‘In the Heights’: How Cinematographer Alice Brooks Captured a Hollywood Musical on Location

That early partnership set the foundation for a creative affinity that has reached its greatest expression to date with “In the Heights,” Chu’s cinematic adaptation of the Latino-centered, Broadway hit penned by storytelling prodigies Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alagría Hudes.

Featuring 30 dancers and filmed in South Pasadena, California, “When the Kids Are Away” required Brooks to use a crane and shut down a street for the first time in her career.

As soon as she heard Chu was attached to “In the Heights” , Brooks preemptively started compiling ideas for the visualization of the story.

At that point, the guiding idea was for them to shoot partially on location and then finish the majority of the scenes on sets built on a soundstage.

Right at the intersection of 175th Street and Audubon, where the fictional narrative unfolds, the production had found an apartment that could perfectly serve as the home of Abuela Claudia , the community’s matriarch.

“That apartment is only 15 feet wide by 40 feet long with two windows on either side,” said Brooks.

Inspired by the real locations, the objective was to keep the story grounded.

“What’s unique to our movie is that each character can express their hopes and their dreams, their fears and their anxieties, not only through song and dance, but also through their environment.

Examples of those include “96,000,” “Paciencia y Fe,” and “When the Sun Goes Down,” a striking sequence where Nina dance on the side of a building.

In the past, the massive swimming pools had served as the water system for Manhattan, thus they have tunnels underneath the deck, therein the first setback.

“We knew we wanted this very high Busby Berkeley type shot on Vanessa in the swimming pool, but the weight of the pool deck would only support a certain crane.

The pool was filled up and heaters were set in place to warm the water, but given that there was a leak , the water kept being replenished, preventing the temperature from rising.

Brooks only had one day to shoot “Carnaval del Barrio,” a number that reenergizes the story late in the plot.

At lunchtime, the rigging team took the crane away, and the rest of the afternoon was spent capturing all the steadicam shots.

I felt that if we could get the color on that number exactly right, especially since it features so many colors in that space, then the rest of the movie would fall into place,” Brooks said.

For all the logistical issues a movie of this magnitude inflicted on Brooks, the artistic liberty and emotional potency of “Paciencia y Fe,” Abuela Claudia’s moving number about her immigrant journey, was endlessly gratifying.

For the film adaption, the song is performed in a dream-like realm with the elderly woman detailing her experience moving from Cuba to New York.

“We then started looking at subways and we looked at all these platforms that the MTA allows you to shoot on, but they all just felt very confined,” Brooks said.

However, given that MTA didn’t allow the production to switch out any lighting, gaffer Charles Grubbs had wooden structures created and painted the exact same color as the train so that they could hide the lights.

For the conclusion of “Paciencia y Fe,” Brooks introduced pillars of lights that were the same diameter as the subway poles in order to do a seamless cut between past and present as Abuela grabs onto it and we’re back in a subway car.

“In the Heights” is in theaters and streaming on HBO Max now.

As new movies open in theaters during the COVID-19 pandemic, IndieWire will continue to review them whenever possible.

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