DESIGN AND MUSIC

The show's look and atmosphere were developed by creator Álex Pina, director Jesús Colmenar, and director of photography Migue Amoedo, according to La Vanguardia "the most prolific television trio in recent years".[42] Abdón Alcañiz served as art director.[43] Their collaboration projects usually take a primary colour as a basis;[43] Money Heist had red as "one of the distinguishing features of the series"[44] that stood over the gray sets.[45] Blue, green and yellow were marked as a forbidden colour in production design.[45] To achieve "absolute film quality", red tones were tested with different types of fabrics, textures and lighting.[46] The iconography of the robbers' red jumpsuits mirrored the yellow prison dress code in Locked Up.[44] For part 3, the Italian retail clothing company Diesel modified the red jumpsuits to better fit the body and launched a clothing line inspired by the series.[45] Salvador Dalí was chosen as the robbers' mask design because of Dalí's recognisable visage that also serves as an iconic cultural reference to Spain; Don Quixote as an alternative mask design was discarded.[47] This choice sparked criticism by the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation for not requesting the necessary permissions.[27]

To make the plot more realistic, the producers requested and received advice from the national police and the Spanish Ministry of Interior.[48][49] The robbers' banknotes were printed with permission of the Bank of Spain and had an increased size as an anti-counterfeit measure.[48] The greater financial backing of Netflix for part 3 allowed for the build of over 50 sets across five basic filming locations world-wide.[50] Preparing a remote and uninhabited island in Panama to represent a robber hide-out proved difficult, as it needed to be cleaned, secured and built on, and involved hours-long travelling with material transportation.[46] The real Bank of Spain was unavailable for visiting and filming for security reasons, so the producers recreated the Bank on a two-level stage by their own imagining, taking inspiration from Spanish architecture of the Francisco Franco era.[46] Publicly available information was used to make the Bank's main hall set similar to the real location. The other interior sets were inspired by different periods and artificially aged to accentuate the building's history.[50] Bronze and granite sculptures and motifs from the Valle de los Caídos were recreated for the interior,[46] and over 50 paintings were painted for the Bank to emulate the Ateneo de Madrid.[50]

MUSIC

The series' theme song, "My Life Is Going On," was composed by Manel Santisteban, who also served as composer on Locked Up. Santisteban approached Spanish singer, Cecilia Krull, to write and perform the lyrics, which are about having confidence in one's abilities and the future.[60] The theme song is played behind a title sequence featuring paper models of major settings from the series.[60] Krull's main source of inspiration was the character Tokyo in the first episode of the series, when the Professor offers her a way out of a desperate moment.[61] The lyrics are in English as the language that came naturally to Krull at the time of writing.[61]

The Italian anti-fascist song "Bella ciao" plays multiple times throughout the series and accompanies two emblematic key scenes: At the end of the first part the Professor and Berlin sing it in preparation for the heist, embracing themselves as resistance against the establishment,[62] and in the second part it plays during the thieves' escape from the Mint, as a metaphor for freedom.[63] Regarding the use of the song, Tokyo recounts in one of her narrations, "The life of the Professor revolved around a single idea: Resistance. His grandfather, who had fought against the fascists in Italy, taught him the song, and he taught us."[63] The song was brought to the show by writer Javier Gómez Santander. He had listened to "Bella ciao" at home to cheer him up, as he had grown frustrated for not finding a suitable song for the middle of part 1.[18] He was aware of the song's meaning and history and felt it represented positive values.[18] "Bella ciao" became a summer hit in Europe in 2018, mostly due to the popularity of the series and not the song's grave themes.[62]