Ridley Scott, smoke and mirrors

Ridley Scott's commentary (apropos those) on Bladerunner is brilliant. It's a whole little primer on how to make films.

One example: on shooting the city scape miniatures... you need a very small aperture, otherwise the small depth of field will give away that it's miniatures. So every frame needs to be exposed for a full second or something like that. So you need a motion control camera, since the camera is moving extremely slowly.

And he wanted much smoke to give the atmospheric perspective. And also to aid the models, because since they were comparatively small due to budget, and so they could only be so detailed and no more.

But the thing is with smoke and the filming with one frame per several seconds, the smoke will move, and flicker!

So they devised a system with many smoke detectors in the room metering the level of the smoke, and a system for small nozzles adding a little at various places, thus keeping it constant over the whole room, over the whole day. And it worked!

Bet you didn't think of that when you watched the movie!

Update: Even Ridley repeats the commonly-heard assertion that Deckard's mental image of a unicorn (which was missing in the original release) means that Deckard is a replicant. I never got that, how's that logical?

Update: I'm amazed at the level of collaboration they did on this film. Ridley Scott says that Harrison Ford came up with the blood in the glass of water. And apparently on the very last night of the shoot, Rutger Hauer wrote one of the best speeches in movies ever, his own "all those moments" speech. Fantastic.

Rutger also invented the hairdo he had. And Darryl Hannah invented her missing eyebrows and her black-painted area around the eyes, inspired by the vampire in Nosferatu.

Update: (blogging is great, I can just keep adding thoughts as they occur.) The five-disk Blade Runner (I thought it was called "Bladerunner") collection includes an excellent making-of documentary. At three and a half hours! Amongst other tidbits it includes a glimpse of a more graphic love scene between Deckard and Rachel. Hot stuff.

Ridley Scott is a very intelligent man. He talks about how love (read: sex) scenes are always superfluous. Gratuitous. And he always keeps them out, or at least short. And I understand what he means. They usually do stop the action, and are not often very interesting. But I don't see why they have to be like that. A scene with the main character riding his bicycle down the road can also be gratuitous and boring, but it does not have to be. It's just a matter of whether it adds to the film, in terms of story, or character, or mood, or whatever. See? So if a sex scene tells us more about the characters or the story or the world it's in, then it's good.