Case Studies
Bringing Reality to The Penguin
The Penguin is a 2024 limited-series based on the DC Comics character. Serving as a spin-off sequel to The Batman (2022), it follows Oswald ‘Oz’ Cobb's rise to power in Gotham City's criminal underworld. Reprising his role from The Batman, Colin Farrell stars as The Penguin, which involved a dramatic transformation including bodysuits, prosthetics and make-up.
The Penguin’s eight episodes were broadcast on HBO in the United States in Autumn 2024 and the series has received critical acclaim for its performances, writing, direction, and production value.
The series was executive produced by Matt Reeves, Dylan Clark, Colin Farrell, Lauren LeFranc, Craig Zobel, and Bill Carraro and had multiple cinematographers (Darran Tiernan, David Franco, Jonathan Freeman, and Zoë White) and directors (Craig Zobel, Kevin Bray, Helen Shaver, and Jennifer Getzinger).
The colour grading was overseen by Picture Shop’s Supervising DI Colourist, Pankaj Bajpai.
Honoring The Batman
Bajpai had previously collaborated with three of the four cinematographers and was involved with The Penguin from the outset.
“It’s the case for almost every show I work on now,” says Bajpai. “We spend time early on discovering the essence of the show, working through both the creative and logistical challenges.”
One of his primary goals during the colour grading process was to ensure the show honored the visual style of The Batman.
“I had to make sure the colour finishing visually evoked the audience's experience of watching The Batman,” Bajpai explains. “However, because this show was created primarily for streaming, we also had to adapt the approach for television viewing. The challenge was to preserve the theatrical nuances in a broadcast environment.”
Logistical Challenges
“There were many complexities,” notes Bajpai. “Filming took place in New York during a brutally cold winter, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, between two major industry strikes. The production also had to contend with a complex prosthetic and makeup process, demanding visual effects, and tight deadlines.
“Because of COVID, at times the project also necessitated the help of different DPs pitching in on a single episode to keep the schedule on track. These factors presented interesting challenges during the finishing process, but with everyone’s support, we managed to create a seamless show - truly exhilarating.”
The Look
Bajpai’s task was to visually tell the story of Oswald ‘Oz’ Cobb while staying true to the world Matt Reeves had created in The Batman. However, as the series progressed, the visual treatment had to evolve in line with the narrative, developed by showrunner Lauren LeFranc.
“We did not start with a pre-defined look for the series,” Bajpai comments. “It was more about exploring how best to maintain the film’s universe while introducing a more human element to the story – which alternates between Gotham's fantasy world and its more realistic and gritty moments.
“The goal was to ensure Lauren, Matt and the DPs felt the visual approach was ‘right,’” he adds. “But what does it mean for something to ‘feel right’? Is it cool, desaturated, something else? There are many ways to approach it, but we had to find the one that resonated with everyone.
“The look was deeply scrutinized. My task was to take the work of all the creatives and build a cohesive visual trajectory. It was a complex process, but that was the exciting challenge - figuring out what worked for everyone.”
Instinct and Collaboration
When asked about his approach, Bajpai says it largely came down to instinct.
“Simple” he explains. “As a colourist—or any visual artist involved in collaborative filmmaking—you must listen. Really listen - not just to the words, but to what’s behind them. It’s about understanding what people are trying to express.”
“Each department has its own way of conveying the same core ideas,” Bajpai continues. “Take the amazing VFX supervisor, Johnny Han, for example. I needed to understand his perspective. The same with Lauren LeFranc, the show’s showrunner and writer. How were her words translating visually? And with Matt Reeves, what was coming through from his cinematic, logical and highly creative approach as a filmmaker?”
“Everyone’s goal was to make the best show we could, both visually appealing and unique,” Bajpai says. “As a colourist, my role was to listen to everyone and use the tools at my disposal to bring it all together. But first, I had to listen.”
Prosthetics
Bajpai was determined to ensure every part of the team felt satisfied with the creation, and this included Mike Marino, Colin Farrel’s make-up and prosthetic artist.
“When we finished grading an episode, it was sent to Mike for critical viewing of his work,” explains Bajpai. “Colin and Mike have a very close working relationship - with Colin spending three hours in the makeup chair every morning and 45 mins at the end, putting it on and off. It was a monumental amount of work.”
“And it had to feel real,” adds Bajpai. “Colin’s performance had to come through all that latex. Even though we might have done something stylistically, it had to be such that Colin’s immensely complicated prosthetics felt real. We were careful to not do anything in the colour grade that broke that.”
Bajpai had to bring this reality to all scenes, which was quite a challenge given all the differences in locations, lighting, VFX, props, green screens and action sequences.
“As expected, the lighting had considerable interaction with Colin’s make-over,” explains Bajpai. “Whether it was a low-light scene, in the cold winter, or an action sequence with gun fire, explosions and dust flying all over the place, it was my responsibility to make sure that no matter how we approached the grading, he always felt real. I had to make sure that the colour of his skin, which was all prosthetic, worked in all kinds of different environments and lighting.”
One of the tools Bajpai looked to for his work was the X-Grade feature in Baselight 6.0.
“X Grade was a significant part of grading the show,” explains Bajpai. “For example, in a cool lit interior there would be warm lamps reflecting on the latex skin, and suddenly you would see an appearance of a blemish or something unusual with the texture because of variation in the colours of the light. We would isolate the issue and go in with X Grade. With its amazing precision and control, it was a big part of the process to make sure that the illusion of reality was never broken.”
Night and Day
Another challenge was balancing the series' increased number of daylight scenes, compared to The Batman, which largely took place at night.
“The Batman movie happened almost entirely at night,” Bajpai notes. “In contrast, The Penguin includes a considerable number of daylight scenes. We had to figure out what Gotham looked like in the daytime - without set references. Plus, daylight in New York is very different from that in London, where the movie was filmed.”
Lenses
The Batman movie was shot with anamorphic lenses, with natural organic distortions on the edges which were used creatively to direct attention to certain actors’ faces or parts of the frame. The Penguin was also filmed with anamorphic lenses in 2:39, but the image extraction for a 2.0 format meant some of those natural lens optical distortions on the edges of the frames had to somehow be recreated.
“Matt wanted to create a similar feel to the movie with this distortion technique,” explains Bajpai. “We didn’t want to rely just on vignetting and darkening to bring attention to certain parts of the frame. So, using Baselight, I created something similar.”
“It had to feel organic in an ‘optical’ sort of way, and Matt was quite specific about what that needed to be,” adds Bajpai. “Throughout eight episodes I applied varying degrees of optical work in Baselight. It was a combination of operators such as Chroma Warp, Halation and DFuse amongst others – all used either independently or blended in degrees. There were different parts of the frame that were optically treated with great specificity. For example, the top and bottom of the frames were adjusted differently from the corners, depending on where the actors were and where the attention needed to be focused. It was almost like we were custom ‘de-tuning’ these lenses as needed.”
Grain
The Batman movie was shot on digital cameras, but to get a natural film grain look the digital master of the movie had been recorded out to film and scanned back in for the final DI. For The Penguin, such a process was prohibitive both in terms of time and expense. Consequently, Bajpai emulated the look of the grain using Baselight's built-in grain tools, adjusting multiple parameters.
“I used a lot of the Baselight tools to simulate the IP and IN film grain structures,” explains Bajpai. “We had a high-resolution master file of the movie to compare with in the DI theatre which was extremely helpful as I would use the grain tools in Baselight to get as close to the texture in the movie as possible when recreating grain digitally.”
Creative Vision
“There was a lot of complex work behind the scenes,” Bajpai concludes, “but it had to blend seamlessly into the show’s singular creative vision – one that was built on heavy expectations.”
“Colin’s performance had to come through all that latex. Even though we might have done something stylistically, it had to be such that his immensely complicated prosthetics felt real.”
