Introduction

This week’s Talking Movies will be looking at the cinematic masterpiece that is Blade Runner, and will talk you through how you can analyse some of the scenes in this movie and use them to help you compose some stunning street photos. I will look at some of my own photos and describe how this movie influenced my own shots. Visit the previous segments of Talking Movies for more info.

Introducing Blade Runner

This Ridley Scott helmed gem is quite possibly my favourite movie of all time. Released in 1982, Blade Runner is a sci-fi movie of truly epic proportions that muses on the grandiose theme of what it means to be human. Based on the 1968 novel ‘Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?’ by legendary science fiction author Philip K. Dick, Blade Runner is about quasi-detective Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) hunting for a gang of escaped artificial humans called Replicants, and is set against the moody, dingy, rain-drenched backdrop of a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles. The doleful Vangelis soundtrack makes for melancholy tone to the movie, while the spectacular special effects and production design are perfectly showcased by Jordan Cronenweth’s excellent cinematography, and play just as much as a part of the telling of the movie’s story as the characters themselves. Blade Runner suffered a complex and fraught production for numerous reasons, not helped by director Ridley Scott’s manic attention to minute details in each scene and shot. This obsessive approach paid dividends in the end, while the movie was not a critical or box office success, it is now widely lauded as one of the most iconic movies of its genre, with a die-hard following of devoted fans.