Blade Runner Analysis
The Intricate World Of Blade Runner
The motion picture, Blade Runner (1982), a term borrowed from William S. Burroughs, was directed by Ridley Scott, who worked with the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? to produce this film noir genre film. The central location of this movie is a harsh, malicious city void of hope and purity, in which each citizen strives to achieve a place of sanctity and belonging; a glimpse of utopia. To capture the ambience of this fictional megalopolis, various film techniques were employed. Meshed within the plot, techniques of various types bring forth the dramatic scene`s to produce this stunning masterpiece. These effects include the mastery of masking, slow-motion, and lighting.
Special effects are paramount in this movie, astonishing flying vehicles, the limitless sky scrapers and cityscapes, the colossal Tyrell pyramids. Critics acclaimed these effects for there intricacy and realism, Don Shay wrote the following review:
After more than a year of intensive labor, the visual effects craftsmen at
Entertainment Effects Group have produced the definitive urban future for Blade Runner -- Ridley Scott's stylish homage to film noir. A polluted, overpopulated megalopolis, the Blade Runner city was created largely with miniatures and matte paintings...
Head of the special effects, Douglas Trumbull, having been in charge of this department on other such movies as Close Encounters of the Third Kind(1977) and 2001: A Space Odyssey(1968), shows his attention to detail in the completion of this movie.
A key contributor to the amazing effects incorporated in Blade Runner is the extensive use of matte paintings and intricate models, and the process of masking. Giannetti describes masking as "the process of blocking out portions of the image using black masks"(43). The Schuffian process, adapts this technique to a create stunning scenes and backdrops with the help of...
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