What 'The Penguin' Production Designer Thinks Every Creative Should Know

From the Top

Ivanov was ready to share knowledge with us from the start, almost before I could even press record on Zoom. We started by discussing the ins and outs of her position.

"The production designer is the first artist who is hired on a project by the director," Ivanov said. "We are in charge of the entire look of the project, which includes finding all the locations, determining the color palette of a project, the general tone of it, and the architecture."

It is, as she called it, a "very big job" that requires collaboration with multiple departments.

"We are also in charge of the set decorating department. They work with us. Every piece of furniture, every drape, everything that the camera sees goes through the production designer's hands."

For The Penguin, she also had to determine what locations she could find and which they had to build. She said this show was about 40 percent a build, and 60 percent locations.

"A lot of it has to do with the very specific interiors that we had," she said. "Obviously the exteriors are all locations, but quite a few of them were enhanced tremendously throughout as the story progressed. And as you know, we pick up six days after The Batman, when Riddler's bombs go off. So after The Batman finishes, our story starts six days later, and goes to Christmas. If the election was, say, Nov. 4, we start around Nov. 10, and we finish before Christmas. So it's a very short timeframe for The Penguin."

Taking the Script to Set

Like nearly everyone else on a production, Ivanov begins her work with the script. As she reads, she says she starts getting ideas for colors, concepts, and ideas.

"I start seeing physical spaces from knowledge, from my bank of images," she said.

She researches images that resonate with what she's getting on the page. Ivanov also pulled research that aligned with the showrunner's visual mandate.

"In this particular project, Matt Reeves and Lauren [LeFranc] gave us a very descriptive visual mandate, which was, 'Look at French Connection, and also think about the movie Scarface.'"

This show was shot in New York City for exterior locations, which gave it a unique vibe that differed even from The Batman, which was shot in England.

"So the nature of being in a different place in the world, New York City, gives you different architecture and a different take on it. Immediately, it felt to me that this was New York in the '80s," she said. "Coincidentally, I arrived in New York in the '80s, so I was very familiar with that."

The original source material—the comic—was also in her mind.

"Matt Reeves based the movie The Batman on the 1986 comic Year One," Ivanov said. "So that's why it felt the '80s were very important storywise to us. And that's also when New York was rebuilding. It had gone so far down in the '70s, it was such a decrepit city.

"I reached into my sensory memory, and then I went and revisited a lot of images from New York in the '80s, and it was very informative for the look of The Penguin."

The "Method Acting" of Set Design

One location we see early on is Oz's home, a loft in the Diamond District of Gotham. It's a rich environment seen briefly, but it reveals so much about who the character is and what he values.

"I very often say that I work like I'm a method actor," Ivanov said, "and I call myself a method designer in a sense, because I always think from the point of view of the character, and I try to go inside their mind and think what would be the right place for this person to live in?"

Oz, clearly, aspires to the wealth and privilege that he sees in his employers, the Falcones, but it always seems just out of reach. Ivanov and the team decided to put him on a second floor (not the penthouse he dreams of) above a jewelry store, which would have previously been a repair shop.

"They're very mundane," she said. "You take your broken ring in, and you pick it up a week later. I've been to many of these places, and I thought, 'Oh, that's what he took over. He took over a jeweler's repair shop.' And that's how we came up with that vault, because that's where the jewels used to be hidden, and that's why I wanted those drawers. He moves his bedroom in there."

Textures and character

The loft, and that wonderful vault, gave the set a look unlike anything else in the series.

"It was a wonderful combination of textures, the coldness of the metal that is very much the character of the Penguin with the very working-class brick walls," Ivanov said. "So all these textures meant something about the character."

Ivanov cooperated with actor Colin Farrell on aspects of the set.

"Colin Farrell had his own ideas about what the scripted 'bad' art should be," she said. "He gave me a bunch of images that he thought, 'That's the bad art, and that's what the Penguin will have.' And there's kind of an iconic purplish painting in the loft. That's based on one of the references that he gave me."

You can see it, in fact, in one of the images above. But what about that tacky fireplace that multiple characters call out?

"The fake fireplace was scripted," she said. "That came up in discussions with Lauren. We were thinking, this guy doesn't really have taste, but he thinks he has. You're riding that line where you don't want to make him a joke. He's not a cartoon character. You want to make him a real, very grounded character."

Easter Eggs to Look For

Since we were talking about the Diamond District set, I had to ask.

"Am I right in assuming that the Burgess Jewelers downstairs is a reference to Burgess Meredith?"

Ivanov laughed. "That's right!"

The actor from the original Batman TV show was key to my Penguin obsession.

She revealed that viewers should also look out for certain numbers throughout the series, which are nods to the Penguin's appearances in comic book issues or the year he was first introduced.

There are also hidden umbrellas in certain sets, an iconic Penguin prop. One you might see as a light fixture, upside down.

Ivanov's team also snuck in ads throughout the series for Killingers Department Store, Gotham's iconic establishment (and a very important setting in the Batman Arkham Knight video game).

Eagle-eyed viewers might also catch road signs for “Amusement Mile,” “Robinsville,” “Wayne Botanical Gardens,” and more.

The Challenge of the Falcone Mansion

Several sets presented unique challenges for Ivanov. Alas, a few of them don't show up until later in the series, so for now, we can share how she approached the look of the Falcone crime family's mansion.

It was, as Ivanov pointed out, a key set that appeared in every episode.

"We had a tremendous amount of discussions about this particular character, and where he lived, and how he had taste, and how he was a third-generation gangster," she said. "And by this time, he's thinking of himself as the mayor of the city in a way. He wants political power, and he wants classy power. His kids go to boarding school.

"He is imitating people with money that come from aristocratic backgrounds. Like the founding families of Gotham, like the Wayne family is one of the founding families. So Carmine would like to become that. That's his aspiration."

She started with the exterior, and took inspiration from The Great Gatsby.

"We found a beautiful turn-of-the-century, early 20th-century mansion in an Italian style. We added the big fountain, and we made it look even more majestic. And then that informed me how to design the interior."

What about the interior?

"What I leaned into in for the interior was a lot of classical art and classical Italian villas," she said. "Carmine is imagining himself as the king of an Italian palazzo. I specifically chose pre-Renaissance paintings because of their slightly odd perspective and a little bit of the flatness. Again, it meant something about this character, about the emotional flatness of this person.

"And there was a lot of gold and dark. It was very much him. It was his character, following on the beautiful design that [production designer] James Chinlund did in The Batman, and following along with his thinking about this person."

"It takes a village"

I reflected to Ivanov that a production of this scale and scope was a miracle to see—something I feel about most film and TV, really. That anything gets made at all is a joy.

"I need a village to make that happen," she said. "For the production designer, their right hand is the supervising art director and the left hand is the set decorator. From then on, then you have a full-on art department with set designers, concept artists, and graphic artists. And everybody has a very important role in the project.

"I was also very lucky to have one of the best construction and paint teams in New York. They're really dear friends of mine, Joe Alfieri and Elizabeth Linn. The quality of the work is on their shoulders.

"I can have the vision, but if I don't have the right people, my vision will not be executed. I was extremely fortunate and extremely lucky to be so well supported by the producers and my team to be able to pull this off."

On a production like The Penguin, the team is essentially creating several movies across a series. Without a team communicating well, none of that can happen.

"What's so special to me about this show is the incredible communication and friendship with Lauren LeFranc, and the creative executives and Matt and Dylan [Clark], and our line producer, Bill Carraro, and all of them," she said.

"Without their support, we really couldn't have created such a beautiful world, and I couldn't have succeeded without their input and their generosity. It was such a pleasure to work with them because the discussions were very deep. We talked a lot about character. We never treated this as a comic book. We treated these people as very real, and as people who mean something to us as contemporary people, as people living in the world today. And it was a very, very meaningful experience.

"And also, kudos to Colin Farrell—to not just be the actor, but also a producer and to be so interested in the look. He took my design book home and then sent Deirdre O'Connell, who plays his mom, to come and talk to me. I love the fact that the actors were so involved in the process."

Ivanov's Advice to Aspiring Designers

Ivanov started as a theater designer—a path she recommends to anyone who wants to design for film.

"It's a very disciplined art form because you have a script and you have a stage with limitations, and you have to work with these limitations. And that is a very good thing to know as a designer."

She landed in storyboarding (and eventually on a Demme film) because she drew quickly. And she fell in love with filmmaking.

"I think that the most important thing to understand about production design and what we do is that you have to think like the camera, and then you have to think of a world that is 360 degrees," she said. "So you have to think very globally. You have to think big. A big picture in 360 degrees, and really, really educate yourself about the camera, and how the camera sees things."

Everyone's path is different, but there's one thing she says every designer should know.

"It's a matter of imagination, communication, and learning about ground plans," she said. "I think that every designer needs to know how to create a ground plan, because that's very important. You're determining how the action, the camera will actually move. You're determining where the actress will go.

"Some people come from architecture, some people come from set decor, some people come from graphics. Every path is equally legitimate. I can only speak to my personal path, but I can tell you what you actually need to be able to communicate with directors. And that is a great sense of color, great sense of space and ground plan, and great sense of camera and how the camera sees things."