Dark) has worked with Chu since their days as film students at the University of Southern California nearly 20 years ago. Brooks describes filming In the Heights as the highlight of their long collaboration and her individual career.

I spoke with Brooks about the challenges of shooting In the Heights, the cinematography, lighting and working with the DIT, colorists and VFX teams.

How long was the prep and shoot?
I had a 10-week prep, and then we shot for 49 days — 10 on stage and the rest on location.

How did you make all your camera and lens choices?
I did several rounds of tests. I went to ARRI and Panavision and tested different systems. I got to look at an early ARRI Mini LF, but it wasn’t quite ready for us to use, so we ended up shooting on the Panavision DXL2. We wanted to shoot anamorphic, so we tested lots of different lenses. I spent a month testing different systems until I decided on the right package.

Did you work with a colorist in prep on any LUTs?
Yes, we did all our dailies and the DI through Company 3. I worked closely with dailies colorist Dustin Wadsworth, in conjunction with Stephen Nakamura, who did the final DI. I’d take all the tests into Dustin, and we would play with different parts of the frame and how the lenses rendered the color naturally with the camera and in-camera LUT. Then we’d start to tweak the LUT.

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