James Price is a British art director and production designer best known for his work on the film “Poor Things”, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, for which he won a BAFTA and an Oscar for Best Production Design. Viewers can also admire the results of his work in productions such as “Bugonia”, “Speak No Evil”, and “The Iron Claw”.

Since James Price was a member of the international jury for the main competition at this year’s Mastercard OFF CAMERA, we took this opportunity to talk to him about his experience with set design, his perspective on achieving immersion, and his views on the future of both his career and the film industry as a whole.

You’re an art director and production designer. From your perspective, how to balance realism and imagination in film production?

So, I do break down production design into two sort of categories: immersive and technical. But the technical aspects can also be immersive, and the immersive ones can also be technical. When I read a script, I see things in geography, in different spaces, almost like a dream where I move through. And whether we’re talking about a home, an office, or some fantastic location that keeps coming back, I always want to make that environment an immersive environment.

And how do you understand the term “immersive”?

By immersive I mean that it’s a real place, in a sense, even if it’s built on a soundstage. I always want all the rooms to relate to one another geographically, and I always will build ceilings and not leave things for CGI to be done. I want to create the world so when the team steps onto the set, they don’t have to think technically in terms of: “I can’t look that way,” or “we’re going to need a VFX shot there”. I want them to exist in that space and live in the scene without any inhibitions. It is also important to remember that we want the world itself to tell the scene and the story.

So, how do you actually go about doing that?

I kind of want to have visual control without even being there. Like when I watch a scene, and it’s shot just as I’d imagined because for example of the way that we have put a light source in. I think in terms of natural light, so where the windows will be, and then I think in terms of architectural lights, and then in terms of kind of low-level movable light.

I think about those things first, and then I reflect on what’s the story is trying to say? What does the director want to say? What is the writer trying to say? What is the world I’d like to create as well? And also, how can we maybe twist it or subvert it? And it doesn’t really matter if no one else gets it. There’s stuff in there for me that I enjoy.

Alright, that was about immersion – can you tell us more about the technical aspects?

So, we talk about the technical side of production when you prepare sets, go to the director, and tell them, “this is what I can give you for this scene”. And everything you see in the frame is everything there was. That becomes technical. And that also can open up the world. In my case, I like using lots of old-school techniques, which is why I enjoyed my collaborations with Yorgos Lanthimos, because he leads fully into the miniatures and the tricks that we’ve done on some of his films. And that’s very technical, but also very rewarding, because we can get it in camera, and we’re not handing the process over to somebody else.

Speaking of your collaboration with Yorgos Lanthimos, it’s impossible not to mention “Poor Things”, for which you won a BAFTA and an Oscar for Best Production Design. How do you look back on working on this film?

I’d only done one film as a production designer, which was “The Nest”, before getting that job. I had been working as an art director for a long, long time, although never on that sort of scale. But Yorgos is a fearless filmmaker and because of that, he does want to challenge things, challenge his team and also himself. So, his brief to us was, because our story was a fairy tale, to create the world according to Bella. In practice, this meant that we were supposed to imagine that French new wave and shooting on location never happened and that studio system from the thirties still was the way that movies were made today. At the same time, however, he wanted to include modern techniques like the LED wall that we used for the ship, as well as miniatures.

So, we had a toolbox of techniques: painted backdrops, digitally printed backdrops, LED screens. The plan was to try and avoid as much VFX as possible. And we did quite a bit of camera testing, because Yorgos and Robbie Ryan, who’s an incredible cinematographer, wanted to test different stocks, different cameras, different lenses. That was where my specialism was at the time.

Did your techniques and vision undergo any changes while you were working on “Bugonia”?

I think so. My wife said to me, “you’re a bit of a chameleon”, in the sense that I don’t have a particular style. There are things that I like doing, but “Bugonia” really appealed to me, because it had this ultra realistic part at the beginning. And when that script came in, I was very excited, because I’ve always wanted to build a house that’s fully immersive. That was the most immersive set that I’ve ever been involved with. It was a real place. And the only one that I’ve ever really been sad about pulling down.

And there was also this incredible ending. And because it’s Yorgos Lanthimos, the aliens just couldn’t be some kind of run-of-the-mill aliens. That was actually more challenging to figure out. But I pitched the idea to do a miniature spaceship, and so we did it. So, one minute you have the immersive set, and in the next one there is this technical spaceship. It was like the perfect two sides of my interest, my personality.

So, how does the latest film you worked on, “Clayface”, relate to your interests as a production designer?

Well, I’ve always liked comics and graphic novels, and the opportunity to do essentially a character that’s never been seen on the big screen meant that I got to create the world for this character. I mean, for people who read the comics this guy has been around since the forties, but for everybody else he’s not a household name. So, it was an exciting project right from the start. It was also a chance to have a look at all of the different Gothams that have been created in order to do our own take on this city. It’s an interesting collaboration and I’m intrigued to see what people will think of it.

Yes, there will be an opportunity to do so at the premiere this October. But we’ve been talking about the past and the future, so let’s touch on the present for a moment: you’re a member of the jury for the main competition at Mastercard OFF CAMERA. What were your impressions of the nominated films?

I think all of the films, individually and collectively, have a real emotional heart to them. Everyone worked on the human story level too, and these films are very well-crafted, beautifully shot, and full of really clever designs as well. I just really like the personal level of the stories and how they can relate to everyone on a human level.

Was there anything in them that stood out to you?

Yes, I’d say it was a sense of humor. In the UK it’s mostly depressing and grim when it comes to cinema, so I found it interesting that these films had a bit more of a flamboyant way of telling essentially a sad story. I think you cannot underestimate humor, especially considering the place where the world is at the moment. Humor helps with telling an important message because it engages people. It’s like putting a mirror up to the world, to our lives.

So, based on what you’ve seen recently, but also on your past experiences, how would you define independent cinema?

I think filmmaking in general is the highest art form humans have created, because it encompasses so many other individual art forms – you have writing, directing, production design, costume design, editing, and so on. And it’s all got to come cohesively together, go in the same direction. That takes a lot of work and there’s a lot of easier ways to go out and make a living, so it really is a passionate thing.

I think that from the UK’s perspective, our independent cinema has been eroded a little bit, but when you come to the rest of Europe, it feels like it’s strong and thriving. So, I really admire it, and what I love about being on a jury like this is that I would probably never have watched any of those films otherwise. And each film had great things that really worked for me, so I will go back and tell people about these films.

What future do you see for cinema, then?

I think that in the age of AI and photorealism, the things for which filmmakers have been striving for the first hundred years and a bit, now can be achieved quite easily. To me, filmmaking is at a point where painting probably was when the photography came in, and I think some of the most exciting times in painting were actually after that. So, I feel like filmmaking needs to evolve in a new direction, everyone’s got to be brave, and artists need to try and lead the kind of way of what can be the next hundred years of cinema.

Aleksandra Kubas

photo Klaudia Kot