Seizing the opportunity to bring his version of an iconic comic book villain to life, Colin Farrell dons prosthetic makeup and body suits as the titular character for the new HBO series The penguin. The show, which is set up as a sequel to the 2022 feature film The Batmansees Oswald Cobblepot (aka the Penguin) attempting to seize the reins of Gotham’s crime world.

“I’ve been working on Oswald Cobb’s (Farrell) voice for a long time, because you got a glimpse of it in the film, but we spend so much more time with Oz, so there’s an opportunity to evolve him,” says Lauren LeFranc, executive producer and showrunner of the series. “I always wanted him to be charming and funny, but you can also see through the seams of who he is as a man. As you spend more time with him, we discover who he is emotionally in a deeper way. I consider this a character study of this man, but also a look at toxic masculinity and masculinity in general. It’s important to me that we didn’t let you idolize him. Oz is a narcissist. Narcissists have the ability to make everyone around them feel like you’re living in their glare until you do something that doesn’t serve them, and then things change.

Gotham immersion

LeFranc says the series’ eight-hour episodes will allow viewers to get an in-depth tour of Gotham. “Matt Reeves (executive producer) had created an incredible and beautiful world of Gotham overnight (for The Batman),” she says. “We had the opportunity to show you different aspects of Gotham during the day. The goal for me was to make Gotham feel like a character in itself and that you felt what it is to have real people there. Obviously we’re seeing the world through the lens of Oz, but we wanted to make sure we show different areas of the city. We have also inherited this terrible flood The Batman where the sea wall collapsed. It is a city that is suffering, and we took that as an opportunity to talk about class inequality.”

The production’s visual effects team played a huge role in bringing Gotham to life throughout the series. “The trick with our visual effects is to make sure you don’t see them,” she says. “The goal was (for) the visuals to feel seamless and so integrated that you think everything is practical and that the city we’re in is Gotham. We shot in New York, so we embraced that aesthetic, which is an incredible place to shoot. We also want you to know that Oz is a man, but we have minor adjustments here and there. We’re not a superhero show. We want you to feel like we are a grounded drama.”

“In visual effects, we try to force physics to do something different, and that usually makes it look fake.”

– VFX supervisor Johnny Han

The prosthetic makeup created for Oz’s face was created by Mike Marino, who also contributed his expertise The Batman film. “It was actually more challenging to create this makeup for the show because Colin is in it three or four times longer and closer,” says the makeup designer. “Someone who doesn’t want to wear makeup isn’t going to help the project. Colin couldn’t be more wonderful to work with as he loves filmmaking and special effects. It’s this perfect marriage of actor and effects coming together.

There is a revealing moment when Farrell is 95% covered in prosthetics. “The nude scene was so hard to do,” Marino recalls. “We built a flesh-hair suit that complements the makeup, so he’s completely naked. That’s a whole prosthesis, which is so incredibly difficult to do, because there’s nowhere to hide anything and it was shot outside (with) daylight. There are no shadows. But when he’s in the clothes, we’ve built a suit that makes him considerably heavier. It almost looks like pants and has a zipper. We built it to move and function a certain way and then the clothes go on. That continues after the makeup is done and the makeup overlaps on that suit. But the nude stuff is a whole different story!”

Approximately 2,200 visual effects shots were created over six months by Accenture Song VFX, Pixomondo, ReDefine, Stormborn Studios and Frost FX. VFX supervisor Johnny Han explains: “We definitely try to put ourselves in the negative space. We try to look in tunnels and under bridges. Elevated trains screech above us, and we don’t know where they come from or where they are going. But they are pushing through the city left and right.”

The third episode of the series features a flashback to the day of the city’s massive flood. Han says: “Many of the recordings are in The Batman I’m looking at it all from a bird’s eye view and I said to Lauren, “Let’s make this feel like Victor Aguilar’s (Cobb’s protégé played by Rhenzy Feliz) point of view and that we’re this close to the danger.”

A different approach was needed to support the editorial team. “The tricky thing about water is that it does what water is designed to do,” Han recalls. “In visual effects we try to force the physics to do something different, and that usually makes it look fake. We wanted to convey the flow in what I call “digital dailies” to the editor, where, even though we had come back to it three or four times in the storyboards, we knew it would be interspersed with Victor. We said, ‘We’re going to simulate a flood at a postviz level, so that we feel that the speed of the water is what physics would do: the water would reach the end of the street in so many seconds.’ It’s like the editor is given a long clip of dailies and can cut it up as he sees fit, but is not allowed to speed up or slow down the clip. This is the best choice if you work with large simulations.”

Create atmosphere

The shots had to feel alive and convey the right scope of the subject. “Smoke and atmosphere are our best friends because they add depth, scale and realism,” notes Han. “One of my most common creative comments is when I say something looks too vacuistic. It feels like there’s a vacuum between me and that building. There has to be air, atmosphere, lights have to glow, and I have to feel mist and movement. It helps to add life and movement when you look at buildings that aren’t moving!”

Of course, practice sets and locations had to be digitally replaced every now and then. “Not that we didn’t like the work, but things are discovered afterwards from a story point of view,” says the VFX supervisor. “We absolutely rely on what was built, and Kalina Ivanov (production designer) and her team were amazing and delivered many of their designs to us as 3D SketchUp models; that was super helpful for us to basically know the blueprints of these crazy sets.

Overall, the show’s biggest challenge in terms of visual effects was being invisible. “How can we put just enough visual effects into it so that you can follow the story a little more, love the characters a little more and get involved in the action a little more, without it being visual effects?” Han says. “The things that are almost unnoticeable still have an influence unconsciously. There are things you don’t really see, but feel. There is always something new to learn about filmmaking, and I’m glad I got to come along.”

The penguin currently streaming on Max.