Holy Bat Metropolis!

The opening shots in the pilot of Gotham literally set the scene for this Fox crime drama about young Batman-to-be, Bruce Wayne.

A wispy haze glides across the screen to reveal a striking aerial view of New York City, the glittering lights of bridges and skyscrapers tempered by clouds visible even in the nocturnal sky.

There are lots of brooding skies and hazy views in Gotham, part of the stylized look that captures the dark tone of a city where corruption runs rampant.

In the police department, detective Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) is possibly the sole honest cop. And prowling Gotham City are mobsters, their minions and other villains in the making: the future Catwoman, Penguin and Riddler.

Even a bustling neighborhood, where early in the pilot young Bruce (David Mazouz) walks with his parents after a movie, becomes suddenly dark with a turn around a corner. There, a lurking gunman kills the couple in front of their terrified son.

The visual landscape “was mandated to me by [Gotham executive producer–pilot director] Danny Cannon,” says production designer Richard Berg, the two-time Emmy nominee for ABC’s Modern Family who joined Gotham on episode 10, teaming for that installment with departing designer Doug Kraner. (The other two exec producers are show creator Bruno Heller and John Stephens; the series is based on characters from the DC Comics’ Batman.) 

“’The action is very exciting,’” Berg recalls Cannon telling him. The director also explained the established Gotham look: “The tonality value is on the gray scale, and for the color palette, we tend to stay in the greens and blues.’”

Shades of gray are seen in the set of the police station, the show’s home base, which, Kraner explains, was to have “this powerful, foreboding presence looming over the occupants all the time.”

For the design, he drew inspiration in part from the nineteenth-century Victorian Gothic architecture of the St. Pancras railroad station in London, along with, he says, “crumbling cathedrals, where good had been done in their time, but no more.”

With Gotham set vaguely in the late ‘1970s to mid-‘80s, one challenge, Kraner adds, has been to keep the New York shooting locations from looking too contemporary.

”Gotham doesn’t feel like a modern TV show,” he explains, as evidenced by the car models and lack of smartphones. “New York in the ’80s had a much more gritty look. We’re always in the process of altering locations.”

Being too attractive is another no-no, not only for city streets and storefronts, but even for the Long Island mansion that doubles for Wayne Manor, Bruce’s home and the one locale that is non-threatening.

“There was a topiary by the fountain,” Berg recalls. “We digitally removed the pretty nature and replaced it with less pretty.” That goes for the sun, as well, which is routinely removed digitally and replaced with clouds.

And while the show is dark, it still must be visible. Both designers include light sources in their rooms, sometimes as windows and sometimes in corners or hidden away, to reduce the time and effort spent lighting the set.

Their concern for lighting is appreciated by Christopher Norr, one of the show’s directors of photography (along with Thomas Yatsko). He, too, conferred with EP-director Cannon.

“Danny gave me two references: the movies Seven [a crime thriller] and Blade Runner [a sci-fi thriller],” Norr says. “Seven was mostly for the darkness, and how light is used, especially in the dark spaces. Blade Runner was for the moving aspects and atmospheric details, such as rain.”

Cannon also described the color palette. But “for your eye to understand it,” Norr explains, “you need the opposite color to complement. If I have a dark scene, I add some gold light in the background.”

A blue-toned police headquarters scene at sunset, for instance, called for some golden shafts of light to break through.

Norr uses fog either in conjunction with lighting or to soften shadows. It can also become haze or a steam effect, rising from the sewers; the latter, he says, is “a Gotham look.”

At Cannon’s behest, Norr uses an abundance of wide shots: “You don’t often do that in television,” he points out. He also goes for a framing technique when possible, for example, shooting a scene through a doorway.

Norr sometimes takes his visual cues from the show’s villains. In a scene in Norr’s first episode, the Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor), then an underling who would rise to control the city’s crime world in the season-one finale, brought cannoli to some thugs he’d hired to rob his boss. The symmetrical arrangement of the pastries inspired Norr to compose the shot, he says, “with the same depth of symmetrical architecture.”

Villainess Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith), who seemingly met her demise in the season finale, had been as evil as they come, but the nightclub she once owned had a different feel.

“Her set had a very warm atmosphere,” Norr says. “I used amber light.”

Norr’s and Cannon’s concepts carry through to the picture editing.

“We always try to use as many wide shots as we can, to show off the arena [the characters] are in,” says Mark C. Baldwin, an Emmy nominee for Chicago Hope and one of the show’s three editors, along with John Ganem and Daniel Gabbe. “First, of course, come the story and performance, but it’s the ambiance they’re working in that factors in to how you cut a scene.”

Ganem adds: “The shots give us an exceptional level of depth, so we can stay wider.” Though the show’s style is one of heightened reality, remaining close to the characters helps to ground the reality somewhat, while the tone and nuance provided by the production designers and directors of photography add dimension to the actors’ performances.  

As for those performances, “You let the material guide you,” Baldwin says. “Every character has their own flavor. It’s a very different edit for Fish Mooney than for [mob boss] Carmine Falcone [John Doman]. Falcone has this weight to him. It’s fearsome. You let that sink in. It’s more slow and deliberate.”

As Mooney, Ganem adds, “[Pinkett Smith] makes gestures. The actor does wider physical interpretations, so you might give her room to move around.”

Does it ever get depressing, working on such a dark series? “Oh, no,” Kraner says. “It’s delicious!” Adds Berg: “We’re living in this ‘other’ New York. It’s refreshing and great.”

And, says Norr: “We’re all in it for what’s going on the screen, being bold. I feel like it’s a gigantic movie. I don’t think there’s anything else like it on television. I’m very proud to work on the show.”

Photographs by Jessica Miglio/Fox