all the questions were pretty much answered inside ihs prsentation. i got to see some nice concept images form blade runner i (and i dont think any of you) have ever seen before. i saw some concept images of the train for one of the 4 alternate openings. i saw the different versions of the taxi cabs, sebastians "truck"/bus, buildings, oh man was this a treat.
i got there an hour early, sat in the front right next to the screen and desk that was up front. he came in right as the clock his 6:00. he sat up his computer righti n front of me (wow, what a rush). just for those who are interested, he's using a powerbook G4, 15" with the latest OS X, lol. the lights went down, and he began the presentation. he started by talking about growing up, his family, and what it was like in school. for about the first 30 minutes he showed off his car designs. then, 30 minutes in, a black screen appears, and the title slides in from the side..."BLADE RUNNER" in an awsome red font (not the classic movie font) i grinned at this point, this is what i was here for.
he explained the train opening that was never filmed because of budget reasons. ill tell ya, this would have been a completely different movie if budget werent an issue. the train concept looked amazing. he explained how they were going to use miniatures, and have the train zooming away from a cityscape, and how as the train passed by, little flaps would open and close as the train zoomed by. the train would be burried in a trench, almost like the death star trench in star wars. the flaps would be on the outer edge of the trench. the flaps were used to animals would be kept off the tracks and wouldnt die (seems useful in a future where animals are rare or extinct)
he also explained another opening. the one with the replicants being shoveled into the pit of fire or whatever...everyones seen and ehard of this one. but i never heard about this other opening. he had some concept images of the streets, and deckards car. traffic is competely stopped and backed up. then we saw the inside of deckard's sedan, and on a little computer screen about the windshild we saw a message "15 minute delay on I138" or something like that. then he explained how originally, the message would change and he would be ordered to pull to the side of the raod to be picked up by a police escort (Gaff). again, all those cars would have required an enormous budget, so that was cut. and now we have the sushi bar.
he aso introduced an "orgasmo" machine that...guess what it does? ill leave that to your imagination, lol. but basically in the deckard/zhora scene, oringally deckard was going to knock on her dressing room door, with no reply. so he would enter the room to find zhora attached to this machine. explaining the "orgasmo" machine is a little out of my league, but you get the picture. esentially it was like a device you sit in/on, and there's an RGB screen you put over your head (a virtual reality set, if you want to think of it like that) and there were these breast cups that you "attach" to your breasts, and other features for other parts of your anatomy...but for budget reasons, this was all cut.
for the zhora snake dance, i saw the original image for that scene as well. again, it looked *amazing*. despite what "future noir" says, syd meads told us that they were going to use an old clasic theatre (i cant remember the name, damn) but it was basically falling apart. so they were going to donate some money to fix it up, and use it as a set, and have the money they donated deducted from taxes or something complicated like that. future noir says they didnt have the budget or something like that, but i think the way syd explained it it was more of a time issue. but to describe the scene, zhora was going to be dancing on a platform above the crowd in a round room (with lots of neon, duh!) spotlights overhead, and the classic theatre seating circling the room. by classic theatre, i mean the seats that go up the height of the room, the balcony seating, all in a circle around this room.
****EDIT****
one other thing he talked about was the tyrell death scene. as in future noir, there was a scene described where deckard would come into a room in the tyrell HQ and uncover a crygenics chamber with tyrell clones/replicants there. although i think in future noir it was batty saying "now take me to the real maker" instead of deckard finding it. i cant really elaborate more on this, he only had 1 concept image that was pretty unclear as to what the design looked like.
there was also talk of the holden hospital scene. mead is just as good as we (the bladezone members) are at quoting the movie, he knows all the actors and all the quotes line by line it seems. he pulled up a slide of holden laying on the hospital bed, quoting "this is where holden, if you remember the guy who got shot by leon in the beginning, bryant says something like 'he can breathe okay as long as we dont unplug him'" he said the room was octagonal, 8 sides, and 7 of the walls were like those beds you see at the morgue, where the dead bodies are stored in sort of a filing cabinet. well the intensive care beds slide out of the 7 walls, and the 8th wall is the entrance/exit. to describe it, holden's bed was out, but he wasnt placed in an iron lung sort of thing like in the deleted scene you can download (
www.brmovie.com) he was just lying on a bed. the walls were all plain silver, plated like a refrigerator. pretty plain.
another thing he showed was just some random machines, computer walls, rooms at the police HQ. he showed the ESPER mainframe which was cooled by cryogenics. just imgaine a server rack with lots of pipes coming out of the side. that's about how i'd describe it.
****END EDIT****
he went on to talk about his other scifi works, more scifi cars and ships, buildings, etc...
but afterwards, he was there for autographs. im not one for autographs, i didnt care. i just waited out the line, and 25 minute later, it was just us, his partner, and the school administrator. man, my hands were shaking. i wsa either cold, or nervous, or both. this is SYD F*CK*** MEAD!!!!!! he wsa putting up his computer, so i helped him unplug it all, and wind up his mouse and power cords. he put it in his bag, and i shook his hand and asked him about his book, his website, and...blade runner. he remembers bladezone and the interviews he did with Gerry K.
he's a nice guy, great sense of humor. i like how he just designs with realism in mind. hell show you a futuristic ship, and explain how it all works. i like that. he's got a great imagination, but i dont have to tell you guys that. he's a BIG thinker.
but as for the questions...i didnt get to ask him any directly, he had to leave. it was already about 8:30 and he had to catch a plane. but for his designs, if you sat through the presentation, they changes a lot. for example, the taxi. it looked like deckatd's sedan. he said ridley hated it, it "looked too nice". so he had to change it a few times, and finally he landed on a bux design, like a cargo carrier. that's the way the world was designed, to dehumanize you. taxis werent meant for people, they were meant for cargo. people are cargo. and in his other future paintings he did, they were all utopian. he designed with a utopin future in mind, and it showed for some of his concept images for blade runner. i saw progression shots of deckard's sedan. it wsa origingally going to fly, but then he flying cars are expensive and for important people. so he removed the wheels. he want on to explain how it was still looking too nice for the blade runner world. it went through about 4 or 5 changes to get where it was in the movie.
and if he were to do BR again, incorporating all the changes of society and technology...again, he probably would, but ridley would have him change it all as he did with all his previous designs. from the sounds of it, when he started out, he had to do all his concept art over again and again because ridley scott had him change so much. it seems only as he got more experienced with ridley and more into the blade runner world did he get everything right on the first try.
dang, but i just though of this while i was sitting there waiting, but i was about to run home and get my dell dj and record the whole thing on mp3 audio. that or my video camera, which has some dirty heads so it would have come out terrible anyways. now that i konw the administrator here, ill see if we can get ridley scott in, lol.
Mon Sep 12, 2005 3:42 pm 
It's not much...but it's what I have.
