Film Opening 6: Blade Runner

Blade Runner
Ridley Scott, 1982
Production companies: The Ladd Company, Shaw Brothers
Distributor: Warner Bros.

Stars: Harrison Ford, Sean Young, Rutger Hauer

                                

Budget: $28m Box Office: $33.8m

Opening duration: 6'56

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE

- Science-fiction is one of my favourite genres, and while it is possible to create a film opening for a Media coursework production, I personally feel I couldn't achieve this my skills at the moment, as this is my first attempt at a fully-fledged media production

- That the protagonists or primary antagonists don't always appear in the opening scene is useful for my general knowledge of film openings, with my limited time frame of two to three minutes, I cannot afford to exclude the main characters of the planned full film

SYNOPSIS:

 sci-fi based on Philip K.Dick's novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (who also wrote the book the popular Amazon Prime series "The Man In The High Castle" is based.directed by now Hollywood legend Ridley Scott (fun fact: started out as being offered to design the Daleks, but declined!), who had recently brought the highly successful horror/sci-fi hybrid Alien. Now seen as the archetype of the cyberpunk subgenre of sci-fi. Harrison Ford in the middle of his Star Wars prime fame, but his casting plus the IP didn't bring in a mass audience as the Star Wars films, despite being set a year before The Return Of The Jedi when the appetite for the sci-fi icon would have been high.  The narrative can be followed back to the Frankenstein complex, and that book's main theme of a creator being haunted by his creation, both hugely influentual narratives for media in general.. It bears many resemblance to the later remake of Battlestar Galactica of the mid 2000s

IDENTS

The Ladd Company, owned by Warner Bros, defunct since 2007. Their signature sound is used for 

There is a black in between, withholding information from the audience. This is a form of narrative enigma, can be traced back to Roland Barthes's mystery code, the audience being   lured to solve a problem. 

TITLES:


As is common for dystopias and any film set in the future, we get a text setting out the scenario, so we already have narrative exposition  before the opening shot, clearly anchoring the setting, taking away some of the narrative enigma.

The titles start with a sound similiar to a soft version firearm being shot off, or a some form of engine starting.

HARRISON FORD 

BLADE RUNNER [centred]

RUTGER HAUER [] 

SEAN YOUNG

EDWRAD JAMES OLMOS

M. EMMET WALSH

DARYL HANNAH

WILLIAM SANDERSON

BRION JAMES

JOE TURKEL

AND JOANNA CASSIDY

SUPERVISING EDITOR TERRY RAWLINGS

MUSIC COMPOSED, ARRANGED, PERFORMED AND PRODUCED BY VANGELIS

ASSOCIATE PRODUCER IVOR POWELL 

PRODUCTION DESIGNED BY LAURENCE G. PAULL

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY JORDAN CRONENWETH

SCREENPLAY BY HAMPTON FANCHER

PRODUCED BY MICHAEL DEELEY

DIRECTED BY RIDLEY SCOTT [film time: 2:01]

MISE-EN-SCÈNE:

The opening shot landscape of a city at night, with explosions of fire in the distance going off as it fades from the black. What looks like a fire in the far background soon emerges as a space vehicle, similiar to those of Star Wars, clearly anchoring the futurist setting and sci-fi genre. 

REPRESENTATIONS:

The absences are fairly routine, but still worth highlighting: homosexual or disabled characters, with the main cast all caucasian. Remember, the constant repetition of 'able-bodied', caucasian, heterosexual etc creates a normative effect, though we do get an interesting mix of stereotypes and countertypes here, not least with the unusual 

AGE: D

ETHNICITY: Despite making some points on slavery and human racial arrogance, the main cast is still Caucasian.
 

SOCIAL CLASS: The man in suit, the man in a white can be connoted of much lower class. 

GENDER: 

NARRATIVE, GENRE, EXPOSITION:

The futuristic setting is clearly anchored through the space shuttle. Throughout the opening shots the camera is tracking forward closer to the building. It is not made clear whether the Replicant was in that shuttle, but if he was it could be seen as connoting we should feel empathise more with him.

The first voice we here is not a human voice, but that through a machine, can be connoting the mechanical hubris that this society and its human inhabitants are based on, and that this species isn't trustworthy. The interrogator is in a suit, a deconstruction of capitalism and formality. When we get close-ups of the technology used for the interrogation, soft/shallow focus is used for the background, connoting that these are powerful instruments of technology, but also that they are threatening. The mise-en-scène is bluely-lit, further anchoring the sci-fi genre

The one use of cinematography during between the Replicant and the interrogator is while there, after using medium shots and medium close-ups for both characters while cross-cutting between them. Soft focused with . The one close-up only used for Leon would seem to connote that he is the character we should. However, he suddenly turns from the victim into the murderer, another intertextual feature echoing back to the fate of the monster in Frankenstein, him lashing out at humans in revenge for their misery.

After that we cut to extreme longshots of the city, but still takes a while until the protagonist entering. 

SOUNDTRACK:

The soundtrack is has both an epic and tragic atmosphere to it.