Over the past year, studio marketing departments have apparently gone to great lengths to hide the musical elements of their films (we’re looking at you, “Mean Girls” and “Wonka”). So it’s rather refreshing that four new and proud additions to the genre are set to make their mark this awards season. Michael Gracey, who helmed the word-of-mouth marvel “The Greatest Showman,” understands the continued appeal of musicals for filmmakers.

“I always say sing when words aren’t enough,” Gracey says. “You want the scene to emotionally bring you to a climax. And when you can’t express that joy or euphoria in any other way, you start singing. The same is true the other way around. You descend to the depths of despair, and in that moment of pain and that moment of anguish, singing is the only way to express what you feel.

The Australian director establishes himself as a true master of the musical number with his latest project, “Better Man”. Centered on the life of Robbie Williams, the film differs from most recent biopics as the global pop star is depicted via CG motion capture in the form of an ape. It’s a bold creative choice that elevates the narrative, but it’s not even the most difficult aspect of making the film. This happened when Queen Elizabeth II died just as filming was about to begin on what turned out to be an incredible number set on Regent Street in London.

“We had to find new money to invest in this musical number because we had to wait for the funeral,” says Gracey. “It took us another five months before we returned to this street. And of course there were those who said, “Cut it, you don’t need it.” And you say, “No, no, no. You don’t understand. But that’s the case with all directors, isn’t it? Every director thinks that each of his sequences is the decisive sequence of the film.

For Jacques Audiard, his success or failure for the Cannes winner “Émilie Pérez” was the first scene of the film. In this number, “El Alegato,” Rita, played by Zoe Saldaña, begins to sing as she walks the streets of Mexico City. Speaking through an interpreter, the famous French author, who had never done a musical, admits: “Of course I was nervous.

“If I have the choice, I like to start my shoots with the most complicated scene,” explains Audiard. “So starting with this market scene was a way for us to find out where we stood. And the filming in this sense informed us even in terms of tone, light, there was something very important to put in place, which is that the entire beginning of the film is done at night.

Audiard plays with the cinematic form, often extracting his characters from the real world in the middle of a song. This is notable in “Bienvenida,” featuring Jessi, played by Selena Gomez. Audiard explains: “There were two levels of reality. There’s Jessi in her room, and then, all of a sudden, we’re going somewhere else. The name we had between us for this sequence was Dark Ideas, that is to say Jessi’s Dark Ideas. You get this girl talking, and all of a sudden it goes into her subconscious, and her subconscious is wild and furious.

Joshua Oppenheimer, Oscar nominee for his documentaries “The act of killing” and “The Look of Silence,” made the unusual choice of making its first narrative feature film an original musical. Set in a post-apocalyptic world where a wealthy family survives in a hidden bunker, “The End” sees its characters expressing their inner feelings through song. But Oppenheimer made specific choices. Unlike “Better Man” or “Emilia Pérez,” there are no backup dancers or visual effects in the context of the scenes. Actors such as Tilda Swinton and George McKay wear these numbers themselves.

“I knew I was going to avoid the kind of post-MTV quick cut (aesthetic). I was going to go back to the golden age of longer takes,” says Oppenheimer. “The songs are basically one takes, unless there’s a change of location that I didn’t anticipate. Even though it’s not dance yet, it’s still choreographed because there’s a musical rhythm to everything that’s happening.

Much of the choreography was imagined on set, often in a real salt mine. For one of McKay’s major characters, a man shaped like an inflatable windsock who could be seen promoting a business on the side of a highway was an unexpected inspiration.

“They suddenly collapse, then suddenly swell and collapse – that was kind of the basis of the choreography,” Oppenheimer recalls. “We then timed these collapses or deflations to the moments when the truth bursts the son’s bubble, which are moments of realization. It’s the realization that everything he learned from his parents is a lie.

Unlike his peers, Jon M. Chu had a very different challenge. His job was to adapt the beloved Broadway musical “Wicked” for the big screen. But as he notes, when you have an iconic song like “Defying Gravity” to work on, it’s “the greatest gift a filmmaker can have.”

Chu says, “You have ‘Defying Gravity’ as a closer, like ‘Awesome, cool.’ But in a weird way, having the scope of flight and the intimacy of words when you do it in film form is so precarious because you make the wrong (choice) and you lose the power of the song.

Plus, as a fan of the original production, Chu didn’t want to lose too many of those essential “biblical” moments. Again, he admits: “Sometimes I thought it was the Bible, and then we were like, ‘Actually, that doesn’t matter.’ Let’s go with what we’re feeling here right now.

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This story was originally published in Los Angeles Times.