Milk and cookies kept you awake, eh, Sebastian?

March 17, 2015 3:44 PM

Blade Runner Model Shop: Images from slides taken during the construction of the miniatures for the film "Bladerunner". (via)
posted by jenkinsEar (11 comments total)

I love these so much.
posted by octothorpe at 4:04 PM on March 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Wow, this is fantastic stuff. Looking at the construction of the Tyrell pyramid I can only imagine that it depleted the entire world supply of greebles.
posted by RogerB at 4:22 PM on March 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Favorite movie. Cheers.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 4:24 PM on March 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Future Noir: The Making Of Blade Runner by Paul Sammon is extremely recommended if you are into this sort of thing. There is plenty of fascinating trivia associated with the making of this film. The anecdote about Ridley Scott borrowing some helicopter footage from Stanley Kubrick is hilarious...
posted by ovvl at 4:30 PM on March 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Gosh, you've really got some nice toys here.
posted by lagomorphius at 5:20 PM on March 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

One of the highlights of my trip to the Museum of the Moving Image last year was when I realized that they had a good sized hunk of the Tyrell pyramid on display. The fanboy glee I exuded was epic, I assure you. You could look in the side of the thing and see the zillions of fiber optic cables wired to all the individual windows.

Oh my god. So cool.
posted by Aznable at 5:56 PM on March 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Track 45 right. Stop. Center and stop. Enhance 34 to 36.
posted by kjs3 at 6:47 PM on March 17, 2015

I love miniatures. Love them so much.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 10:13 PM on March 17, 2015

Cinefex just posted a short blog article about the remastered Final Cut version (which you can see on the big screen if you happen to be in London next month), which has a wonderfully crazy snapshot from the filming of these miniatures: "In order to get aerial views of some of the cityscapes, the miniature structures were tilted sideways and aligned individually at varying angles so as to appear correct to the barrel distortion of the camera’s wide-angle lens."
posted by effbot at 3:35 AM on March 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

For me, the images of the blimp under construction really sum up why hardware CG generally never quite cuts it: the sheer effort, the dozens of hours of thought, appropriation of found objects and the sheer serendipity of shared opinion whilst working on a physical thing all seem to conspire to fulfil the realisation of the hyper-real. The blimp - like sporadic stuff in The Fifth Element - is probably the single most believable fantasy object I can think of, whereas contemporary films generally suffer from floaty, carbon-copy design like much of the stuff in Jupiter Ascending and the like.

There are exceptions, of course, i.e. Ryan Church's gorgeous Valkyrie shuttle from Avatar, where the CG modelling process suited the clean forms of the vehicle, and probably Blackout for the initial Transformers, but a decent miniature somehow resonates and films using a heady combination of the two work so well. The boat-looming-out-of-the-fog moment in The Lost World - with the dinky limo and all that - is one such effect, and I think helps sell that sequence as pure Spielberg genius.
posted by specialbrew at 5:40 AM on March 18, 2015 [1 favorite]

I hate to think about what the effects will look like for the recently announced sequel. Lots of teal, I'm guessing.
posted by octothorpe at 7:41 AM on March 18, 2015