www.forbes.com: Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix have been receiving a lot of the praise for Joker (and rightly s0), but what about the other crew members? It takes a village to raise an iconic Gotham City villain, so let’s take a minute to appreciate the unsung heroes of the movie like production designer Mark Friedberg.
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I just saw Joker this past weekend and was absolutely stunned by the visual presentation of the film. This article actually helped me pick out a lot of the fine details that Friedberg included in his design to further portray the mind of the Joker. I thought that calling Gotham City the Joker’s antagonist was extremely interesting, and it makes complete sense. The Joker is bogged down by his surroundings, in which it enters his mind and drives him crazy. Friedberg used overpasses and tight, confined spaces in order to visually portray this pressure in his mind. Every detail was there. Before seeing this film I was not really excited to go because I have never been into comic films and superhero movies. I had never really watched any and felt like I would be confused, but I was totally wrong. The portrayal of this movie as the story of a character was very effective. It drew in the comic fans and regular viewers and shared something that everyone could watch and understand. I thoroughly enjoyed Joker.
This article is and interesting insight into how difficult it is becoming to produce period city films as time sees their demise. I just watched Joker over the weekend, and aside from being an excellent film, in my opinion, the setting and location was perfect. Not once do you see a single modern building which are becoming every so common as cities such as New York are gentrified ad modernized. I actually remember thinking to myself while watching the film, wondering where it was shot, because when I’ve been to New York, I haven’t seen blocks and blocks of the classic, grungy, dirty buildings seen in the film. I wondered if perhaps some of it was done in a backlot. However, this article goes to show the effort which production teams put in to scouting optimal locations. This reminded me of when I visited Hobbiton in New Zealand. Hobbiton, the location which the Hobbit films were shot, is a remote family owned ranch in the heart of the north island of New Zealand. This location was found by location scouts flying over the islands by helicopter. The production team knocked on the owner’s front door and arranged a deal to use their land, just for filming the movie. It amazes me the lengths a production will go to just to get that perfect locations, but I love the ultimate result.
I was ecstatic for this film to come out, both as a comic book fan and as a psychological horror/thriller fan. It wasn’t until I actually saw the film that I realized how crazy elaborate the film actually is. As the article mentions, the filmmakers had to seek out the smallest, most time-preserved pieces of New York, among other cities, in which they succeeded. I watched a video recently of Todd Phillips reflecting on the first scene and the creation of the world, and it was truly fascinating to watch their process in developing a fictional, 80’s-like set out of a pre-existing world. In doing this, it is to my understanding that the film crew blocked out the street to allow for time-appropriate cars to create traffic for the shoot. Then, they picked which building in the background would be the trigger for the artificial background, whereas they selected the modern city in the background and replaced it with a time-period-similar landscape. Through this process, the creators were able to construct a completely artificial city-scape based in the precise time period they aimed for. In this, the filmmakers succeeded significantly in setting the time period and in creating a cold, oppressed, darkly realistic tone. While this of course was only one part of making the movie as wonderful as it was, it proved an incredibly effective part, and my friends and I all noticed the details throughout, too, even discussing the setting specifically following our showing.
I went to see “Joker” with a group of friends last weekend without any expectations. I’m not especially into typical superhero movies - I think it’s an over-used trope that absolutely never changes. I mean, honestly, how many different iterations of Spider Man do you need? After watching this movie, however, I am honestly taken aback. It was a visually stunning production, which was obviously so very carefully crafted by production designer Mark Friedberg. I absolutely agree with him about the importance of texture and grit contributing not only to the movie as a whole, but also to Arthur’s character development (or, rather, the unraveling of the character) in “Joker”. Even subconsciously, the viewer sees the minute details about the environment that Arthur (the Joker) is living in and how they contrast to the world in which Thomas Wayne (you know, Batman’s dad) lives in without even processing that they are, well, processing these visuals. It’s interesting looking at the stills in this article because, while in the movie, the scenes they are from just hit differently. This is probably due to the physical motion and emotion of the scene but, even in the stills, there is obvious character outside of the actual characters that shape the film.
Having not seen Joker (and I’ll probably never see it), this was still a fascinating look into the production design and direction of a unique, twisted film. I feel like I have a better understanding of the story and the justification of the movie- I appreciated the fact that the design/production team did not just want to make “another superhero/comic book movie.” Having read the article, the movie seems like it should be billed as a psychological/horror movie rather than one based on a comic book. I found it particularly fascinating how Gotham City is made out to be the antagonist in the story, rather than any one person. The Joker’s descent into madness is taken to be a result of his reaction to the environment he is in, suggesting that, had this movie taken place anywhere else, the Joker’s struggle would not be as believable or “justified.”
Production designers are so detailed and talented and after seeing “Joker” I can passionately say that Mark Friedberg did NOT disappoint! As a self-proclaimed production design buff, I sat through the film, closely observing the locations, constantly wondering if they were using cgi or studio sets or actually shooting on locations in the many outside scenes. From the alleyways to the subways, everything looked so genuinely gritty and true to the time period/setting that Friedberg imagined up. It’s really interesting that Friedberg had to search so hard to find these true worn down locations. While it does mean that cities are improving in their infrastructure, the grittiness doesn’t always mean gross and bad. The heritage of these locations are being lost with the new. Anyways, it’s really amazing that Friedberg paid so much attention to the detail of creating this new Gotham, and that he also was so aware of Arthur’s character, and the relationship between the two. The detail was insane. I saw no modern glass buildings. The signage (fonts and the grittiness of the signs themselves) was spot on. A beautiful film.
I recently saw the Joker movie and have many thoughts about it. First I did really love the production design. You can tell they spent a lot of time and money trying to recreate the 80’s verison of new York. In some aspects I think they were really successful, the garbage everywhere was great. However, I think they could have done more. I don’t think I noticed any porn houses or drug dealers or any of the grim of New York. While I was not around during this time it was widely known that new York was not a safe place to be. I wish there was a way for them to show the grittness more than they did. I also think there recreation of the late night show was great. In the article it says they shot almost everywhere and I think it served the movie well that went to multiple locations.
As someone who has seen the Joker movie, I was very impressed with the presentation of the story. Part of that presentation is the production design. It is interesting to know that the creative team had to search hard to find places to film in since the city has become so gentrified. It is interesting that the film is a grounded exploration of a comic book character, and that the city plays such a large role in setting up his journey. It's fascinating to know that the production designer for the film has worked on The Amazing Spider Man 2, a film which was received very poorly and that his experience on the film made him shy away from the superhero genre as a whole. It is good to know that he has an integrity when it comes to his work and that he chose to do Joker because it seemed like a film that aligned with what kinds of projects he wants to be a part of.
The location scouting for this movie were really on point the whole time. They did an incredible job of world building out of existing cities and places that created a whole new Gotham that I had never seen before. I can imagine it was hard for them to find the places they wanted in order to create this vision, and so it makes sense that they had to expand out further than just New York City itself. Trying to capture a time period and a new city out of existing ones is an impressive challenge that they rose to wonderfully. The staircase they found has really become synonymous with the movie, and has even turned into a landmark in New York that internet fans are going wild over. It is a great location that speaks to the character and ideas of the movie wonderfully. They really did an incredible job of using their location scouting to build their movie and the image they were going for.
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