Peaky Blinders: EXCLUSIVE: Production designer hints at plot surprises in new film The Immortal Man

“My main collaborator is my location manager,” she said. “He and his team scoured the land for good stuff. The key was, we wanted to build in Birmingham, and Digbeth Loc Studios was brilliant to work in because it had a freedom that places like Pinewood don’t. We built The Garrison at Digbeth, which was really exciting because the space was brilliant. We were burning stuff in the yard!

“We filmed a lot of things, including a concentration camp interior up the road next door to an old gym, and we did a lot of canal stuff.

“Creating is always hard when you’ve got a lot of modernisation – it’s a bit of a sleight of hand trick. We looked at museums around the Potteries and places in Staffordshire, and we knew we wanted to go back to ‘Charlie’s Yard’ at The Black Country Living Museum. 

“The people there were amazing. We had last minute problems with a few things and they were so incredible. The ground wasn’t right – not quite rubbly enough – so this guy said ‘we’ll just move a whole load of coal from there to here’. They literally dressed the sets with us. They lent us bits and were just amazing. That was a joy.”

Aside from reinforcing her affection for one of our greatest historical attractions, Jacqueline’s experience with The Immortal Man has cultivated a deep love for our region in general.

“We went to a lot of locations to patch stuff together. My experience of being in Birmingham was just so positive – I loved it there. There is an attitude that is really special.”

In terms of creating the look for film, subtlety was the name of the game. 

“The important thing was not to have people say ‘look at the period film’,” Jacqueline said. “It was in trying to be as minimal as possible, and having people look at the architecture that still exists. You don’t want it to be an excited recreation of ‘toy town’. You need it to feel like it’s got a gritty edge. The reality of this world was what we were trying to create.”

As Jacqueline tells it, the film’s leading star also had a hand in what she and her team built.

“I’m rarely there when the actors are there,” she said. “But I spoke with Cillian [Murphy – Tommy Shelby] about the look of the pub. 

“Interestingly, in the script it was much ‘higher’ – almost like a footballer might have designed it; like his son had gone overboard with the money. We’d decided on quite a look of it, and then Cillian popped in, and you could see him digesting the world of it, and I’d got this beautiful photo of a floor which was really worn – I don’t know why it was in the mix, but it was. And he just said, ‘I like that. That’s how the pub should feel’. And I said to Tom [Harper – director] ‘we should re-think this’.

As one would expect, there was a mighty amount of work involved in bringing the project to the editing table, but Jacqueline is confident it has all been worth it.

“It was probably about 11 or 12 weeks of prep, and then the shoot was about the same,” said Jacqueline. “It was a good five months of work. Since that time, up until the picture lock at the end of last year, they’ve been editing and adding VFX. 

“I haven’t seen the film yet, but I’m very excited. Cillian is an extraordinary actor and I think people will not be expecting this as its trajectory – I think they’ll be quite surprised by it.”

We wait with bated breath…