We Need to Talk About Emmy #22: Kalina Ivanov’s designs bring color to the world of ‘The Penguin’
Production designer Kalina Ivanov takes us inside the visual world of HBO's 'The Penguin,' revealing how she adapted Matt Reeves' Gotham for television. From the surprising discovery that Penguin's iconic Maserati is actually purple to the intentional color storytelling that contrasts Oz's pastel childhood memories with his dark present reality.
We discuss her collaboration with cinematographer Darren Tiernan in creating Gotham as a living character, the technical challenges of transitioning from film to series format, and how production design deepens character development. She also shares the delicate balance of honoring Batman lore while bringing fresh perspective to the Penguin's world.
Transcript
You are listening to the we need to Talk About Oscar podcast, and this is our conversation with Kalina Ivanov, production designer of the Penguin.
Speaker B:I can hardly recognize any of the colors that I saw later from James Arkham looked black.
Speaker B:Well, it's not black.
Speaker B:It's khaki green.
Speaker B:And that will surprise a lot of people, you know, and in that sense, it was like, I didn't know if HBO will allow us to do that.
Speaker B:You know, it was super, super dark, the movie, so.
Speaker B:So we copied the colors, but the lighting was a little more left open, and at the end, the mix was more bright than the movie, you know, which is still dark, but it's not as dark as the movie.
Speaker A:To start with, more of a big picture question.
Speaker A:As you have both film and TV credits under your belt, and a great number of them, what do you consider to be the biggest practical, or maybe even not so practical differences you encountered between designing for film versus this limited series format, as in the Penguin.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:I mean, in terms of process, the design is the same, you know, in terms of, like, how do I arrive at it and what it is about?
Speaker B:It's always the same.
Speaker B:The difference is that in limited series, you have more time to develop the character.
Speaker B:So, for example, the Penguin is very well rounded because you learn about his backstory, you learn about where he's going to go.
Speaker B:You learn all the things where in film, in two hours, you won't have time to learn.
Speaker B:So that's the only difference.
Speaker B:And for that reason, I really like limited series.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And in this case, another little spin or twist on that is the fact that this iteration of the character of the Penguin was introduced in a feature film.
Speaker A:So I'm curious about the handover from the big screen to television, both for the characters and.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Gotham as a character itself, making that transition from film to television for the entire story.
Speaker A:Did you speak with the Batman production designer James Chinlund?
Speaker A:How much of that established visual language were you working with while.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Also expanding it.
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:The first call was James.
Speaker B:For me, you know, he is a friend, and he also is.
Speaker B:He's a very good designer, and he really designed the Batman spectacularly.
Speaker B:So I was very curious about the Penguin, but in the.
Speaker B:In the film, we only see him at the.
Speaker B:At the Iceberg Lounge.
Speaker B:You know, you never see his home.
Speaker B:You never see where he lives.
Speaker B:He's a bit of a mystery.
Speaker B:He's Mr.
Speaker B:Iceberg Lounge, you know, in the film.
Speaker B:So that was very helpful to me because I had the history of the character from James which wasn't very much.
Speaker B:It was like, you know, he is the manager of the.
Speaker B:Of the.
Speaker B:Of this institution, the iceberg lounge of this club.
Speaker B:But other than that, I had perfectly free reign to imagine the character.
Speaker B:And also, I should note that the film was filmed in London and Liverpool, and we were filming in New York.
Speaker B:So by.
Speaker B:By the choice of New York, you ground a film in different reality, in a sense, you know, you allow the designer to have a freer hand.
Speaker B:So I felt very free.
Speaker B:But James Chindalin gave me enough history of the environments.
Speaker B:And, for example, Arkham, which appears in this show the same way, the way it was in the.
Speaker B:In the.
Speaker B:In the movie.
Speaker B:It's very, very important that he gave me that history of Arco.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And it's just as an example, take something like Aussies purple or red or plum Maserati, like, from more of a, I don't know, logistical point of view.
Speaker A:How do you maintain that continuity while once again making it work for not only a different medium and the demands, but also the vast array of storylines that combat it?
Speaker B:Well, in the case of the purple Maserati, a lot of people will be surprised to hear that it was purple in the film because it didn't look purple.
Speaker B:Because they did.
Speaker B:Such a color happened to me.
Speaker B:Exactly, exactly.
Speaker B:So a lot of people were very surprised that it was purple in our show.
Speaker B:It is really purple.
Speaker B:I mean, they talk about how purple it is.
Speaker B:Sophia mentions it, he mentions it.
Speaker B:So that was a through line through our project, you know, and we.
Speaker B:We brought the penguin to more realistic point of view.
Speaker B:You know, it wasn't.
Speaker B:It was stylized, but it wasn't as stylized as the movie was.
Speaker B:The movie was really, really dark in terms of lighting, you know.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And it's, of course, a bit contradictory what I'm about to say, which is that the color palette is extremely distinctive because at the same time, it can be muted, yet with warm tones throughout with all these rugged surroundings.
Speaker A:And now that you've talked about James and your talks with him, as far as collaborations go, what were your early and then ongoing conversations, like with Darren Tiernan, the lead dp, who you were working, I guess, pretty much shoulder to shoulder, establishing the visual language for the series?
Speaker B:Well, Darren was a wonderful collaborator.
Speaker B:I mean, he was.
Speaker B:He was terrific.
Speaker B:And we had a very easy relationship.
Speaker B:He is a real gentleman.
Speaker B:And we talked a lot about how dark, the darkness in the movie, you know, And I questioned.
Speaker B:I questioned where that darkness will take us to hbo, because it's different when you watch everybody's TV set this program differently, you know, and so therefore the darkness, it may be super dark in one, in one country and not so dark in another or, or, you know, and so we didn't really know.
Speaker B:But Darren leaned into the same lenses he used.
Speaker B:He got them from the DP of the movie.
Speaker B:The same lenses and he used the same lenses and the same color palette.
Speaker B:And at the end, you know, it was brought up to light by hbo, you know, like how, how they time it.
Speaker B:It's out of our hands in a way, of Darren's in my hands.
Speaker B:But we definitely followed the movie in a sense.
Speaker B:But I always.
Speaker B:But that's why I use so much gold, you know, because when I saw the movie, I. I can hardly recognize any of the colors that I saw later from James Arkham looked black.
Speaker B:Well, it's not black.
Speaker B:It's khaki green.
Speaker B:And that will surprise a lot of people.
Speaker B:And you know, and in that sense it was like, I didn't know if HBO will allow us to do that, you know, it was super, super dark, the movie.
Speaker B:So we copied the colors, but the lighting was a little more open minded, you know, left open.
Speaker B:And at the end the mix was more bright than the movie, you know, which is still dark, but it's not as dark as the movie.
Speaker A:And as for the character of Oz, given the complexity of not only the makeup on Colin's face comes the bodysuit.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I'm sure it must take considerable practice for him to move around in different spaces, thanks to him not being used to that.
Speaker A:Did you have to take the character's physicality into consideration and how he would interact with and within your sets?
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:Lauren Lefranc, our showrunner, scripted specifically some staircases for the penguin to be going up or down, depending on the scene.
Speaker B:And that was to accentuate his leg, you know, really for us to see it.
Speaker B:So I'm thinking of the scene particularly when he approaches Eve's apartment for the first time, how he has to drag his feet up the steps.
Speaker B:So Laura definitely wrote that into the script and then we took it from the script and we embedded it into the sets in that sense, you know.
Speaker B:But in terms of his apartment, that was all on one level, you know, and so it wasn't really a consideration of mine, except for the actor, how he behaved, you know.
Speaker A:Now to take a turn towards the story a little bit more.
Speaker A:Despite the Ozzy's wealth and status, we know that he's aspiring for way more in either sense.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Plus, thanks to his line of work.
Speaker A:We see him in these rugged, beat up surroundings, but we get to see his.
Speaker A:His childhood home as well, which is completely different.
Speaker A:More modest, lighter, with those pastel colors.
Speaker A:So how do you use color and texture to tell the story of where he's been versus where he is currently and is going?
Speaker B:Yes, very strategically.
Speaker B:I have to say this is one of the most designed projects that I have done in a sense that it is very, very specific to childhood apartment with its palette, it embodies the 70s because it takes place in the 80s, but they bought the furniture in the 70s and with that came up the lighter palette in a sense, you know, and it's to give you the feeling that he didn't grow without love.
Speaker B:He really was loved.
Speaker B:She loved all the children, that mother who didn't have money, but she had a wonderful.
Speaker B:In terms of warmth, atmosphere and apartment.
Speaker B:And then to see him go to become darker and darker slowly throughout the movie, you know, every environment becomes darker.
Speaker B:And at the end, to end up in the penthouse, which is very dark, very grand, but very dark.
Speaker B:And it was done by design, for that matter.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And Gotham itself as a whole seems like, even despite the incredibly dark colors, seems like a production designer's dream sandbox to play in.
Speaker A:But then comes with it the history and lore, plus the fact that Matt Reeves has created a very specific version of Gotham.
Speaker A:What aspects of it felt untouchable to you when designing within this somewhat, or to a point, established universe?
Speaker B:I didn't think anything was untouchable.
Speaker B:What Matt and Lauren wanted was reality.
Speaker B:You know, they wanted the environments to feel really real.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And I didn't think that anything was untouchable.
Speaker B:I only stayed away from Manhattan geography, like, which is a grid, Manhattan is a grid.
Speaker B:And I went for five corners or three corners, streets that really met each other, which meant that we shot more in Queens under the subway.
Speaker B:That was a matte directive at us to make it look like the French Connection, you know.
Speaker B:So we were under the elevated subway for red light district.
Speaker B:And we were in the.
Speaker B:In Yonkers a lot.
Speaker B:You know, we spent.
Speaker B:Our crown point was really a combination of Manhattan, downtown Manhattan with Yonkers, you know.
Speaker B:And the interesting point of the story is where Victor is on the rooftop when the.
Speaker B:The wall breaks and he sees the flood coming.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:That is the first project in New York.
Speaker B: That project has existed from: Speaker B:It was called.
Speaker B:It was called Lung District.
Speaker B:And it was small apartments and people.
Speaker B:And it was called Lung District because people always Suffered from tuberculosis.
Speaker B:So then it was leveled.
Speaker B: And in the: Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And speaking of that history, let's talk a little bit about Arkham, which has its own following within the fan base.
Speaker A:And we've seen so many different shapes, forms, iterations of it.
Speaker A:And you had to help the viewer get into Sophia's headspace.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:Which is incredibly complicated after life, overflowing with betrayal and.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Translate that into the physical spaces.
Speaker A:How do you design for that psychological state so that we can see it and understand it, but still it doesn't feel forced?
Speaker B:Well, it helped that the cell is.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And in the visitation room were a direct copy from the movie.
Speaker B:That was the one set that I said that we copied, aside from the.
Speaker B:Outside of the.
Speaker B:Of the Iceberg Lounge, which you have behind you.
Speaker B:But when it came to the mess hall where she eats and where she has this incredible scene with.
Speaker B:With the other women, that was done in a church, you know, in a.
Speaker B:In a space of.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker B:In a space attached to a church.
Speaker B:And then I brought in, I. I built in the environment of the.
Speaker B:Of the mess hall and the security booth, you know, so I combined set with location.
Speaker B:And you ended up with Arkham with a mess hall.
Speaker B:But it gave us the perspective of the.
Speaker B:Of the largeness of how many women were there in a sense of.
Speaker B:In this prison.
Speaker B:And that was very good.
Speaker A:And Crista Miliotti's Sophia, as I've already somewhat alluded to, it, has such a complex arc, even if you're talking about just these eight episodes, because we've already talked about how we get a glimpse at Oz's childhood as well, and the current.
Speaker A:And where he might be going, but within the confines of these eight episodes.
Speaker A:Did you design Sophia's spaces to evolve with her character development throughout?
Speaker B:No.
Speaker B:Why?
Speaker B:Because Sophia lives in the Falcone Mansion, and the Falcone Mansion is preset, you know, and how she's going to rebel against it, it's up to her, in a sense of the.
Speaker B:It's up to the character.
Speaker B:But the environment that she has to embody was designed by her father.
Speaker B:And in that sense, it.
Speaker B:It is the ultimate rebellion that she does at the end, you know, but all the spaces was reflecting the taste of her father, you know, so what the character does, what the space does, is who designs the Space, you know, and because she didn't have any influence over any.
Speaker B:He shouldn't have any choice there.
Speaker B:The space was all designed by her father.
Speaker B:So that's the explanation.
Speaker A:Finally, even though the Penguin is a limited series and works perfectly as a standalone piece as well, thanks to it picking up right after the events of the film, of course, you're creating something that fits into this larger Batman universe.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:What were you taking into consideration for the what came before and might come next in this world?
Speaker B:That's a very good question, because what came before was established in the movie, in the Batman.
Speaker B:So I had a very good roadmap.
Speaker B:And also I knew that Matt Reeves had based his Batman on the graphic novel year one.
Speaker B:So I read the novel, etc.
Speaker B:So I knew the environments, which are very 80s, very real environments.
Speaker B:It's very much based on New York, the book.
Speaker B:What would come after.
Speaker B:Well, the only set that we touch upon after is the last set, you know, and in that sense, I designed the whole building, the whole beaux art building of the hotel.
Speaker B:I named it La Couron La.
Speaker B:Like the Crown as.
Speaker B:Because it's the crown jewel.
Speaker B:Jewel of the Crown Heights, you know, and then for.
Speaker B:For that, I don't know if they'll take it to the movie, you know, but I was very well aware that they might take it into the movie, you know, And I designed it in such a way that James can take it from there and remodel it if he wants to, because he is in the process of remodeling this space.
Speaker B:So you see all those chandeliers on the ground, you know, everything is.
Speaker B:Everything is decaying.
Speaker B:And if James and I brought all of that, I mean, that was a white box, you know, that said, when we inherited it, it was a location.
Speaker B:And I turned it into this very poetic space of a hotel, a ballroom, but that was divided by two.
Speaker B:And the Penguin is in the process of renovating.
Speaker B:So I gave a lot of freedom to the.
Speaker B:To the next designer, which I'm assuming is James, but it could be somebody else to interpret that space further, you know, because you never want to box anybody into your own design, you know, so that was the only time I was worried about the.
Speaker B:What it will be further other than that, you know, what we created was very special because it was from the Penguin point of view, which was down on the street, down on the ground, looking up.
Speaker B:And we always looked up where Batman is on the top, always looking down.
Speaker B:You know, that was.
Speaker B:That I was very well aware of.
Speaker B:And on the other and the other thing is, I mean, to create this destruction, we brought 40 tons of dirt on in Crown Heights.
Speaker B:We brought cars to pile up.
Speaker B:We brought tons of furniture to throw around, you know.
Speaker B:And when you see Crown Heights in the episode, I think it's in five.
Speaker B:You see it?
Speaker B:Yeah, it's in five.
Speaker B:It's incredible, the destruction.
Speaker B:The Riddler, by setting off the bombs, what he did, you know, he hurt the poorest because the poorest live where the sea wall is, you know.
Speaker B:And that destruction was very important that we get it right.
Speaker B:Where the next projects are going to be is going to be a few.
Speaker B:It's going to be a month or a year after that event.
Speaker B:So they can take it.
Speaker B:What.
Speaker B:Whatever they want to take it.
Speaker B:But I was only really concerned about the six days after our story starts.
Speaker B:It's six days after it goes for two weeks and it ends up at Christmas.
Speaker B:And that's basically it.
Speaker A:Incredible.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And as far as I know, if we'd like to see your work in other superhero projects, you have very, very soon coming the season two of Peacemaker.
Speaker B:Peacemaker two.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And to my knowledge, another thing you've mentioned is that you also have a feature coming in the future.
Speaker B:Oh, yes.
Speaker B:But the feature, it's interesting.
Speaker B:The feature is very different than the Penguin.
Speaker B:The feature is completely realistic and it's a wonderful story about a father and a son who's autistic, you know, and it's produced by Plan B, and the director is Stephen Chbosky, and it's called Little Man.
Speaker A:Once again, thank you so, so much for taking the time for this lovely chat.
Speaker A:And, yeah, honestly, all I can say is that can't wait to see your future projects as well.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:Thank you so much.
