In this episode of Crossing the 180 we have Alice Brooks, director of photography for Jon Chu’s adaptation of Lin Manuel-Miranda’s Broadway musical sensation “In the Heights.”

Alice shares about her artistic inspirations, the complexity in shooting musicals and choreographed dancing, how they performed some of those more complex scenes from the movie (like the dancing on the side of the building scene), and some of the technical challenges they faced and how they overcame them.

This is the first episode where I have guest co-hosts. This is something I’ll do from time to time to make for a deeper, more engaging conversation. Today we have two actors, Tehana Weeks and Sapna Gandhi. Tehana and Sapna are part of the film collective We Make Movies, which provides resources, workshops, productions services and insurance for filmmakers. (If you’re interested in learning more about the film competition they mentioned near the end of the show, click here.)

As two women of color in this business, Tehana and Sapna were the perfect pair to have an engaging conversation about the colorism controversy surrounding the movie. In short, there’s been some backlash from those who feel the movie, despite being focused on a LatinX community, had no Afro-Latino leads, a demographic that is prevalent in the Washington Heights area of New York where it takes place. The conversation we have is after the main interview, and does a good job addressing both sides of the issue.