Production Companies Silver Pictures, Anarchos Productions Inc. (in association with), Warner Bros. (as Warner Bros. Productions Limited), Fünfte Babelsberg Film (as Fünfte Babelsberg Film GmbH), Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (with the assistance of), DC Comics (Vertigo
V For Vendetta is set in London in the near future. Though still anchored by venerable landmarks such as Parliament, Old Bailey and Big Ben, the city, like the rest of the country, has fallen into a state of post-war isolation and depression. Chancellor Adam Sutler wrested incalculable power over this tightly-controlled society by championing his extremist Norsefire party as England’s only safeguard against war, disease and famine. Yet Sutler’s oppressive policies have stripped the culture of its spirit, vitality and hope. Food is rationed but fear is in great supply. Personal freedoms are an antiquated notion of the past, and no one dare raise a voice in dissent, lest they be “black bagged” by Fingermen – Minister Creedy’s secret police force – and never heard from again.
Led by director James McTeigue, the V For Vendetta filmmakers strived to capture the essence of present-day London in their rendering of the film’s grim socio-political landscape. “England has become quite soulless,” says production designer Owen Paterson, who previously collaborated with McTeigue and the Wachowski Brothers on the Matrix trilogy. “We tried to create a London that is very recognizable, yet frozen by having become this totalitarian state.”
Paterson and costume designer Sammy Sheldon used a palette of gray tones to evoke the bleak, regimented pall that envelops the city and its citizens. “In this environment, choice is limited,” set decorator Peter Walpole notes. “You might be able to buy a car or a can of baked beans, but there’s only one brand available. This was reflected in the television studio set, for example. All of the monitors are the same brand, and all of the desks and chairs are exactly the same.”
The film was largely shot on soundstages and interior settings to underscore the story’s tone of anxiety and alienation. “We wanted to create a sense of claustrophobia, so the film is very purposefully interior,” McTeigue explains.
Filming began in March 2005 at Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam, Germany. With nearby Berlin doubling for a handful of practical locations, the production spent ten weeks on the Babelsberg soundstages before moving to London for a few weeks to shoot principal exterior sequences.
Paterson oversaw the design and construction of a staggering 89 sets for the Babelsberg segment of production alone, including the Jordan television tower, home to the government-controlled British Television Network; Victoria Station, a former stop on the ruins of the Underground, which the government shut down years ago; as well as another critical section of the Underground that V has commandeered for use in his plot to blow up Parliament.
On historic Stage 2, where Fritz Lang’s classic futuristic thriller Metropolis was filmed in 1927, the cast and crew of 500 inhabited the grandest and most elaborate of Paterson’s sets: the labyrinthine Shadow Gallery.
Like V himself, his subterranean lair is elegant, mysterious and enthralling – a stylish cross between a crypt and a church, carved from the passageways beneath the city. “I envisioned the Shadow Gallery as an expanded ace of clubs, with a central space and chambers spiralling outwards from the middle,” McTeigue says of the sprawling set, which includes a library, V’s dressing room, a kitchen and a screening room/lounge. “It feels like it’s located beneath some great cultural institution that has long been closed down by the government.”
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