Oscars Intro Review: Blade Runner 2049

Blade Runner 2049: Oscars Intro Review

When proposing a movie scene for the U-Films Oscars intro, I immediately wanted to do something from Blade Runner 2049 – a film with some of the most beautiful visuals in cinema. Now obviously I didn’t believe we’d be able to replicate the simplistic yet intricate nature of the cinematography featured in 2049, after all it was shot by legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins (who finally won an Oscar for his efforts).

For me. 2049 represents the pinnacle of cinematic achievement and motivates me in this industry, there’s a handful of films that have that kind of effect on me and this is definitely one of them. I initially was also going to use Drive (2011) and the elevator scene but the more I thought about it, the more I realised it would be way more effort than it was worth trying to pull it off (timing elevator doors, even finding an elevator big enough etc.) so I landed on this. I also found Drive to be a little too violent for a wider audience, and considering we wanted the Oscars Intro to reach as many people as possible it really wasn’t viable to use a scene that contained so much violence/gore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I decided to pick one of the most iconic scenes from the film, which features the lead protagonist, K, gazing upon a giant holographic advert. We believed that thanks to the new lights and colour filters that had just been purchased for the group would convey this lighting effect pretty well. Issues we of course had was the lack of ability to A. Replicate the hologram and B. Feature a fully nude woman.

 

 

  The scene is supposed to convey a sense of regret and sadness, of course without the context of the film supporting the scene it loses this meaning. However I do think it looks stunning and I jumped at the opportunity to recreate it.

As you can see, the hologram (above) was too complicated to recreate. We abandoned the idea rather quickly.

We decided to focus on Officer K and the lighting of the shot. I’d be taking on the role whilst Olivia Reed and Adam Cowperthwaite filmed. We shot from a number of angles attempting to recreate the scene shot for shot. First things first however we needed make-up. In the scene, the protagonist has been badly beaten and whilst standing out in the rain, dried blood from his forehead drips downwards. Bernadette Allan from the make-up course within college provided the effects.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As well as adding dirt, cuts and blood, Bernie also applied a spray of water to create the rain droplets that cause the blood to run.

We used the green room as the location for the shoot and had a black drape placed over the green background to replicate the darkness of the scene. We placed the light directly above me head and placed a purple filter across it, creating a filtered effect that could then be amplified in post. I believe we did the best we possibly we could with what we had, and the final piece actually looked very nice. In post the colour was bumped up whilst the audio used was taken directly from the scene we were replicating – the final edit looked great and I was very pleased with how it turned out.