The filmed version of the original Broadway production of Hamilton combines the best elements of live theater, film, and streaming to bring the cultural phenomenon to homes around the world for a thrilling, once-in-a-lifetime experience.
With book, music, and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda and direction by Thomas Kail, Hamilton is inspired by the book Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow.
Featuring a score that blends hip-hop, jazz, R&B, and Broadway, Hamilton has taken the story of American founding father Alexander Hamilton and created a revolutionary moment in theatre. This musical has had a profound impact on culture, politics, and education.
Hamilton stars: Daveed Diggs as Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson; Renée Elise Goldsberry as Angelica Schuyler; Jonathan Groff as King George; Christopher Jackson as George Washington; Jasmine Cephas Jones as Peggy Schuyler/Maria Reynolds; Lin-Manuel Miranda as Alexander Hamilton; Leslie Odom, Jr. as Aaron Burr; Okieriete Onaodowan as Hercules Mulligan/James Madison; Anthony Ramos as John Laurens/Philip Hamilton; and Phillipa Soo as Eliza Hamilton.
“I’m incredibly grateful that the world will be able to see this. Theater is a communal artistic experience, and this film is a love letter to live theater,” Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Capturing the essence of the Broadway show were six camera positions with six camera operators. Additionally, there were three fixed camera positions, one dolly and a Steadicam, a crane and two angles capturing each performance. There was one overhead camera and one at the rear of the stage, strategically hidden in a brick wall. The Steadicam, crane, and dolly were used on the scene the day the audience was not present. They shot 13 or 14 numbers from the 46 numbers in the show.
Director Thomas Kail describes directing Hamilton for the screen, “This film celebrates the work of our extraordinary designers.”
Offering the example with one of the most moving scenes, he says, “Satisfied changes time and plays with the time dynamic. The show doesn’t proceed in a linear fashion. It’s elliptical… it’s not continuous time, but it’s always moving forward, and Satisfied is the first moment in our show where we stop time.”
The song is also doing more, “What we are doing in that song is setting up the final duel… we’re setting up the bullet, and what we’re able to do on film is be much more subjective with the camera, so it feels a little more like we’re going inside her brain. The cut pattern is quite accelerated, and the camera angles are quite varied, and we did that because we wanted to also break the form in the cinematic language in the same way that we break the form in the theatrical language in the theater.”