BACKGROUND

What is your background?

Henning: I studied graphic design ‚ very traditional ‚ at a private school in Hamburg, and I never could make the decision whether I would go to an advertising agency or work in graphic design for a packaging agency, or do web design. I was interested in everything, so I did a lot of internships, and then started my own company, Design Tourist. One of my first jobs was working for a German bank in London on a big website project for an Internet broker. That went on for half a year until in 2000 when the economy went down. I came back to Berlin and did bits and pieces for small companies in Berlin and a few start ups: logos, corporate design, posters, brochures and things like that, and a few websites as well.

How did you get into film work?

Henning: I started, almost four years ago, to work for a TV show called Gute Zeiten, Schlechte Zeiten ‚ Good Times, Bad Times. My friend Jan called me to see if I would like to share the job with him: two and a half days work in the studio producing packaging, magazines, posters, and things where they can't use real packaging. Everything in that TV show is fake to avoid product placement. After about two years there I got a call from the supervising art director of The Bourne Supremacy, which was also shot here in Studio Babelsberg. So I got into film.

Did you find you had to be more detailed for film than for TV?

Henning: Yes, and the big difference was that it wasn't only packaging, newspapers, and magazines, but signs for shops and street signs, because they shot Moscow scenes in Berlin. Basically we had to transfer Berlin into Moscow, including everything like big posters, street signs, shop windows, number plates, flyers, everything. I love designing lots of different things, and I'm glad if something survives on the screen.

V FOR VENDETTA

How did you get the call to work on V?

Henning: I was at the production of Aeon Flux and they cancelled the scene that I was there for that day, but I heared that Owen [Paterson, Production Designer] for interviews and I joined the list of applicants. Owen didn't explain the project very much, he just said we're going to have a new government, and we might have a logo there, and we're shooting scenes that are supposed to be in London, but we're shooting them in Berlin or on set. I said I was used to that ‚ making Berlin into something else. Owen is a very nice guy, very relaxed. I had the interview in December, and started in the middle of January.

At what point did it start to dawn on you how much design work was actually needed?

Henning: It started with lots of locations. I talked to the Supervising Art Director [Kevin Phipps], to the designer [Owen], Set Decorator [Peter Walpole], and the prop guys [Ty Teiger & Axel Kahnt], and we talked about where the shootings would be, what we were going to need there, and how that would affect the graphics.

It started with big things, like giant posters, government posters that appear in the comic already. The poster design was kind of already there, we decided to stick to that to get the link to the comic. Then it went down to other posters, like the TV station for example, I did lots of posters for that, including the logo, of course.

Did you know of the graphic novel before starting work?

Henning: I didn't know the comic before, but I bought it to get a better idea of the project. The script didn't look that dark, but when I read the comic I knew better how the whole design idea could be.

VALERIE'S SHRINE

What was your most challenging set from a graphics point of view?

Henning: I think it was Valerie's shrine that I did the movie posters for. That was a really nice job. Owen liked a Klimt painting, which became the inspiration for the hero poster, and he gave me some other references. The photographs were taken when the actress arrived ‚ I only had a few days to do the design, just two days before they shot it. The set photographer, David Appleby, took some really good pictures of the actress in different positions and hairstyles, and from there I used Photoshop to create different looks to make posters for really different kinds of films.

Each of the posters you created have 'film credits', how do you get approved names for that, and 'titles' for the films?

Henning: That's a pretty big issue ‚ clearance. The titles came from James, I think, and that went to clearance first. There was a list of about fifteen or twenty titles, and I chose some of them from what was approved that fit the photography. The names I used for the credits are from crew members on this film who agreed that their names could be used. It's the same credits on every poster.

So David took the photos, and you looked at the photos and decided what the design was going to be?

Henning: I had some rough ideas that I drew in my book before, and when the photographs came, I did the Photoshop work and took some extra pictures for the backgrounds. On The Separatist, for example, I took a picture of the wall and put it all together. The Salt Flats poster was in the graphic novel, so the composition is closer to that one. I couldn't use the one in the comic because it didn't really look like a movie poster. When the designs were finished and approved I sent them to one of the printing companies around here.

TV STATION

Where did the idea for the posters for Deitrich's show come from?

Henning: The inspiration for Dietrich's Half Hour came from a poster for Metropolis, which had to be made a bit more modern and a bit funnier than Metropolis. I wanted to use the corporate colors for the TV station, I started with a dark blue, made the logo, and then that had to fit into the whole BTN (British Television Network] design world.

I did lots of designs for the poster for Deitrich's show. I proposed a few London buildings, took a few hero buildings, like Big Ben in the middle, and then added the blue and gold coloring. It took a while to create this because I worked with a wrong perspective, the angles are totally crazy. I started with a picture of Big Ben then I drew it on the computer, using my own perspectives. Owen liked it very much and he wanted another poster for the band, and I had to do it all again with music instruments. Then he took the poster to get the set made out of it.

The first thing I did work for on BTN - poster-wise - was the Lewis Prothero Voice of London poster that was inspired by books of Italian futurism in the 1930s. I created a graphic element that we call English sunrise, which we find everywhere. The sunrise is also a symbol for all the Norsefire-related companies. You find that everywhere: on the margarine truck that drives into Larkhill, in the newspapers, on the money, in all the designs for the British Television Network, and on the boxes of the courier company, BFC [British Freight Company].

We also used the same typeface everywhere, which is the typeface for the London Underground. That was something Owen wanted, he bought the font and said maybe we're going to use it, not only for the production, but for bigger signs and everything, just to get the connection to the Underground, and to make it really English. Only the Valerie posters have a different font because that's from the time before the Norsefire government.

How much control do you have of colors that are used, such as those for the TV Station?

Henning: We talked about it and said it has to be a dark color, but doesn't have to be black. The first posters for Prothero were black and white, but were changed into a color that would be more friendly ‚ a bit warmer.

Did you work on any screen graphics for the TV shows?

Henning: I proposed some ideas for the crisis at Jordan TV Tower, for the special emergency report, and the V graphic that is on the television when V makes his speech. We started with something that turned out to be too prominent for the whole picture: V sitting in front of a screen with sprayed Vs instead of a red curtain, until it came to the V in a circle with the drips.

How did V come to the TV Station with his own graphics for the broadcast?

Henning: His speech was prerecorded. He breaks into the TV station and brings his DVD and throws it on.

Did you work on getting the V spray painted in the circle?

Henning: Owen started with something he did in Photoshop, but only on one layer, just red on black. But sometimes we use it on white, and we thought we should really spray it - that was in the days before shooting began, and we had the press conference coming here ‚ so I sprayed a few versions in different shades of red and on different surfaces. However, in the end it changed againÖ Owen took his original file back and added some drips to make the final. Owen spent a lot of time on that, getting the drips and texture to look right.

How did the television logo begin?

Henning: The BTN logo started with the sunrise, although another idea was to use a simple version of a map of England without the islands. In the beginning, the TV Station was called FBBC, which didn't get through clearance. We thought we had finished the BTN logo, which was just the letters 'BTN' with 'British Television Network' below, really small but still readable, but clearance said the height of the smaller letters had to be 50% of the height of the initials, which destroyed the whole design. It was like, make BTN big and British Television Network even bigger. I'm not sure why it had to be that way. What I did then is make very condensed letters and push it all together, and now the words are about 50% of the size of the initials.

How long does it take for clearances?

Henning: They're pretty quick, so it only takes a few daysÖ sometimes just the night or a few hours. The problem is that they're based in Los Angeles and start working when we finish. The guy who's working there starts working pretty early, so we just have an hour where we can write and answer e-mails.

How do you know where the line is between what needs to be cleared and what doesn't?

Henning: I just guess. The signage in the TV Station didn't go through clearance, but the logo had to be cleared. The obvious things go through clearance, but as soon as I have a logo and use it on paper or little signs it should but OK, but still, it's a guess.

Do you show each iteration of a design to Owen or to James?

Henning: I show designs to Owen first and a few things survive, so I continue to work on those ideas, and if he thinks it's OK, he goes over to James.

NORSEFIRE

Was it fun to go on the riff of security, the eyes, the Fingermen?

Henning: Yes, of course. It was a big challenge to create a whole world that started with a symbol for the Norsefire government and then went to every company that is controlled or run by the government, like police, military, Fingermen, the TV station, and the newspapers.

Was the Norsefire symbol in the graphic novel?

Henning: No, it wasn't. In the comic, there was a symbol on the poster that had a cross and wings on it, but without any color, and Owen came up with the idea of a double cross. We decided on red and black because you connect those colors with those kinds of regimes. Owen did a very quick drawing of the double cross, then I made the details and showed some other proportions, and we found the right thing.

Were you able to see the Norsefire Rally set with the Norsefire flags flying?

Henning: I didn't get to see it at all. That's a big difference from this to other productions - I'm normally at the location first to have a look at it.

Did the Norsefire logo start differently?

Henning: Originally it was just an N in a circle, white on black, and then red on black, and then it went on to this double cross and to the flag. It's used on all the paperwork, from Larkhill to the police station and the special reports for SutlerÖ there's tons of paperwork. The logo is also on ID cards and signage for the fences in Larkhill, and for the Fingermen. I also created wanted posters of Evey and files of her parents.

How did the logo for the police progress?

Henning: I played with the same elements ‚ the sunrise, the font, and the shape of the symbol. The model makers did a really good job on that; they made a little sculpture of it, and then the badges were created.

I also had to make a design for the police cars. The guy who's doing all the vinyl stuff for us took the cast for a week, and put three layers of reflecting foil on each car. The number plates were also fake and, of course. I had to create different styles of number plates for police, Norsefire, and private cars.

Did you create anything unusual for the Norsefire regime?

Henning: I did mini CDs for Creedy - in twenty years they only use small CDs that hold tons of gigabytes of data and music. Creedy listens to popular classics and piano concerts - I didn't want to go into clearance troubles too much by having him listen to Elvis or something.

How did you go about making the Norsefire money?

Henning: I started with a picture of Sutler, then I made a little painting and did a lot of Photoshop work to make it look like an old drawingÖ creating the money was a lot of work.

For the newspapers, where did the text come from?

Henning: We have three different newspapers: there's the England Morning News, The Three Lions, and The Vanguard. The big headlines came from James. I made up the smaller headlines. Normally I looked at references, going through English newspapers, just to read a bit and to get ideas. The first two sentences in our articles are real, but the rest is just subtext.

OTHER GRAPHICS

What was the design process for the Sutler as Queen poster?

Henning: The inspiration was an album single cover for the Sex Pistols' God Save The Queen. I took a picture of the actor and made the first version where Sutler's eyes are covered and you can't really recognize him. In the script Evey says, ìOh, I know that piece of art. Isn't it God Save The Queen?î. It went from there to a nice collage of the Queen and actor combined in black and white. Owen wanted it to look like a Warhol artwork, so I switched the colors.

How did you get a photograph of John Hurt?

Henning: I used pictures that I got from his agent, where he was a lot younger, shaved and friendly looking. We had the graphic approved by clearance, which wasn't that easy because it was Warhol and the Sex Pistols. When John Hurt showed up, he had a beard, and I had to do it all again.

Were you involved with the jukebox in the Shadow Gallery?

Henning: Would you imagine that all the songs came from James? He wrote a three page list with the titles he wanted in the jukebox. It's James' iPod collection, I think! I added a few more titles to the list, got them cleared, printed all these little labels, cut them out and put them in the jukebox.

Did you work on the Mausoleum set that had all the names?

Henning: Yes, we had to decide on the stone, and between different foils in different shades of grey, silver and metallic. In an early version almost everyone from the crew had their names on the wall, but the big crew names and the German names didn't survive on the final. Lots of names were from a telephone book, and had to be cleared. It was a long list, enough for two or three of the wall pieces, and then I just flipped around the namesÖ hopefully no one is going to read it!

What sort of background graphics did you create?

Henning: Tons of paperwork: special files about Prothero, Evey and V, as well as surveillance camera stuff. Simple things like phone extension lists, and all kinds of reports for the police station, Larkhill and BTN. I also did tax reports for Sutler, Prothero, and Lilliman that go into a lot of detail. They weren't that easy, but I had reference of real tax documents from England so I could make fakes. All of the amounts are made up, so I don't know if it makes any sense, but they had to look real. I also made bank statements for Prothero, showing that he was one of the richest people in England. I also created products for the Grocery store and brand labels for the pub like Adam's Ale, Adam's Best Bitter, Adam's Lager and a few whiskey and gin labels.

Where do you get your ideas?

Henning: I start with looking for references, go through books, I Google a lot, and for complicated items like the tax things, we had a person in London who provided us with good references.

In creating maps for the London Underground, where did you find reference?

Henning: I used photos from the real Victoria Station. The London Underground has a pretty good website, where you can get design manuals that show what the proportions are, what sizes they use for train stations, bus stations, or whatever. That was pretty helpful.

How did you deal with changing Berlin street signs to be like London signs?

Henning: Most of the street signs are basically the same as in Germany, slightly different in proportion and color maybe. Also, you see security camera signs more often in London ‚ it's actually very typical for London - so I chose a few signs like that to put up just to make clear that we're not in Berlin.

Thanks Henning.