The movie version of the hit musical Wicked soared at the box office this winter, and among its 10 nominations, one is for costume designer Paul Tazewell.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown starts our coverage of Oscar nominees this year with this report.

It's part of our arts and culture series, Canvas.

It's a visually spectacular world. It's intended to feel both familiar and fresh.

The Wicked Witch of the West is dead.

The costume designer Paul Tazwell,

Wicked is an enormous canvas of characters and colors,

materials in motion.

And it's the biggest thing he's ever been involved in.

It's a blast, one, and it is my life.

It is the way that I communicate.

I mean, as a painter would, it is my language, and it is my means of being creative.

We met recently at Steiner Studios, a film production complex in Brooklyn, New York.

And he told us that for all the huge scale, the key is still through his designs and working

with director John Chu and actors, most of all Cynthia Arrivo as Elphaba and Ariana Grande

as Glinda to help create characters, not only their outer clothing, but their inner emotional

life.

My focus is who these characters are and how they dress themselves and how to create a world

that makes sense within itself and provides a magical environment for this story to exist within.

I mean, so I'm stepping into their shoes. You know, if I'm working

adjacent to... Actually, they're stepping into your shoes. Well, there is that. Both.

When it comes to American cultural history, these are very big shoes to fill.

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