Designing the Grit, Decay and Emotional Impact of ‘The Penguin’

After all the hype, excitement, promotion and media coverage surrounding HBO’s The Penguin series, the creative team behind the hit show is finally able to reflect on reactions to their work. "It is still amazing that even now people come up to me, especially in the visual effects community, and say the show continues to stay with them," says Johnny Han, Visual Effects Supervisor on the series. "We always knew the flood in Episode 103 would be the big visual effects sequence because it sets up Victor Aguilar’s [Rhenzy Feliz] journey so well. It’s stuck with people, even though we could never match the scope and scale of The Batman. Spectacle fades over time, because the tools and technology get better, but the emotional impact remains."

To film the flood sequence, non-water shots were captured on a Lower Manhattan rooftop. "For the action shots, we planned to rebuild the set onstage for more control," Han explains. "Because it was an expensive build, we wanted to storyboard everything. Chris Anderson, an amazing artist, and I spent a weekend storyboarding every reaction cutting back to Victor. He turns to see a bomb to his right, then to his left — another is so close it knocks him and his girlfriend down. As Victor rises, he sees the flood hitting his street. Everyone loved the storyboards. They gave a clear vision of how everything played out and let us estimate how many visual effects shots we could afford. Everyone gets nervous with big effects sequences, and their first instinct is to cut it down. But storyboards help quantify the work and ease concerns."

Across eight episodes, 3,107 visual effects shots were created over six months by Accenture Song VFX, Pixomondo, ReDefine, Stormborn Studios, SSVFX, and Frost FX. Of those, 800 involved prosthetic makeup cleanup on Colin Farrell. "Mike Marino [Makeup Designer: Penguin] was a dream to work with," Han says. "His designs were amazing. We had full daylight shots of Oswald 'Oz' Cobb shirtless or naked in real New York locations with no air conditioning. That heat affected the makeup. When Oz gets angry and his face reddens, a prosthetic can’t change color. Sweat would build up in little sacs. We helped smooth that out."

Over eight months of filming, small, physical changes in the physicality of the actors had to be managed. "Mike’s team was vigilant on set," Han recalls. "They watched the monitors like hawks and did touch-ups quickly. Anything makeup couldn’t fix, we would talk it out on-set. It’s not like six months later in post where we were trying to remember what happened that day. We used SyncSketch so Mike could draw on each frame in high resolution on his own time. We gave him a color system: green was fine, yellow meant 'needs work but not a dealbreaker,' and red flagged urgent issues. We addressed everything we could."

Principal photography took place in New York City, though the goal was never to identify Gotham as any one real-world city. "Gotham doesn’t exist," Han says. "It’s a character we had to build. New York gave us a great sandbox, but we didn’t want viewers to suddenly recognize Manhattan. Any recognizable skylines or rooftops were modified to lean into Neo-Gothic architecture. Chicago holds the record for most Neo-Classic skyscrapers in North America, so we borrowed heavily from those designs and reverse engineered elements from The Batman."

Establishing landmarks helped ground the show's geography. "We didn’t want it to feel random," Han notes. "The Elliot Bridge is a recurring element, so we based it on the George Washington Bridge in New York and modified its upper section. We added a beautiful, ornate angel watching over people entering Gotham, almost like a guardian. That idea came from the comics — the Elliots are one of Gotham’s founding families. Piers Dennis [Visual Effects Asset Manager] went through the comics to find Elliot family references and found a gravestone of the family patriarch with an angel on it, which we incorporated."

The visual effects team used ShotGrid to create an asset library. "New York is a lot cleaner than many of us remember," says Han. "But since the story picks up after a flood, Gotham needed to look decayed. We told our VFX team to photograph anything that looked worn — rusty garbage trucks, broken construction debris, corner trash. iPhones can now LiDAR scan at low resolution, so we used that too. Piers Dennis collected everything and worked with us in post. When we saw a street that looked too clean, he mocked up a dirtier version in Photoshop or After Effects to guide the vendors."

An explosion sequence intended to kill Oz, set by Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), was originally left off-screen. "We asked Lauren LeFranc [Creator, EP, Showrunner, Writer], do viewers really understand what happened if they don’t see the bomb?" Han says. "She said let’s try, so we took stock footage of explosions and cars as well as some b-roll of the trolley station where the SUV was parked, mocked up the scene, and gave it to the editors. They cut it in and show Lauren and the producers. It helped a lot. We added a helicopter shot of the ground collapsing, using unused Batman dailies. ReDefine did a physics-based simulation that calculated how layers of concrete, asphalt, dirt, and hollow space would realistically collapse and crumble. It looks totally real. We had to engineer what you see on the surface and also what’s inside those digital buildings. You’re not meant to notice, but to feel it."

In one of the show’s most chilling moments, Nadia Maroni (Shohreh Aghdashloo) and her son Taj (Aria Shahghasemi) are burned alive by Oz. The fire was created digitally for logistical reasons. "We rehearsed many times with the actors," Han says. "Director Helen Shaver had a childhood experience where her leg was burned, and she guided the actors through the panic and irrationality of the moment — a mother trying to save her son and catching fire. We had many more finished shots, but in review with Matt Reeves [EP] and Lauren, we realized the scene is not about the end of the Maronis, it’s about Oz’s reaction. We focused on tight, closeup shots of him watching with twisted delight. We even comped tiny flames into his eyes to reflect what he was seeing."

Gunfire effects also required a new approach. "We knew the show would be darkly lit, and we can’t use blanks in our prop guns anymore, which usually produce muzzle flashes," Han says. "In dark scenes, those flashes light up faces and the environment. When added later with VFX, they often feel fake. So, we used flashguns — prop guns with strobe flashes emitting off the tips. They were also timed with the ALEXA camera shutters so they would never flash in-between or halfway through a frame to avoid visual tearing, which is a common artefact. The flashes were real on set, so actors could react and flinch, knowing when the gun went off. The DP could use them creatively for lighting scenes. Stunt teams also benefited from having something more physical to work with. We used this method in every episode. It was an experiment that paid off — working on a series, you can refine with each episode."

For the VFX team behind The Penguin, the process was collaborative, inventive, and grounded in realism. While the tools may evolve, the show’s emotional resonance and visual depth reflect a meticulous attention to detail and a shared belief in the power of storytelling through visual effects.

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer best known for composing in-depth filmmaker and movie profiles for VFX Voice, Animation Magazine, and British Cinematographer.