Christopher Nolan has been out on the streets of Chicago filming his second Batman movie, The Dark Knight. In fact, he’s apparently shooting scenes with Heath Ledger as The Joker, and various scoopers are chiming in from all over the web with the word on what sort of makeup job they’re going with for Heath’s transformation into the clown prince of crime.

Batman On Film says he’ll have “gray skin with scarring”, and his costume will be ragged. He’ll look more scary than clownish. That make sense, it’s in keeping with Nolan’s slightly more realistic approach to the Batman world. Dip your face in acid and you’ll be horribly scarred, you won’t come out with smooth, perfectly white skin. Still, I think I’m going to miss the old, more clown-like Joker. Realism can be such a drag sometimes.

It would help to have a picture, and Superherohype has one. Well sort of. They have some extremely blurry snapshots of what appears to be a guy in green hair wearing a purple suit. They say that’s Heath Ledger, and I believe them. But they’re so fuzzy it’s impossible to tell how accurate BOF’s description is. Looking through all the Vaseline they smeared on their camera lens before snapping the pic, his suit certainly doesn’t seem ragged and there’s really nothing realistic about green hair. But it’s impossible to tell what they’ve done with his skin. See their pictures here.

So will this be the over the top Joker we know, or will he simply be a very badly burned serial killer? I can tell you with absolute certainty that I have no idea.