‘Squid Game’ Season 2 Production Designer on Building a ‘Festival of Death’

The slow days between Christmas and New Year’s are usually a time for gaming, but it feels like the perfect stretch to make room for Squid Game’s second season, so to speak. Netflix’s advertising blitz of pastel-neon colors and brand partnerships for Hwang Dong-hyuk’s series was at least as strong as capitalism’s callous incentives to make a sequel. It is to the credit of director Hwang and his entire production team that they tackle the sequel to the show head on. “Squid Game” Season 2 has a broader and darker atmosphere that fits our expanded view of the systems that make the games run.

Production designer Chae Kyoung-sun faced the ultimate television challenge; She and her team had to build a world that was deeply familiar, but also different and surprising enough that even Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) felt trapped in the bright, pastel maze of the Squid Game compound when he knowingly beginning Player 456’s mantle to bring down the games from within once and for all.

More from IndieWire

Working with costume designer Jo Sang-gyeong, Chae’s use of color to design the Squid Game sets is a big part of what gives the series such a distinctive take on the South Korean battle royale hellscape formula. Regardless of any new work, it’s great to see the original production team getting additional credit for the designs that brought everything from sneakers and phone cases to an actual reality series to market.

However, Chae takes the second season’s opportunity to mature the series’ nursery in The Bad Place aesthetic, showcasing the Masked Guards who run the games on behalf of the frontman (Lee Byung-hun), and finding ways to How the games can do this also affects Gi-hun’s life in Seoul. IndieWire reached out to the Emmy Award-winning production designer and asked her how the production design continues to give the series real grit and grit as it looks more shiny and innocent.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

IndieWire: I would like to ask if the game world can be expanded to include the masked guards’ quarters. How did you make these spaces feel different and scarier while still maintaining the familiar “Squid Game” look?

Chae Kyoung-sun: One of the main new features of Season 2 is the hierarchy within the Pink Guards. In Season 1, we only showed the masked worker dormitory. But for Season 2, we introduced new rooms for Pink Guards, such as the Masked Soldiers’ Dormitory, their Weapons Depot, and the Masked Managers’ Dormitory. I wanted to show the differences in hierarchy within the world of the Pink Guards, since the Pink Guards are divided into such different ranks. The rooms for masked soldiers (who have a higher rank than masked workers) are larger and have a shower room.

I also spent a lot of time thinking about the colors for the masked soldiers room. The reason for using orange was to highlight its more negative connotations and symbolic meaning. I felt that deep orange was even more driven by desire and ambition than red, symbolizing a strong drive for entitlement and conquest.

There is also a final staircase leading to the control room. This room serves as a path to the masked managers’ dormitory and also as a setting for the players’ rebellion against the frontman. Purple was used for this room. Purple has many symbolic meanings, but I chose it as the color of ultimate power and placed it on the path leading to the top of the labyrinth staircase.

Extending the series’ iconic staircase to work for a shootout in Episode 7 seems like a really interesting challenge. Has anything been added or changed to make the gunfight between players and guards work?

The firefight in the stairwell marks the beginning of a decisive event. It’s the point where the tension reaches its peak, the meeting between Gi-hun and the frontman takes place, and sets the stage for changes and twists in the next game and story.

In Season 1, we focused on creating a sense of vertical depth with continuous connections. This time we designed the maze staircase to unfold horizontally, imagining wider layers while planning the movements for the gunfight scenes. I wanted to incorporate the endlessly repeating structure of Korean homes. By using the corridor-like layout of Korean apartments as a basis for the bridge paths, I wanted to add more variety to the action scenes between Pink Guards and Rebels and present the ultimate labyrinth staircase design.

Speaking of labyrinths, I would like to ask about the hotel in the first episodes where Gi-hun hides; How do the design choices help us understand the cost of surviving the games?

While I was reading the script, I thought that the name “Pink Motel” had some meaning. It felt like the Pink Guards and their color Pink continued to overwhelm Gi-hun. That’s why I chose pink for the sofa that Recruiter sits on and painted the doors of the Pink Motel pink. I wanted them to signal Gi-hun’s fate and foreshadow the beginning of the Squid game.

In Season 2, many characters face important decisions, including Gi-hun. The branching corridor structure was designed to visually symbolize the concept of “choices” – the choices faced by characters entering the Pink Motel. This is where survivor Gi-hun lives, but it also feels like a place stuck in the past, as if time has stood still.

Entering Gi-hun’s room through the corridor, one sees an empty and hollow room furnished with only the bare essentials. Using dividers, we pushed him further into a corner and placed a mirror and a CCTV monitor opposite each other, creating the impression that Gi-hun was even monitoring himself. By grouping the elements most important to a person – such as the sleeping area – alongside surveillance elements in a space that is not even that narrow, we wanted to reflect Gi-hun’s psychological state in which he can never truly feel comfortable.

The palm tree pictures on the bathroom window also show his longing for his family in LA. At the shooting range, there are signs of his practice and concentration: bullet holes and hand-drawn targets. Dead plants, calendars, clocks, dust and cobwebs reflect how time stood still for Gi-hun after he survived the games.

I wondered what it would be like if, for someone living in such a realistic nightmare, reality itself seemed blurry and dreamlike. For this reason, I added details such as dust deposited on the inside of frames where Gi-hun appears, such as bathroom mirrors and motel windows, or water stains left behind. I wanted to create a strong contrast between the vibrant colors that fill the play zone and Gi-hun’s blurry, gloomy reality.

I would also like to ask about the new games in season 2. What decisions had to be made to make these spaces feel novel, but still use the same language as the games we’ve seen before?

The set for the pentathlon came from the idea of ​​Sports Day, which all primary school students look forward to during the school year. The focus is not on attacking or competing with others, but rather on harmony and unity within the team. The set was designed to resemble a primary school, with backgrounds made up of crayon clouds like children’s drawings. Bulletin boards, lesson plans, and doodles you might find in a classroom have been recreated.

The aim was for the participants in the game arena to briefly return to their childhood and remember their youth. However, in this environment, the participants who risk their lives appear desperate, and if they fail, their blood will splatter across the dirt floor and the beautifully painted rainbow-colored track. Objects that evoke nostalgia for the world of childhood are important elements in “Squid Game.”

The Pentathlon is also designed with elements inspired by the playground from the second game of the first season, Dalgona. With a sky background with clouds that appear to have been drawn by children with crayons and a playground floor covered with rammed earth, Gi-hun is confused as soon as he enters the arena, unsure whether it is the same playground setting or not .

The set that I personally care about the most in Season 2 is the Mingle Play Arena. I wanted to create a space where all participants could actually play the game and walk around anxiously like pieces on a chess board.

With the frontman hosting Season 2, we wanted to create a gaming arena that reflected his memories and imagination. I imagined a place that the frontman, who had lost his family, might have wanted to visit with his wife and child, and incorporated the symbolic image of an amusement park carousel into the setting. It was a new challenge, and although it looks like a celebration, I wanted to present a world that spins both beautiful and scary, like a festival of death.

Were the recurring sets easy to recreate, or was there something difficult about recreating things like the dormitory and red light/green light? Is there anything you were able to do differently the second time around?

Rooms that appeared in Season 1 have now become iconic rooms of Squid Game. I never thought we would have to recreate them exactly as they were!

We focused on rediscovering the blueprints, the color numbers we used at the time, and the finishing materials we worked on with the set team. One of the improvements we made due to the challenges in Season 1 was to make the (dorm) mattresses lighter, as they were previously too heavy, and we also made it easier to put on the bed covers.

In terms of size, we were able to expand the height and width of the dormitory by around 330 square meters. When creating the O and

It would be interesting to watch Season 2 and imagine what the dorm will look like at the end of the season. I hope viewers enjoy Season 2 and that it stimulates lots of thought and discussion. Also look forward to the new sets in Season 3!

“Squid Game” Season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.

The best of IndieWire

Sign up for Indiewire’s newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.