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.
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