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The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing

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Re: The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing

#71

Post by mindcrime »

roughly wrote: post #28
schoen wrote: post #2

With the em dashes and the conclusion "This was not called execution. It was called retirement." I expect a lot of people would believe today that these title cards were written by an LLM.

What’s sort of funny about that is there’s a normal thing whenever anyone who hasn’t seen it watches Blade Runner for the first time - often they come out feeling it’s kind of derivative, when the truth is that it feels that way because everything after Blade Runner copied Blade Runner. Add the initial title cards to that list too now, I guess.

It's been reported that William Gibson saw Blade Runner before releasing Neuromancer and was worried that people would think he stole ideas from Blade Runner, as the aesthetic of Blade Runner was so close to the way he imagined the Neuromancer world. Now in turn people are worried that the Apple TV adaptation of Neuromancer will feel derivative because so many subsequent works are its hereditary kin.

What can ya do?

Re: The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing

#72

Post by Terr_ »

teraflop wrote: post #69
Terr_ wrote: post #60

> Here are the six that have made my cut [...] The question is: how do they make you feel? Feel, schmeel, I'd have vetoed Berkeley Mono right away for the very practical offense of making 0 resemble O. Even in my pre-coding youth, I already had an inordinate fondness for the disambiguations of OCR-A [0]... > HARRISON FORD Hold up... Why is that one twisted!? Is it an optical illusion? Am I going nuts? Nope. I opened…

I mean back in the day, those kinds of titles involved film editing, not video editing. As in, physically filming title cards with a camera (and then maybe optically compositing them on top of other elements). It's easy to see how things could get slightly misaligned. Looks like the misalignment is less than 1 degree. It's the kind of thing that stands out very noticeably in an image on a web page, when there are lot…

> (and then maybe optically compositing them on top of other elements)

Right: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdHTlUGN1zw&t=3m20s

Re: The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing

#73

Post by lstodd »

mpfh wrote: post #62
anigbrowl wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the problem with LinkedIn, local news etc. Contemporary American culture is addicted to dramatic writing and tries to leverage its tropes to create emotional engagement on everything .

You hit the nail on the smoking gun.

I applaud your excellent (sorry, cat stole the rest).

Re: The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing

#74

Post by the_af »

julienchastang wrote: post #19

The complete opening sequence of Blade Runner is "fucking amazing". The entire movie is "fucking amazing". It is a beautiful, visually stunning masterpiece that I will never tire to look at complimented with a Vangelis soundtrack that ranks as one of the best in all of cinema. And a performance by Rutger Hauer that is pure artistic mastery. And has a woman ever looked as seductive as Sean Young smoking a cigarette as…

Rachael smoking in that scene is almost like a painting, a masterpiece.

I love the whole movie and soundtrack with the same enthusiasm as you, it's one of my favorites, but that scene with Rachael is something else.

Re: The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing

#75

Post by lstodd »

roughly wrote: post #54
majormajor wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Casablanca is a famous example of this too. And LOTR, though in that case coming to it after reading Terry Pratchett was difficult for me (Pratchett didn't just copy its, or other, fantasy tropes, but send them up in an exceedingly clever way).

Yeah, there’s a bunch of these. I really like finding these sorts of “ur-“ moments, the first time a way of doing things really crystallizes into something other practitioners can see. The Matrix is another one - that movie is the transition point from 90s cinema to the 2000s, and it’s a little clunky from a 2000s viewpoint, but if you look at everything that came before it, it’s so clearly a turning point.

I'd say if there even was a bump between 90s and 2000s it was not the matrix, it was Guy Ritchie. And then Gaspar Noe sealed that. Tarantino was having a smoke nearby.

Re: The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing

#76

Post by julienchastang »

jcims wrote: post #31
julienchastang wrote: post #19

The complete opening sequence of Blade Runner is "fucking amazing". The entire movie is "fucking amazing". It is a beautiful, visually stunning masterpiece that I will never tire to look at complimented with a Vangelis soundtrack that ranks as one of the best in all of cinema. And a performance by Rutger Hauer that is pure artistic mastery. And has a woman ever looked as seductive as Sean Young smoking a cigarette as…

>And has a woman ever looked as seductive as Sean Young smoking a cigarette as she's being interviewed by Harrison Ford at Tyrell Corp? It really is for me a pinnacle. I sometimes wonder what it’s like to be part of something like this. Do you even know? I’m just some random fifty something among billions and your comment resonated because it was a shared experience. I have no idea if my grandchildren could watch the…

> Do you even know?

I've wondered about this too. Did Ridley Scott and crew set out to make the greatest movie ever (IMO)? Or did something magical happen? My guess is "auteurs" often set out to create a masterwork but usually something beyond their control derails that. But, if they are lucky, they stumble upon something extraordinary that touches the heart of the human experience and that only happens once in a lifetime, if even that.

Re: The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing

#77

Post by acomjean »

psyclobe wrote: post #55
ilamont wrote: post #26

Well, besides the language and the typeface, the other element of this sequence at the beginning of Blade Runner that makes it so special is the accompanying score by Vangelis, and the sound effects that start with twinkling computer notes and gradually build in volume to explosions and the whoosh of futuristic vehicles. It effectively immerses viewers into this incredible world and story.

As good as that track is its literally his only good stuff. Try as I might, and as eager as I was to like him his library of music just falls flat.

Chariots of fire soundtrack was good too.

Re: The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing

#79

Post by themadturk »

majormajor wrote: post #40
roughly wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s sort of funny about that is there’s a normal thing whenever anyone who hasn’t seen it watches Blade Runner for the first time - often they come out feeling it’s kind of derivative, when the truth is that it feels that way because everything after Blade Runner copied Blade Runner. Add the initial title cards to that list too now, I guess.

Casablanca is a famous example of this too. And LOTR, though in that case coming to it after reading Terry Pratchett was difficult for me (Pratchett didn't just copy its, or other, fantasy tropes, but send them up in an exceedingly clever way).

Having read LOTR many, many times before I ever started trying to read Pratchett, I can't read Pratchett. That's not a slam at Sir Terry; I'd just internalized Tolkien so much that it was beyond my ability to properly appreciate him.

Re: The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing

#80

Post by mixmastamyk »

foobar1962 wrote: post #68
nullc wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck even finding the non-directors cut. I liked the film noir voice-over.

> I liked the film noir voice-over. I remember the voice over the first time I saw the movie, possibly in a cinema. I liked it, and was surprised with the general level of dislike it has received. The film was meant to be a mid-20th-century film-noir detective drama.

Is it transcribed anywhere?
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