Clayface: which Burton Batman props are in the film?

James Price, the production designer of Clayface, says the film carries props from Tim Burton's Batman, walls designed to resemble damaged skin, and a courtroom split between heaven and hell that he admits audiences barely get to see. Price won an Oscar for Poor Things and has now made three films with director James Watkins: The Ipcress File, Speak No Evil, and Clayface. For Clayface, he turned Liverpool into Gotham City, and I sat down with him to find out how you make a DC movie look this good without a backlot.

James Price studied every big screen Gotham and New York street photography

I asked Price what he decided not to do after looking back at the Gothams of Burton, Schumacher, Nolan and Reeves. He said the team also looked at a great deal of New York street photography, including a documentary on the history of the form, though he could not recall its name.

Price said he likes Burton's Batman and called it "an incredible um piece of production design," especially the Jack Nicholson version. The neon in Clayface was borrowed partly from that street photography, and partly from the neon and colored light in Burton's Batman films. His assistant took screenshots of every exterior across the big screen Gothams, leaving out the TV versions.

He also said he liked the Joker films. Those were the two versions that seemed to fit. Price said that obviously the production could not afford to do the crazy architectural design. Burton's Gotham was very designed and built on a backlot, and he said he did not know if they shot much on real locations at all.

Price also mentioned an exhibition at the Design Museum about Tim Burton and his career, with a book that accompanied it and material from Burton's second Batman movie. He saw it around the time they were making Clayface, or just before, and said it was nice to see the original concept art.

Props from Tim Burton's Batman appear in Matt's apartment in Clayface

The Burton connection goes beyond inspiration. Price said Clayface has a couple of props from the Jack Nicholson Batman, because someone at a local prop hire company is a big DC fan and bought them all. A table that appears in Matt's posh apartment was in Jack Palance's apartment in the Burton film.

The apartment itself nods to that set. Price said the window in Matt's posh apartment was inspired loosely by Palance's apartment, which had a big window and a view. He wanted to give a nod to it.

The space was also designed with a theatrical frame, with a proscenium arch leading into the bedroom. "I wanted every one of Matt's sets to be like a stage," Price said. That idea carries through to the sewer system at the end, where Matt is up on a stage that dips down into water. Price said sewer systems, especially in America, can be pieces of brutalist architecture at their best.

Clayface hides wallpaper and sculptures Price does not expect anyone to notice

I pointed out that Price has said 90 percent of his work often goes unseen, and asked where Clayface lands. "A lot of stuff I put in I don't expect anyone to notice," he said.

One favorite is an office at the end of the film, which has ribeye steak wallpaper, along with mutilated figures on the wall. Price said James Watkins wanted to put an earlier scene in that room, but Price pushed back, telling him he had to save it for a final death later in the film.

In the nightclub, there were life size sculptures of humans inspired by Italian Renaissance marbles under cloth. Price described them as figures trying to push themselves out of an invisible sack, as if in a womb trying to get out, or vacuum packed. They were white, set with columns. He also said there were faces in the burr walnut the scenic painters made.

Old school techniques, scanned and printed, shaped Matt's posh apartment

Price said the finishes in Matt's posh apartment were hand done the old school way, in a big marbling tank. He then clarified that it was not all done that way. "I like using old school techniques," he said, but he speeds things up by scanning the results and printing them digitally.

Instead of making every piece of wallpaper the old fashioned way, the team makes a selection of original panels, scans them, and prints the rest. Price said they did a good bit of that on Clayface.

The walls of Matt's rundown apartment were designed to resemble skin conditions

For Matt's rundown apartment, Price prepared a document for the scenic painters that tied the deterioration in the set to skin conditions. He wanted it to look like someone had been burnt, with blistered paint. When the painters were puzzled, he showed them pictures side by side: a blistered painted wall next to a blistered human face, or the skin of a person with eczema. Then they started to understand why he wanted it.

Price said the team looked at many skin conditions, including ones that occur naturally, rather than only mutilation, as well as acid attacks, car accidents and burns. He said he was thinking about what it means if you get disfigured, and how you live with yourself.

He described the idea of a car crash on the way to work that leaves you living with the result for the rest of your life, possibly unable to work anymore. Price said many of those thoughts went into the design.

The Clayface courtroom splits heaven and hell, and the light came through the windows

The production built a big old courtroom, because Price said American courts are very different from British ones, and you cannot go into British courts to film. He designed stained glass windows that represented heaven. On the far side, paintings the same size as the windows, in the style of Roman Renaissance works, represented hell. Matt was on one side of the room and another character on the other, as a kind of visual representation.

Price was worried about cinematographer Rob Hardy's reaction, since the only way to light the set was through those windows, apart from some practical lights that were not enough. He warned Hardy all the light would come in an orangey pinky color, saying many cinematographers would refuse.

They did a couple of tests. Price told the art director they had better try something less saturated in case the color was too intense. "Anyway, Rob picked the most intense color," he said.

Price said that unfortunately you don't see it, with only a couple of close ups, and you do not get to see the heaven side of the room. Still, he said he would like to think it helped the performances in that scene.