According to Comicbook, the VFX team for Max’s The Penguin developed a new type of prop gun to make shootout scenes safer. The recent second episode of the series showed viewers the first full-fledged action scene. *Spoilers ahead* During the episode titled “Inside Man,” Oz Cobblepot, also known as the Penguin, double-crossed the Falcone mob family by informing their rival family, the Maroni mob, with information on where and when to find the drug stockpile as the Falcone tries to relocate to another town. Cobblepot gets caught with the Falcon boss, Johnny Viti, who orders him to ride on the truck that is getting hit by the Maroni. When the heist goes down, he is forced to fight to stay alive while still keeping his cover with his current family. The result is a bloody shootout on the backstreets of Gotham City, which proves that The Penguin will not slouch when it comes to major action set pieces.
As per Comicbook, during HBO’s “The Penguin – Inside Episode 2” featurette, Johnny Han (Pacific Rim, Superman Returns) supervisor for Visual Effects revealed that the team working on The Penguin developed a new type of prop gun to use on set. This new prop gun offers the actors the physical interaction they need, gives the VFX teams something more convincing to work with and keeps the set safe.
“So for ‘FEMA heist’ our team developed these flash guns where they look like regular guns but they have an enormously bright camera flash that could be triggered by the actors so that they could wield it and feel that flash of light as they pull the trigger,” Han explained. “We felt this was a really unique approach to doing gunfire because for safety it helps us not use real guns on set.”
The Penguin is available to stream on Max.