Clayface designer James Price: why go analog in the AI age?

For Clayface, production designer James Price turned Liverpool into Gotham City. When I sat down with him to talk about how you make a DC movie look this good without a backlot, he told me: "in the AI age, I'm looking to go more analog."

Price won an Oscar for Poor Things. He has made three films with director James Watkins: The Ipcress File, Speak No Evil and now Clayface, and Liverpool keeps coming back as a location across that run.

James Price compares AI to the invention of photography

I put to Price a lineage Rick Carter had laid out: one generation took film off the backlot, Carter's generation took it digital, and Price's generation is taking it into the AI age. I wanted the practical version, not the philosophy. What does that look like on his next art department?

Price said it means "going back to play school, basically playing." He compared the current moment to where painting stood when photography was invented. Once you can take a picture of something, there's no need to make a photorealistic painting of it. Painting went on to evolve into expressionism, impressionism and surrealism, and he called that "the most exciting time arguably for painting."

He thinks filmmaking is now at that stage. For as long as movies have been made, he said, the goal has been to make them more and more real. If AI can create something more real than CG can, Price sees that as an opportunity.

Miniatures, matte paintings and cloud tanks meet digital tools

The opportunity, as Price described it, is to reach back into any of the tools filmmakers have used over the years, such as miniatures, matte paintings and cloud tanks, and combine them with digital technology, and maybe in the future a little AI technology as well.

He gave an example from another movie. He started to describe a miniature train, then corrected himself: it was a boat. The idea is that you build the real object, scan it with its real textures and run it in a simulation. You keep things from the real world that still can't be created artificially, such as the way light bounces off it, and you end up with something different.

Price stressed that it depends on the movie. What he's looking for are opportunities where you can cut loose.

Why the script decides whether Price is the right designer

For Price, it always comes down to the script, because so much of production design is determined by it. He said he has been reading some very good scripts lately and thinking each would be a great movie he'd enjoy watching, but that the production would not need him.

In those cases, he explained, the filmmakers want somebody interested in creating a photorealistic world, and his kind of design wouldn't complement the story. So he's looking for stories that can be set in a world that lets you go for it.

The Poor Things question: what else is possible in that world?

Price used Poor Things to explain what he means. Even today, he pointed out, Bella Baxter can't exist. If you're setting a film in a world where a very skilled doctor can take the brain of an unborn baby, put it in an adult and reanimate them, the question becomes: what else is possible in that world?

That, he said, is the starting point for a production designer, and it's what he looks for when he reads a script now. If the script says one impossible thing is possible, the design can ask what else follows from it.

Sean Durkin, James Watkins and Yorgos Lanthimos

Price said the exception is when the script comes from a director he trusts and knows, naming Sean, James and Yorgos. With Yorgos Lanthimos, he said, it's always going to be off the wall.

Working with Sean Durkin is a different sensibility. Price described him as an emotionally connected and very grounded person, and said creating worlds for him requires a touch that makes them timeless. He'd like to think the work on the two films they've made together has been more timeless, and what he likes is that you look at those movies and aren't quite sure when they were made.

Finding the zag: James Price goes analog in the AI age

Price summed up his approach plainly: in the AI age, he wants to go more analog. That makes a lot of sense to me. If everyone is zigging one way, find the zag, the place where you can still have something to say. I think that's awesome.