How NYC Was Transformed into Gotham for The Penguin

Architectural Digest

Production Designer Kalina Ivanov joins AD to break down how she transformed New York City into Gotham for ‘The Penguin’. ‘The Penguin’ takes place immediately after Matt Reeves’ ‘The Batman’, in a Gotham flooded by The Riddler's bombs. Discover how Ivanov transformed Yonkers into Crown Point by dropping 40 tons of dirt, and why NYC’s own history makes it the perfect inspiration for Gotham City.

Transcript

00:00Why New York City for the Penguin?

00:02Because New York City is the love of my life.

00:05I love it decayed, I love it shiny,

00:08I love every look of New York City.

00:10It has everything.

00:11It has the streets, it has the history,

00:14and the crooked politicians.

00:16It has everything.

00:17That is why New York City had to be Gotham.

00:22I'm Kalina Ivanov,

00:23and I'm the production designer of The Penguin on HBO.

00:27Today, we're gonna talk about

00:28how we transformed New York City

00:30into Gotham for The Penguin.

00:34New York City was the perfect background for us

00:37because of its eclectic architecture.

00:40You can have five good blocks, and then two bad,

00:43and then three good blocks, and then one bad.

00:46You can see the tension between the poor and the rich

00:49in the streets of New York.

00:51You can see it, you can feel it, you can breathe it.

00:54I moved to the city in 1979.

00:58New York City in the 70s and the 80s was a very different city

01:02than the modern one.

01:03It was city left to the rats, and it was a garbage strike.

01:06And it was one disaster after another.

01:09So the rich people left New York at that time.

01:12But I thought it was the most beautiful place in the world.

01:17And I carried that love for the city and for the grime of the city deeply with me.

01:24I used it to the full extent in The Penguin.

01:27And it relates to the story of The Penguin very well

01:30because he is somebody who grew up in the city down on the streets,

01:33on the dirty streets of Gotham.

01:35And he wants to become the top gangster.

01:38He wants to go to the top.

01:40He is full of personal discontent and full of ambition.

01:44And that suited the story very well.

01:47The Penguin takes place immediately after Matt Reeves is the Batman.

01:52That means the Riddler has set off his bombs and the city is flooded.

01:56The last images of the Batman are the flood.

01:58And the first images of the Penguin are the flood.

02:01Let's look at the neighborhood where the post-flood was stage five.

02:05The most affected neighborhood was Crown Point.

02:09So this is Crown Point.

02:11Crown Point is very important because the poor people live there.

02:16And one of the things that was very important to Lauren LeFranc, our showrunner,

02:20was that the poor people are proud people.

02:23They take care of their business.

02:24And The Penguin uses that very well to his advantage.

02:28The good people of Crown Point are hard at work.

02:32We've got the love in a way.

02:36Because we pay them.

02:38You know how meaningful that is, Vic?

02:41To be the guy in the neighborhood who takes care of people.

02:44Crown Point is the last place to have its power restored.

02:47And it's only in the series you see The Penguin bribing a politician to restore the power.

02:52This is a real street in Yonkers.

02:54Nothing you see here is CGI.

02:56All the 40 tons of dirt and the garbage and the cars.

03:01Everything is brought by the art department.

03:03This is what a production designer really does.

03:06I dropped 40 tons of dirt on the street.

03:08And all the cars and all the garbage.

03:11Because you really needed to feel like FEMA needed to come here.

03:15And mark up the street.

03:16And you can see the FEMA markings on the stores that we created.

03:20I lived through Sandy.

03:21As a matter of fact, the water breached where I live.

03:24And Avenue C was entirely covered in dirt.

03:28I took that memory and experience and I transferred it to this set in a sense.

03:35So this is the real FEMA signage.

03:37This is done by us.

03:39My art director Debbie Whitley became an expert on FEMA signage.

03:43And you can see here how it says FEMA.

03:46And it shows the most destruction you can ever see in the city.

03:50So Crown Point is based on Five Points in Manhattan.

03:53The real Five Points in Manhattan was where the Irish used to live in the 30s and the 20s.

04:00And where the gangs used to live.

04:02So Crown Point is based on Five Points in Manhattan.

04:05Particularly the Mulberry Band.

04:07It gave us this wonderful curve to slowly reveal the Crown Point.

04:12It allowed for a flowing shot to go through this street.

04:16And ends up right where you need to end up.

04:19But you don't see it from the beginning.

04:20If the street was straight, you'd see where your end point is.

04:25If the street was bent, it will slowly reveal itself.

04:29Matt Reeves based the Batman on the comic book year one.

04:33And that took place in the 80s.

04:35And therefore his heart was always in the 80s.

04:37And I wanted to follow that dream.

04:41His dream.

04:42And I wanted to base the Penguin on New York City in the 70s and the 80s.

04:47It was a very evocative time.

04:50It was a time of decay.

04:51Of crooked politicians.

04:53And it played very well into our story.

04:56And into the tension between poor and rich.

05:00They're going to talk about this night.

05:03The time that we decided that it's better to work with the ones we hate.

05:07Than live under those that don't even know our fucking names.

05:10This is the trolley depot.

05:13And he is going to set up his big drug business in here.

05:21You know what thrives in a place like this?

05:24Mushrooms.

05:25Bingo.

05:26Bingo.

05:26It's an abandoned trolley depot which we built as a set.

05:30The last car left in 1957.

05:32And the trolley depot is also underground like the New York subway.

05:37Actually, New York used to have trolley cars until 1957.

05:41This set was built in the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx.

05:44And it is 4,500 square feet.

05:47The armory is huge.

05:49It is three times bigger than the set.

05:51It's the biggest armory in New York.

05:53And it's massive.

05:54I mean, it's a spectacular building.

05:55I hope you go to see it.

05:57So this set was built in the atrium of the armory.

06:00But there is a real part to it.

06:02Inside the Kingsbridge Armory, there is a lobby.

06:06And you can see how the same architectural detail I copied on our set.

06:11You can see it on the columns.

06:13You can see how I repeated that element.

06:15And it was done from plywood.

06:17All the brickwork, all the stonework, all the elements are done by the scenics.

06:23And it's painted bricks.

06:24And it's painted stone.

06:25And it's painted everything.

06:27But it looks real.

06:29I mean, the scenics are such masters.

06:32They deserve all the credit.

06:34And also, these are the real windows of the building.

06:38They're interior windows.

06:40And they lead to the second story where the officers used to have their quarters.

06:44The prop master brought in two trolley cars.

06:47We completely painted them, aged them to be from the period.

06:51And this trolley car has the number 58.

06:54Because that was the first issue of the Batman comics.

06:59The Penguin appeared as a character.

07:01And if you look at the production design, that's not the only Easter egg.

07:05In Eve's bedroom, there's an upside-down umbrella.

07:08Also, outside the Penguin's apartment in the Diamond District, there was the Burgess Diamond sign.

07:13And Burgess is an homage to Burgess Meredith, who played the Penguin.

07:19We've got enough to put you back on ice, Penguin.

07:22Oh, tut-tut-back, man.

07:24I only make the umbrellas.

07:26What they do after they leave here is hardly my affair now, is it?

07:29Lighting in this set was very complicated.

07:33We made life with the DP a little bit harder because we built the set for real.

07:38It was meant to be like a real building.

07:42Because we built all the vaulted arches like they were in real life,

07:46there was no grid possible for the DP to light a set.

07:51Therefore, he had to use what we give him.

07:54On top of everything, the scenes were shot handheld.

07:57And he had nowhere to go in terms of the lights.

08:00They would be in his way, you'd see them.

08:03So we really had to think about the lighting and build it into the set.

08:08And we thought of what the construction department uses to why they construct the sets.

08:13They have all these lights, practical lights, LED lights.

08:17And those are the lights that you see in the show.

08:20And they really like beautifully, the people.

08:23And it gives you this very ghostly atmosphere in a way.

08:27And it's very appropriate for the moment.

08:30Remember, somebody asked you where you got this cache.

08:32I said construction.

08:33Construction.

08:33We're all in construction.

08:36So we've been looking at the underbelly of Gotham.

08:39And now let's look at how the other half lives.

08:43So this is the Falcone Mansion.

08:45In the 70s and the 80s, the rich fled the city.

08:48So we took that as a cue.

08:50The rich lived in Bristol Township in our story, which is, of course, 30 miles outside of the city.

08:56I thought of it as Oyster Bay.

08:58That is where the rich live.

09:01So we found this location exactly at Oyster Bay.

09:05I envisioned Carmine's residence as an Italian villa.

09:09In a sense, I was thinking of the Great Gatsby.

09:12And we went to Oyster Bay and we found this location, which is a real Italian villa from 1925.

09:19And all we did was bring the fountain in and the greens, a lot of greens we brought in.

09:25I loved this location because it had the restrain of the architecture.

09:33It showed a constricted character the way Carmine was.

09:38Don't tell me you're sick of the party already.

09:41Why didn't you tell me you met with a reporter?

09:43You never, ever talked to the press.

09:47I thought you understood that.

09:50So this is inside the Falcone Mansion, which we built as a set.

09:55I chose black and gold for Falcone as his theme because he's the number one gangster in Gotham.

10:01I also liked paintings of pre-Renaissance painters, like Simone Martini.

10:07It's the main fresco we have behind Carmine when he sits at the head of the table.

10:12In this particular photo, it is Sofia that is up against it because it is the scene

10:18where she becomes the head of the family.

10:21As of today, my father's legacy is dead.

10:25This is a new family now.

10:27Let's not be rash here.

10:29All right, these gentlemen know we got a score we need to settle.

10:31It's very important to me that it is pre-Renaissance because it's before they figured out perspective.

10:41So the figures are always slightly stilted and that appealed to me very much because

10:48that was like Carmine. Carmine is elegant but slightly stilted.

10:54There's something dead in him inside and I wanted to capture that.

10:59And not only that, but Carmine, when he sits in front of him,

11:03he wants you to be impressed by that painting.

11:06He wants you to feel the power of the painting, the power of who he is as a man.

11:13So all the textures inside the Falcone Mansion are Venetian plaster, gold, black, columns,

11:21the biggest fireplace you ever saw, the biggest windows you ever saw.

11:26Those textures there together, they're supposed to weave the picture of Carmine to show how

11:33imposing Carmine really is.

11:36How I see the difference between the rich and the poor is in the scale of things.

11:43Carmine has a two-story drawing room.

11:46The poor are always under something.

11:49They're always under the subway. Underpasses were very important in our story.

11:54They're always in the shadows.

11:56Carmine is here with the light.

11:59It's a golden light.

12:01It shows the power of the person.

12:05New York City was the perfect Gotham for the Penguin because of its scope, of its history,

12:11of the layers of history, and of the one unique quality New York has.

12:16The mixture of styles matters to the production designer very much because

12:21it allows you to do rich people, poor people, and they're next to each other.

12:26And that vibrancy of the city played very well into our story.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended