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Blade Runner - The Analogue Cut (Released)

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 (Edited)

*UPDATE 08/04/2020
There was a 20 second or so gap in Audio track 2 (the stereo option) which was pointed out to me recently. It’s from “home again, home again” to when Deckard starts the Esper up. This is now fixed and has replaced the old version. It’s available on the original link etc.

Cheers folks.


Greetings all 😃 Long time fan editor, first time poster…

This is just a straight copy paste from my project notes for a preservation/restoration/polish/cut/grading I’ve been tweaking on and off for a while now. It’s a version of the film made up from what I feel are the best elements available. Closer to it’s original release contextually and aesthetically, whilst utilising it’s latest release technically.

PLEASE NOTE - This goes on to explain edits and changes in detail so it includes story spoilers.


BLADE RUNNER - The Analogue Cut (1982) HEVC x265 12000kbps 3 Track AC3
1920 x 800 – 23.97fps

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Essentially this serves as a remastered Directors Cut without a unicorn or Deck-rep-eyes. It retains and enhances many Workprint elements and incorporates most Final Cut technical updates which are regraded to suit. Not quite so much a “cut”, as a spit n’ polish.

…There’s even a ‘Ford voice over’ audio track option for those who feel the need.

While we’re here – I feel that 2049 tried to insist that a grand unveiling was taking place - A mystery where one did not exist. In my view they just pointed to a change of archetypal emphasis rather than anything else, with a fork in the road for the narrative to pull a little clunky misdirection that weakens subsequent viewings. I will concede that the film carries a borrowed mystique and carries it very well, but ultimately, it needs a lot of tweaking and even then will contain only domestic revelations of worth. Which might be enough on an emotional level;

But something is often missed about Blade Runner for me. It is philosophical yes, and arguably it’s metaphysical rivers and world building run deep - All the way back to Philip. K. Dick’s fertile, imagined lands in fact. But it’s not very complicated and it’s mystery only really serves it’s gum shoe detection premise and the viewer’s anticipation of circumstantial information. It’s ultimately a character study of humanity with a culturally embedded and vibrant production design that generates layer upon layer of epic atmosphere. Any lasting mystery attached to it is retrospective myth and superficial to the core comparisons it portrays. And it certainly doesn’t pick the low hanging fruit of messianic archetypes to artificially raise it’s value like it’s successor. It’s conclusion is emotional and magnanimous.

Did you get precious about the photos?
Before we get started. Some of you simply won’t be interested in this beyond a certain point so that point might as well stand first. In this cut Deckard is simply not suggested to be a replicant and his photo collection doesn’t signify anything more than a typical human habit to refer to as an example of behavior. His humanity is deeply flawed in the face of Rachael’s misery - A misery he helped to conjure and solidify with his prideful knowledge of her origins. At first he was fearful of her, then he was irritated, and then boastful before his guilt found him heading for the drink again. Deckard has certainly lost his humility years ago and the desperate fight and flight of the other replicants he murders only buries him deeper. Most of all though, in my view Deckard is human because he’s an asshole…an asshole with full knowledge of which traits he has lost. When Rachael asks if he’s ever taken the Voight Kampf test himself, it is clear she feels legitimate humans could fail the test and bring into question the test creator’s assumptions. Deckard understands the moral subtleties he hides from. He can be touched by a replicant’s musicianship knowing them to be the result of implanted behavior. Yet he feels free to be rough with a hesitant replicant lover in a way he wouldn’t or shouldn’t with another human. So then it takes an inexperienced replicant to “love” him or be dependent enough on him for Deckard to start to empathise as though she were human. So to me, Leon’s featured photo collection is a mirrored behaviour to Deckard’s, and is as human a behaviour as anyone’s. That’s the point, not the twist.

Don’t send a boy to do a man’s job
The origami motifs - Gaff likes to fuck with people. If you want there to be a deeper, narrative based meaning for his foil folding then I’d consider a unicorn as an appropriate symbol for Rachael. A one off custom creation - much like the unicorn originally scripted for Sebastian to give Tyrell at his birthday party. Unicorns also represent egalitarian women who don’t practice hypergamy at the expense of loyalty – Which is admittedly moot until Rachael has any chance to prove it, unless Gaff tried it on with her of course. It could be simply that Rachael is the only replicant thus far that Gaff approves of letting live - she has been house trained after all.

At the begining Gaff clearly thinks Deckard is a chicken in Bryant’s office and maybe not befitting his legend. Later the stick man with a hard-on might be innuendo for the hell of it or it might be a presentiment to Batty’s line later on “You better get it up…”. It also might be simply “you’re a dick”. All these nuggets can fit into a conspiratorial jigsaw or stand to serve the analogue of the human/replicant experience. There need not be an implant behind an idiosyncrasy.
The naive and somewhat compulsive replicants are nicely juxtaposed with the machine like obsessive neurosis’ of the jaded humans who have lost their way… I’m with Frank Darabont …and Rutger …and Harrison …and Phillip K…and I think still, Hampton Fancher. The carpet gets pulled out from under the story by the Deck-Rep narrative and it’s meandering TV show mentality. Some film maker devotees will maintain that a director’s vision is law, and it can be simply in terms of copyright and depending on the studio. But it is also treated as sacrosanct by the internalised corporate ideology of box set collectors and industry sycophants. So sometimes maybe I agree with a director. Sometimes not. Ridley Scott thinks that an analogy works best if you obfuscate it like an episodic opera with a wave of an existential hand – appealing to the lowest common denominator with cliffhanger bait that harks back to his commercial marketing origins. Creating an extra layer of possible reality for use as a narrative twist can seem clever, but it is often superficial and little more than intrinsic marketing for the intellectual property. Ultimately Scott is dismissing the characterful observations the film makes between natural humans and unnatural humans. It is a spite of his conspiracy that Scott gets to commercialise the philosophical goalposts. This all played out as an obvious precursor to the trans-human trending in mainstream narratives for the technological age - Cylon character studies in Battlestar Galactica where the “are they?/aren’t they?” story arcs were worth an extra two seasons worth of episodes alone. More recently the same trope was taken off the shelf and dusted off for the hosts in Westworld, albeit a little more concisely. More consumer than human is their motto. For many Blade Runner prop collectors, it is all a design and branding experiment – nothing more.

The Final Cut
The grading for The Final Cut of Blade Runner was stylistically very contemporary compared to it’s original colour timing. In fact it felt positively frightened of anything remotely neutral on the colour spectrum. Any shadow detail worth talking about in those crunched up and “inky” blacks people obsess over in the high definition age are almost entirely obliterated. There’s a heavy cyan (hipsters call it teal) and yellow bias in the tones that choke out the clean blues and the skin tones often hold a gilded golden hue that is a little sickly. The green neon tubes are now almost indistinguishable from their blue counterparts and all light sources look as if the new negative scan has been run through a heavy handed luminosity process, sucking a great deal of contrast out, resulting in most white/register/unexposed areas of the negative simply not being present in the frame any longer - An omnipresent fogging as though by some highlight/shadow filter now seems to be masking most necessarily unexposed areas for fear the print would be flagged for burn out as if Blade Runner should look like a 1st year photography students’ landscape in puke green. In short, the quest for a heavily stylised colour palette for such an already established cinema classic is redundant in my opinion. It loses shadow detail to hide matte lines and grain and plainly negates a good portion of the lighting and exposure work of Jordan Cronenweth. His clever colour “noir” has now been replaced with the Black Hawk Down filter 2.0. This isn’t fixing what couldn’t be done at the time. This isn’t a 1981 director’s decision. It is a 21st century revision that has filtered out much of the ambient light and the original tone. The whole look to the film seems self conscious now because Scott doesn’t want the green computer text on the old VDU monitors to look dated, like someone who hates their natural hair colour. Under a video grading menu list it would be called “Millennial” 😉

Many of the 35mm anamorphic shots are also a little soft in places which I was surprised about versus the 3rd generation 70mm print scan we were previously used to. Thankfully the 6K scanning of the 65mm effects shots are beautiful, smooth and sharp – grading notwithstanding. I do understand how the darker print hides the larger instances of grain very well. And that Sebastian’s apartment, for example, does buck the prints’ grading trend in the doll menagerie with a fuller range of colour than even the original had – A lthough it’s no longer consistent with the external lighting spilling into the room via the window. Ideal contrast was lacking in places of all the original prints, but to me the Final Cut solution to minor exposure inconsistencies is to cripple many other scenes by dragging the quality down to match the lowest performing scenes - It’s like treating a little sun burn with chemotherapy.

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The Analogue Cut
I have augmented the generally aesthetically preferable Director’s Cut with portions of the identically graded International Cut and included all necessary restorative technical improvements from the Final Cut, so long as I could pull it back into a neutral colour spectrum and closely match the archive colour and tone palette. The painted out wires on the police spinners and the visual counterparts to the dialogue fixes and the stunt double fixes are all welcome additions - not to mention the excellent new audio mix and certain FX or matte shots that have had their grain and composite lines cleaned up (although interestingly some spinner cockpit perspective shots look worse for colour balance with the mattes).

The edits illustrate Deckard as human, but it is simply put and without making any insistence’s. Merely by removing the unicorn and a particular set of retina reflections, the change is more about the suppression of one or two elements which in turn then don’t fuel further assumptions. I think he is human. This edit allows for that, but insists on nothing.

Retrospectively I recognise the term “analogue” might not be initially taken to represent the overall philosophical analogy between human and replicant and might instead be construed as a form of technical retrograding using a non-digital process, or even suggestive of a grindhouse look. In this regard I feel the term can multitask for the act of regrading recently remastered digital elements to appear like it was taken from the 70mm optical transfer for The Director’s Cut.

Due to the fact this is yet another addition to the many releases and fan edits of this film, it’s necessity will be a diluted affair to start with. Also it is possibly the least changed fan edit to the degree it’s a restoration/remix/polish etc. So in theory it won’t have much chance to neuter the assumptions made about Deckard by those that are already familiar with the film. But it will be those who are familiar who are likely to have a fuller opinion about these types of subtleties - As there are people who can reset their own cognitive engram history by accepting and allowing that memory is being constantly rewritten and updated as it is accessed. They can then relate to the exclusive thread of a particular 2 hour chunk of narrative, while suspending association with prior viewings of the film. And then there are those who are fixated with the narrative extensions of their first impressions of a film that they keep rewriting the same memory entry almost literally each time due to a cognitive dissonance or strongly held bias. So fan-edits/remixes in general are subject to this very conscious process of analysis from even the very sub-conscious viewer…but then it is a very appropriate film to analyse in these ways.

List of Edits;
The audio for this edit defaults to the Final Cut (FC) mix, except where previous audio mixes are preferred or dictated by edits to previous cuts.

Opening Ladd logo is from the FC and graded to match the Director’s Cut (DC). Opening crawl and titles are from DC as the FC titles are larger and poorly rendered with stepping visible in the curves.

Holden’s eye plus all external views approaching the Tyrell Building are from the FC & regraded to match the DC-

Intro and Noodle Scene is from the DC. Audio cuts from and back to the FC seamlessly before any left/right/centre channel dialogue starts.

The spinner journey to the police precinct and to the Tyrell building - The cityspeak over the comms has been removed. The center channel has been replaced with the DC version and the external shots for the spinner journeys to the police precinct, to the Tyrell Corporation and to Leon’s hotel is footage from the FC & regraded to match the DC.

Bryant’s over dub about “Skin jobs” has been tweaked to better suit the room’s reverb ambience with a little pitch, reverb and EQ. Also added a little reverb to Leon’s, Zhora’s and Pris’ introductions.

All shots looking into the sun in Tyrells office are from the FC graded to suit the DC except for Deckard’s introduction close up as the posterisation was worse in the FC. The DC footage for these shots generally had very coarse grain/noise. The FC shots were smoother and they also had much more light playing into the stage wings on the wide shots, showing up the owl noticeably more. The sun however wasn’t as vibrant as it was in the DC, so I used a simple orange coloured circular overlay which was feathered to suit and used it over the suns’ changing position across the three wide/medium shots. Also burned in a little vibrancy with it’s layer filter – Just to get a pop out of the dull fogginess that the FC grading had given it. It’s worth noting that some grainy shot’s still remain from the DC to retain it’s colour and tone. Most remain in fact, but the updated FX shots and the very worse frames with noise got switched if the DC colour tone could be closely approximated.

All spinner shots showing wire have been replaced with masked off FC footage patched into the DC shots and regraded to suit, using Premier’s quick correction filter, 3 way correction filter or Dr Dre’s colour match software. Generally wider shots where the camera is locked off or doesn’t vary much in it coverage, where it’s exposure and target content is consistent, tend to work well with DR Dre’s colour match software. But for longer lenses where any given subject is isolated from the overall environment’s colour palette with busy elements moving in and out of shot, then the general colour grading filters are required. This takes longer than using Dr Dre’s, but is still more accurate overall. *Update – The previous procedure with Dr Dre’s software still rings true in principle, but when I created a contact sheet of 64 frames loosely covering the overall scope of the film with a focus on the gamut of colour schemes featured. Dr dre’s software can then create a .cube file, which can then be used with Adobe After Effects’ colour LUT function to grade the whole damn thing. It is less accurate than using it with small sample sizes, but surprisingly accurate considering 64 frames are able to closely approximate the general tone for large sweeping sample sizes. It even sometimes reccovers the original detail in highlights that the final cut had put a tint over to “fog” the burn out. In places it is close to the archive tones and in others it is certainly in keeping with the archive tone versus the FC, which is nice for those cleaned up FX shots - Certainly those shots from the FC that represent the time of day better than certain archive shots. And some shots still simply need manual colour grades to finish it off as even Dr Dre’s Colour matching can’t always cover drastic level changes which can result in heavy digital artifacting and pixel break up.

Roy Batty’s vid booth intro is from FC & graded to match DC

When Deckard drives into his apartment complex is from the FC graded to suit the DC

When Pris arrives at Sebastian’s building, the 2 shots used are from the FC & graded to match the DC in tone, but not luminosity. In effect it’s a blend of the two - brighter than the strangely subdued FC, so more reminiscent of the original, but the original was heavy handed. *This has now been replaced with colour matched grading using Dr Dre’s software.

There is no unicorn daydream when Deckard is sat at the piano, solo finger tapping in his melancholia. What is used visually is from the International Cut (IC) and the audio is from the Work Print (WP) –The original on-set notes Ford was playing are appropriate and atmospheric, adding to the diegetic warmth of the apartment hum. There is no other score used here - The nostalgic love theme is not needed yet. The piano notes actually start a few seconds too early to round off the previous scene - timed as a tender nod to Sebastian having found a friend I assume, but here Ford’s playing works much better for the same reason, so I let it come in just a little earlier and louder.

The snake scale microscope visuals in Animoid Row were from the FC & graded to match the DC

The window shot of Abdul Ben Hassan was from the FC & graded to match the DC *This has now been replaced with colour matched grading using Dr Dre’s software which I then scale matched the footage from the FC & graded to match the DC, but also cropped the additional FC footage to a small inset area to focus only on the FC changes. The preceding FC crane shot from Animoid Row is not used here. It used a quick fade-in fade-out piece of score which was more awkward than the original cut which always felt timely and smooth enough for me. Besides the FC footage of animoid row and Deckard outside Abdul’s looks terrible in the FC - Dark and muddy.

At Taffey Lewis’s, the crane shot street scene and shot of Deckard and the Policeman are from the FC and graded to suit the DC before cutting to the the interior shot from the DC. The street scene is an awkward restoration considering the hideous FC grading uses greens that obliterate the RGB dynamic and the WP is all there for reference. So it has been built up layer by layer with various colour tweaks, noise patterns, opacity filters and isolated coloured masks to imitate the WP colour range as closely as possible whilst adding a little punch to deal with the print fog – including overlaying the WP itself to pull out the highlight dynamics. The hockey mask dancers are just straight from the WP as it just pops nicely and is a good example of fairly untarnished footage from the WP. The audio from the WP is used here as my preferred diegetic music, starting from the street bustle, Deckard’s club entry and continuing to the original audio cue as Deckard’s vidphon chat with Rachael ends. This portion is essentially a tightened up restoration of the WP edit, as the diegetic music heard outside Taffy’s bar (Qu’ran by Brian Eno and David Byrne with session music by Jon Hassell) was replaced by a Vangelis piece in all other cuts for the clubs’ interior except in the WP. Keeping the original diegetic music from one scene to the next (exterior to interior) works very nicely when the surround sound amplifies in an instant, the segue to the first interior shot – making for a somewhat more invisible cut than other releases. It’s also worth noting that this music would probably have remained in the theatrical cut had it not been a tune that gained criticism from the religious community at the time for it’s use of sampled quotes from a holy book. I’ve read that the complaints were not accurate but I have no desire to verify this. Ultimately if the WP can be viewed with it, so can this edit. This diegetic music in Taffy’s bar scene wasn’t very well mixed in the WP so I remixed 5 of the 6 channels - leaving the low frequency as it is for now. I used the original music track to fill out the surround channels predominantly, with a little more in the left & right to augment what was already there and a touch more in the center for continuity. The old tracks were a good guide but the inferred diegetic audio dropped off to nothing in the surround tracks and was pretty shaky all-round with almost a wow & flutter effect. It is now much more present and consistent without totally taking over the bustling wild track. When it cuts to the vidphon around the corner from the main club area, I left more of the music track in the Left surround than the Right surround to embellish the orientation of the wider room etc.
To match up the WP audio with DC footage it meant there were a few frames missing from the slightly tighter edits of the conversation with Taffy in the DC that had developed from the original WP editing. I lengthened the shot of the photo of Zhora using Twixtor Pro - Whilst trimming a frame at the end to remove a slight backward thumb movement to bring less attention to the edit. This filled a third of the void and cutting the remainder of the music down to suit the rest of the DC edit didn’t throw the audio continuity out too noticeably as there was already an unavoidable jump cut interrupting the track during the original WP audio when Taffy’s voice was coolly ending the conversation - At which point it is conveniently the loudest his voice was in the mix.

For the 3 shots replacing Joanna Cassidy’s stunt double I scale matched the footage from the FC & graded to match the DC, but also cropped the additional FC footage to a small inset area to focus only on the FC changes - allowing as much of the original neon tube lighting from the DC to show through as possible. The original primary colours of the neon tubes are nearly impossible to replicate satisfactorily using the FC footage whilst retaining the skin tones and ambient light elsewhere. Dr Dre’s software did it nicely too, but the contrast wasn’t as good so I went with the fast colour grader in Premier.

The shots at the liquor stall and the road side chat to Bryant where Deckard’s cheek scuff is repaired in the FC. I graded all the cheek repairs from the FC to suit the DC and then I cropped and isolated them each to let as much of the original DC frames show through as the liquor stall blue lighting looks very muted in the FC. Also the colour spectrum in the FC is such that when you get rid of that green darkness you are left with weak blacks that fall to pieces, so there are limitations to how closely you can match the archive tones when using the FC footage in spite of some very powerful software available these days.

Deckard’s eyes. The footage of Deckard over Rachael’s shoulder in the bathroom doorway is from the DC. Then I used After Effect’s motion tracking of the blurred pixels of Deckard’s retinas. This wasn’t very accurate so then it was frame by frame node nudging in order to map out and mask the reflections.

“…I want more life…fucker” Using “father” is painfully obvious and remedial symbolism and undermines Battys’ demeanour entirely.

Tyrell’s head crushing scene is mostly DC – The expression’s on Hauer’s face were to me far more telling and moving than the blood and gore. Also the inclusion of Tyrell’s owl bearing witness to it’s maker’s demise at the hands of it’s own manufactured brethren was aesthetically cerebral. I did include a timely run of blood and briefly featured the eye sockets when Batty was done but it never needed more than a sprinkle – both are from the FC & graded to match the DC.

The 2 latter shot’s of the spinner querying Deckard’s ground traffic activity uses footage from the FC & graded using Dr Dre’s software to match the DC and then overlayed over the DC whilst being closely trimmed around the spinner and also masking it’s wires.

The shot of Deckard arriving outside Sebastian’s building is from the FC & graded to match the DC in the same fashion as the previous shots featuring Pris’ arrival. *This has now been replaced with colour matched grading using Dr Dre’s software.

The IC version of Pris’ death scene has the fingers in nose shot and the extra footage of a 3rd gunshot to kill Pris. I kept the fingered nostrils, but with a 2 gunshot scenario - using the footage of Deckard’s expression from his second gunshot in the IC in place of the footage of his expression from the IC’s 3rd gunshot which is used for the final shot in all cuts. The expression from the 2nd gunshot is more of a grim distortion – A distaste for the task at hand and showing a little of his desperation setting in. More…human if you will. Not that the replaced expression wasn’t similar, but this one was more apparent, and crossed with Pris’s horrific screaming in animal terror just felt more acute.

Where Deckard climbs through the floor and sits on the bath on his own and Batty is shown driving a nail through his hand, also on his own - is the same room and edited to appear to be at the same time as though in matching but separate rooms. They fight in this room briefly just afterwards. I have re-edited the sequence to reflect the chronological order of the shot list as filmed. The original shot order was obviously Batty having tracked Deckard to the bathroom, they fought (Batty let Deckard hit him with stylish bravado) and after Deckard exited, Batty found a nail to put through his hand to induce a desperate resurrection of nerve response as his body starts to shut down. This mean’t losing a few frames to join some shots of Deckard together earlier in the bathroom in a more natural way. Others had to be chopped up - like dividing a long shot of Deckard on the ledge into 2 to correspond with return cuts to Batty using the nail, which I augmented with an added blanket flash of lightning on Deckard just as it cuts to Batty with the sound of thunder. Cutting the next long shot on the ledge around the corner into 2 allowed me to retain Batty’s exclamation “YESSS” and by the interleaving of re-used audio for rain sounds and the external South East Asian slow chanting, the whole sequence has been re-shuffled to suit the chronology of the use of the same room.

The back of Roy Batty’s hand simply looks too fake in the IC and FC when the nail comes through and it looks too distorted – like soft rubber as it’s being held and squashed with his other hand. So that’s gone too, but I kept the extra camera angle on his facial expression as he collects himself, cutting short his frenzied breath after the initial burst of pain signals feeling.
All shots of Deckard climbing and hanging from the building are re-cut from the DC to suit the FC sequencing. The external matte painting composite shots are from the FC and graded to suit the DC except for where they have used the same shot twice of the corner of the building. In the first instance we see it is oriented to show the left side in the DC which makes more narrative sense than in the FC where they show the right side orientation – As it then goes on to show the reversal of the frame after Deckard has traversed the corner, thus seeming to be the right side.
In the first instance of the corner shot, I have replaced the shot entirely. Making use of the surrounding detail in the classic shot of Deckard dangling – as seen from above. I have taken a still and illustrated and animated a reversed angle view to suggest it is what he sees as he steps out onto the ledge. I painted out Deckard and replaced him with girders and details etc and turned it around by about 180 degrees. I distorted the gap using photoshop to make it appear a little further away etc and then added a falling piece of wood to be consistent with the slats he kicks out. This was done by animating a tumbling 3d texture mapped rectangle panel using Blender, which was then layered into premiere via an alpha channel .png sequence. Then I added a few layers of stock steam footage to incrementally envelop the falling wood as it falls, creating a perception of depth. On top of this there is also a forced perspective overlay of rainfall with some wet pitter-patter on the opposing girder using stock footage samples. Added a 3 frame lightning flash which freezes and helps embed many details nicely for a split second.

In the 2nd corner shot where Deckard climbs round to the right side and meets Batty kicking out the window slats, I took the footage of Batty in the window from the matte shot in the FC and re-composited it into the DC footage to better match the grading of the original footage. The FC version of this shot also has awkwardly painted shadows in the top right. I have instead introduced some lighting FX in the top right of the DC’s wide shot to mimic the background when the close up on Hauer leaning out of the window shows the part of the set swinging and dripping with flashes of distant neon etc. I also added a slight green/blue cast to simulate the slight foreground light on Deckard and his corner of the building. Over all of this I simulated a few blue flashes of lightning over the whole frame to match the lightning featured in the close-ups either side of this shot for colour continuity as a whole. I also augmented the rising steam in the matte shots with an extra layer or two of smoke footage, which when tinted bluish, fitted in just like steam.

Most of the remaining shots were from the DC except for the matte FX shots looking down at Deckard clinging on for life above the street which I regraded far closer to the DC, using elements from both the DC and FC in composite. Other regraded FC shots were Deckard standing on the roof for the first time, Batty sitting, Battys’ tears in rain dialogue – Which is adjusted visually to grow lighter more slowly towards dawn. The dove’s flight into the new skyline is also obviously from the FC graded to suit the DC. The credits are from the FC with it’s necessary technical and staff info updates, but with the Warner Brothers logo from the DC.

Added a stereo track option as an alternative to the surround track. Also added a third track featuring Ford’s voice over for those who like it. It is stereo and it involved using the final phrases from the TC car scene, but placed over the hallway scene at the end. Had to cut it down a little and re-order it to make it work. It’s a little obtrusive, but I wanted to give the V.O. option, and I definitely didn’t want to include the original ending.

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Running time: 117 mins
01:57:32:03

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where to find?
would take a look.
thanks

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 (Edited)

No worries, thanks for taking a look.

PM me here on Original Trilogy if you’d like to find out more.

Posting a comment will rarely get noticed by myself as the email notifications only seem to work for PMs.

Cheers.
15MaF

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Hi 15 MaF,
From what I read this project seems to be a Fan Edit of Blade Runner not a Preservation of it, right? No harm intended, but this seems to be in the wrong category. 😃

"What is a preservation effort?

A preservation effort is a fan-made release of a film (or version of a film) that has never had a full retail DVD release. Usually these are sourced from obsolete formats such as VHS or laserdisc, but sometimes they can be from captured TV broadcasts.

What is a fan edit?

A fan edit aims to improve on or alter an existing film, by the insertion, deletion or re-ordering of scenes within the movie. It involves the application of artistic license to the material available. (Fan-made documentaries are also included in this category.)"

What can you get a Wookiee for (Life Day) Christmas when he already owns a comb?

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ScruffyNerfHerder said:

Hi 15 MaF,
From what I read this project seems to be a Fan Edit of Blade Runner not a Preservation of it, right? No harm intended, but this seems to be in the wrong category. 😃

"What is a preservation effort?

A preservation effort is a fan-made release of a film (or version of a film) that has never had a full retail DVD release. Usually these are sourced from obsolete formats such as VHS or laserdisc, but sometimes they can be from captured TV broadcasts.

What is a fan edit?

A fan edit aims to improve on or alter an existing film, by the insertion, deletion or re-ordering of scenes within the movie. It involves the application of artistic license to the material available. (Fan-made documentaries are also included in this category.)"

Yeah that’s fair comment Nerf.
I suppose I saw this edit as a “preserving” of the old vibe, the characteristics and vagueness in the narrative and texture before it was over ruled by the popularity of The Final Cut and Ridley Scott’s explicit declarations regarding Deckard.

But technically yeah I agree with you entirely. It’s still a transformation from any available release. If any site Admin/Mod can move it, I’d be happy for them to do so as I can’t see a delete option this side. Otherwise I can just repost another.

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I would love to watch this. It’s exactly what I’ve been looking for.

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I’m looking very forward to BR:2409 1.1.

“Get over violence, madness and death? What else is there?”

Also known as Mr. Liquid Jungle.

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This sound fantastic, great effort! Can I please get a link?

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This is a phenomenal edit. My problems with the grading of the FC have been solved, beautifully. The removal of the unicorn dream is flawless. Especially enjoy the removal of the unnecessary gore. And I’ve even watched the voiceover alternative and can finally say I’m happy to hear those lines!

You’ve done a man’s job, sir.

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mattww952 said:

This is a phenomenal edit. My problems with the grading of the FC have been solved, beautifully. The removal of the unicorn dream is flawless. Especially enjoy the removal of the unnecessary gore. And I’ve even watched the voiceover alternative and can finally say I’m happy to hear those lines!

You’ve done a man’s job, sir.

I’ve been looking for this edit for many years. Do you have the link?

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Hi 15 MaF, would it be possible to get a link to watch this please. I love Blade Runner and the changes you have made sound very good and would love to see it.

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This sounds like a marvellous edit. May I also please get a link?

Many thanks.

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Could you please send me a link to your movie project.Thank you

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15 MaF said:

*UPDATE 08/04/2020
There was a 20 second or so gap in Audio track 2 (the stereo option) which was pointed out to me recently. It’s from “home again, home again” to when Deckard starts the Esper up. This is now fixed and has replaced the old version. It’s available on the original link etc.

Cheers folks.


Greetings all 😃 Long time fan editor, first time poster…

This is just a straight copy paste from my project notes for a preservation/restoration/polish/cut/grading I’ve been tweaking on and off for a while now. It’s a version of the film made up from what I feel are the best elements available. Closer to it’s original release contextually and aesthetically, whilst utilising it’s latest release technically.

PLEASE NOTE - This goes on to explain edits and changes in detail so it includes story spoilers.


BLADE RUNNER - The Analogue Cut (1982) HEVC x265 12000kbps 3 Track AC3
1920 x 800 – 23.97fps

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Essentially this serves as a remastered Directors Cut without a unicorn or Deck-rep-eyes. It retains and enhances many Workprint elements and incorporates most Final Cut technical updates which are regraded to suit. Not quite so much a “cut”, as a spit n’ polish.

…There’s even a ‘Ford voice over’ audio track option for those who feel the need.

While we’re here – I feel that 2049 tried to insist that a grand unveiling was taking place - A mystery where one did not exist. In my view they just pointed to a change of archetypal emphasis rather than anything else, with a fork in the road for the narrative to pull a little clunky misdirection that weakens subsequent viewings. I will concede that the film carries a borrowed mystique and carries it very well, but ultimately, it needs a lot of tweaking and even then will contain only domestic revelations of worth. Which might be enough on an emotional level;

But something is often missed about Blade Runner for me. It is philosophical yes, and arguably it’s metaphysical rivers and world building run deep - All the way back to Philip. K. Dick’s fertile, imagined lands in fact. But it’s not very complicated and it’s mystery only really serves it’s gum shoe detection premise and the viewer’s anticipation of circumstantial information. It’s ultimately a character study of humanity with a culturally embedded and vibrant production design that generates layer upon layer of epic atmosphere. Any lasting mystery attached to it is retrospective myth and superficial to the core comparisons it portrays. And it certainly doesn’t pick the low hanging fruit of messianic archetypes to artificially raise it’s value like it’s successor. It’s conclusion is emotional and magnanimous.

Did you get precious about the photos?
Before we get started. Some of you simply won’t be interested in this beyond a certain point so that point might as well stand first. In this cut Deckard is simply not suggested to be a replicant and his photo collection doesn’t signify anything more than a typical human habit to refer to as an example of behavior. His humanity is deeply flawed in the face of Rachael’s misery - A misery he helped to conjure and solidify with his prideful knowledge of her origins. At first he was fearful of her, then he was irritated, and then boastful before his guilt found him heading for the drink again. Deckard has certainly lost his humility years ago and the desperate fight and flight of the other replicants he murders only buries him deeper. Most of all though, in my view Deckard is human because he’s an asshole…an asshole with full knowledge of which traits he has lost. When Rachael asks if he’s ever taken the Voight Kampf test himself, it is clear she feels legitimate humans could fail the test and bring into question the test creator’s assumptions. Deckard understands the moral subtleties he hides from. He can be touched by a replicant’s musicianship knowing them to be the result of implanted behavior. Yet he feels free to be rough with a hesitant replicant lover in a way he wouldn’t or shouldn’t with another human. So then it takes an inexperienced replicant to “love” him or be dependent enough on him for Deckard to start to empathise as though she were human. So to me, Leon’s featured photo collection is a mirrored behaviour to Deckard’s, and is as human a behaviour as anyone’s. That’s the point, not the twist.

Don’t send a boy to do a man’s job
The origami motifs - Gaff likes to fuck with people. If you want there to be a deeper, narrative based meaning for his foil folding then I’d consider a unicorn as an appropriate symbol for Rachael. A one off custom creation - much like the unicorn originally scripted for Sebastian to give Tyrell at his birthday party. Unicorns also represent egalitarian women who don’t practice hypergamy at the expense of loyalty – Which is admittedly moot until Rachael has any chance to prove it, unless Gaff tried it on with her of course. It could be simply that Rachael is the only replicant thus far that Gaff approves of letting live - she has been house trained after all.

At the begining Gaff clearly thinks Deckard is a chicken in Bryant’s office and maybe not befitting his legend. Later the stick man with a hard-on might be innuendo for the hell of it or it might be a presentiment to Batty’s line later on “You better get it up…”. It also might be simply “you’re a dick”. All these nuggets can fit into a conspiratorial jigsaw or stand to serve the analogue of the human/replicant experience. There need not be an implant behind an idiosyncrasy.
The naive and somewhat compulsive replicants are nicely juxtaposed with the machine like obsessive neurosis’ of the jaded humans who have lost their way… I’m with Frank Darabont …and Rutger …and Harrison …and Phillip K…and I think still, Hampton Fancher. The carpet gets pulled out from under the story by the Deck-Rep narrative and it’s meandering TV show mentality. Some film maker devotees will maintain that a director’s vision is law, and it can be simply in terms of copyright and depending on the studio. But it is also treated as sacrosanct by the internalised corporate ideology of box set collectors and industry sycophants. So sometimes maybe I agree with a director. Sometimes not. Ridley Scott thinks that an analogy works best if you obfuscate it like an episodic opera with a wave of an existential hand – appealing to the lowest common denominator with cliffhanger bait that harks back to his commercial marketing origins. Creating an extra layer of possible reality for use as a narrative twist can seem clever, but it is often superficial and little more than intrinsic marketing for the intellectual property. Ultimately Scott is dismissing the characterful observations the film makes between natural humans and unnatural humans. It is a spite of his conspiracy that Scott gets to commercialise the philosophical goalposts. This all played out as an obvious precursor to the trans-human trending in mainstream narratives for the technological age - Cylon character studies in Battlestar Galactica where the “are they?/aren’t they?” story arcs were worth an extra two seasons worth of episodes alone. More recently the same trope was taken off the shelf and dusted off for the hosts in Westworld, albeit a little more concisely. More consumer than human is their motto. For many Blade Runner prop collectors, it is all a design and branding experiment – nothing more.

The Final Cut
The grading for The Final Cut of Blade Runner was stylistically very contemporary compared to it’s original colour timing. In fact it felt positively frightened of anything remotely neutral on the colour spectrum. Any shadow detail worth talking about in those crunched up and “inky” blacks people obsess over in the high definition age are almost entirely obliterated. There’s a heavy cyan (hipsters call it teal) and yellow bias in the tones that choke out the clean blues and the skin tones often hold a gilded golden hue that is a little sickly. The green neon tubes are now almost indistinguishable from their blue counterparts and all light sources look as if the new negative scan has been run through a heavy handed luminosity process, sucking a great deal of contrast out, resulting in most white/register/unexposed areas of the negative simply not being present in the frame any longer - An omnipresent fogging as though by some highlight/shadow filter now seems to be masking most necessarily unexposed areas for fear the print would be flagged for burn out as if Blade Runner should look like a 1st year photography students’ landscape in puke green. In short, the quest for a heavily stylised colour palette for such an already established cinema classic is redundant in my opinion. It loses shadow detail to hide matte lines and grain and plainly negates a good portion of the lighting and exposure work of Jordan Cronenweth. His clever colour “noir” has now been replaced with the Black Hawk Down filter 2.0. This isn’t fixing what couldn’t be done at the time. This isn’t a 1981 director’s decision. It is a 21st century revision that has filtered out much of the ambient light and the original tone. The whole look to the film seems self conscious now because Scott doesn’t want the green computer text on the old VDU monitors to look dated, like someone who hates their natural hair colour. Under a video grading menu list it would be called “Millennial” 😉

Many of the 35mm anamorphic shots are also a little soft in places which I was surprised about versus the 3rd generation 70mm print scan we were previously used to. Thankfully the 6K scanning of the 65mm effects shots are beautiful, smooth and sharp – grading notwithstanding. I do understand how the darker print hides the larger instances of grain very well. And that Sebastian’s apartment, for example, does buck the prints’ grading trend in the doll menagerie with a fuller range of colour than even the original had – A lthough it’s no longer consistent with the external lighting spilling into the room via the window. Ideal contrast was lacking in places of all the original prints, but to me the Final Cut solution to minor exposure inconsistencies is to cripple many other scenes by dragging the quality down to match the lowest performing scenes - It’s like treating a little sun burn with chemotherapy.

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The Analogue Cut
I have augmented the generally aesthetically preferable Director’s Cut with portions of the identically graded International Cut and included all necessary restorative technical improvements from the Final Cut, so long as I could pull it back into a neutral colour spectrum and closely match the archive colour and tone palette. The painted out wires on the police spinners and the visual counterparts to the dialogue fixes and the stunt double fixes are all welcome additions - not to mention the excellent new audio mix and certain FX or matte shots that have had their grain and composite lines cleaned up (although interestingly some spinner cockpit perspective shots look worse for colour balance with the mattes).

The edits illustrate Deckard as human, but it is simply put and without making any insistence’s. Merely by removing the unicorn and a particular set of retina reflections, the change is more about the suppression of one or two elements which in turn then don’t fuel further assumptions. I think he is human. This edit allows for that, but insists on nothing.

Retrospectively I recognise the term “analogue” might not be initially taken to represent the overall philosophical analogy between human and replicant and might instead be construed as a form of technical retrograding using a non-digital process, or even suggestive of a grindhouse look. In this regard I feel the term can multitask for the act of regrading recently remastered digital elements to appear like it was taken from the 70mm optical transfer for The Director’s Cut.

Due to the fact this is yet another addition to the many releases and fan edits of this film, it’s necessity will be a diluted affair to start with. Also it is possibly the least changed fan edit to the degree it’s a restoration/remix/polish etc. So in theory it won’t have much chance to neuter the assumptions made about Deckard by those that are already familiar with the film. But it will be those who are familiar who are likely to have a fuller opinion about these types of subtleties - As there are people who can reset their own cognitive engram history by accepting and allowing that memory is being constantly rewritten and updated as it is accessed. They can then relate to the exclusive thread of a particular 2 hour chunk of narrative, while suspending association with prior viewings of the film. And then there are those who are fixated with the narrative extensions of their first impressions of a film that they keep rewriting the same memory entry almost literally each time due to a cognitive dissonance or strongly held bias. So fan-edits/remixes in general are subject to this very conscious process of analysis from even the very sub-conscious viewer…but then it is a very appropriate film to analyse in these ways.

List of Edits;
The audio for this edit defaults to the Final Cut (FC) mix, except where previous audio mixes are preferred or dictated by edits to previous cuts.

Opening Ladd logo is from the FC and graded to match the Director’s Cut (DC). Opening crawl and titles are from DC as the FC titles are larger and poorly rendered with stepping visible in the curves.

Holden’s eye plus all external views approaching the Tyrell Building are from the FC & regraded to match the DC-

Intro and Noodle Scene is from the DC. Audio cuts from and back to the FC seamlessly before any left/right/centre channel dialogue starts.

The spinner journey to the police precinct and to the Tyrell building - The cityspeak over the comms has been removed. The center channel has been replaced with the DC version and the external shots for the spinner journeys to the police precinct, to the Tyrell Corporation and to Leon’s hotel is footage from the FC & regraded to match the DC.

Bryant’s over dub about “Skin jobs” has been tweaked to better suit the room’s reverb ambience with a little pitch, reverb and EQ. Also added a little reverb to Leon’s, Zhora’s and Pris’ introductions.

All shots looking into the sun in Tyrells office are from the FC graded to suit the DC except for Deckard’s introduction close up as the posterisation was worse in the FC. The DC footage for these shots generally had very coarse grain/noise. The FC shots were smoother and they also had much more light playing into the stage wings on the wide shots, showing up the owl noticeably more. The sun however wasn’t as vibrant as it was in the DC, so I used a simple orange coloured circular overlay which was feathered to suit and used it over the suns’ changing position across the three wide/medium shots. Also burned in a little vibrancy with it’s layer filter – Just to get a pop out of the dull fogginess that the FC grading had given it. It’s worth noting that some grainy shot’s still remain from the DC to retain it’s colour and tone. Most remain in fact, but the updated FX shots and the very worse frames with noise got switched if the DC colour tone could be closely approximated.

All spinner shots showing wire have been replaced with masked off FC footage patched into the DC shots and regraded to suit, using Premier’s quick correction filter, 3 way correction filter or Dr Dre’s colour match software. Generally wider shots where the camera is locked off or doesn’t vary much in it coverage, where it’s exposure and target content is consistent, tend to work well with DR Dre’s colour match software. But for longer lenses where any given subject is isolated from the overall environment’s colour palette with busy elements moving in and out of shot, then the general colour grading filters are required. This takes longer than using Dr Dre’s, but is still more accurate overall. *Update – The previous procedure with Dr Dre’s software still rings true in principle, but when I created a contact sheet of 64 frames loosely covering the overall scope of the film with a focus on the gamut of colour schemes featured. Dr dre’s software can then create a .cube file, which can then be used with Adobe After Effects’ colour LUT function to grade the whole damn thing. It is less accurate than using it with small sample sizes, but surprisingly accurate considering 64 frames are able to closely approximate the general tone for large sweeping sample sizes. It even sometimes reccovers the original detail in highlights that the final cut had put a tint over to “fog” the burn out. In places it is close to the archive tones and in others it is certainly in keeping with the archive tone versus the FC, which is nice for those cleaned up FX shots - Certainly those shots from the FC that represent the time of day better than certain archive shots. And some shots still simply need manual colour grades to finish it off as even Dr Dre’s Colour matching can’t always cover drastic level changes which can result in heavy digital artifacting and pixel break up.

Roy Batty’s vid booth intro is from FC & graded to match DC

When Deckard drives into his apartment complex is from the FC graded to suit the DC

When Pris arrives at Sebastian’s building, the 2 shots used are from the FC & graded to match the DC in tone, but not luminosity. In effect it’s a blend of the two - brighter than the strangely subdued FC, so more reminiscent of the original, but the original was heavy handed. *This has now been replaced with colour matched grading using Dr Dre’s software.

There is no unicorn daydream when Deckard is sat at the piano, solo finger tapping in his melancholia. What is used visually is from the International Cut (IC) and the audio is from the Work Print (WP) –The original on-set notes Ford was playing are appropriate and atmospheric, adding to the diegetic warmth of the apartment hum. There is no other score used here - The nostalgic love theme is not needed yet. The piano notes actually start a few seconds too early to round off the previous scene - timed as a tender nod to Sebastian having found a friend I assume, but here Ford’s playing works much better for the same reason, so I let it come in just a little earlier and louder.

The snake scale microscope visuals in Animoid Row were from the FC & graded to match the DC

The window shot of Abdul Ben Hassan was from the FC & graded to match the DC *This has now been replaced with colour matched grading using Dr Dre’s software which I then scale matched the footage from the FC & graded to match the DC, but also cropped the additional FC footage to a small inset area to focus only on the FC changes. The preceding FC crane shot from Animoid Row is not used here. It used a quick fade-in fade-out piece of score which was more awkward than the original cut which always felt timely and smooth enough for me. Besides the FC footage of animoid row and Deckard outside Abdul’s looks terrible in the FC - Dark and muddy.

At Taffey Lewis’s, the crane shot street scene and shot of Deckard and the Policeman are from the FC and graded to suit the DC before cutting to the the interior shot from the DC. The street scene is an awkward restoration considering the hideous FC grading uses greens that obliterate the RGB dynamic and the WP is all there for reference. So it has been built up layer by layer with various colour tweaks, noise patterns, opacity filters and isolated coloured masks to imitate the WP colour range as closely as possible whilst adding a little punch to deal with the print fog – including overlaying the WP itself to pull out the highlight dynamics. The hockey mask dancers are just straight from the WP as it just pops nicely and is a good example of fairly untarnished footage from the WP. The audio from the WP is used here as my preferred diegetic music, starting from the street bustle, Deckard’s club entry and continuing to the original audio cue as Deckard’s vidphon chat with Rachael ends. This portion is essentially a tightened up restoration of the WP edit, as the diegetic music heard outside Taffy’s bar (Qu’ran by Brian Eno and David Byrne with session music by Jon Hassell) was replaced by a Vangelis piece in all other cuts for the clubs’ interior except in the WP. Keeping the original diegetic music from one scene to the next (exterior to interior) works very nicely when the surround sound amplifies in an instant, the segue to the first interior shot – making for a somewhat more invisible cut than other releases. It’s also worth noting that this music would probably have remained in the theatrical cut had it not been a tune that gained criticism from the religious community at the time for it’s use of sampled quotes from a holy book. I’ve read that the complaints were not accurate but I have no desire to verify this. Ultimately if the WP can be viewed with it, so can this edit. This diegetic music in Taffy’s bar scene wasn’t very well mixed in the WP so I remixed 5 of the 6 channels - leaving the low frequency as it is for now. I used the original music track to fill out the surround channels predominantly, with a little more in the left & right to augment what was already there and a touch more in the center for continuity. The old tracks were a good guide but the inferred diegetic audio dropped off to nothing in the surround tracks and was pretty shaky all-round with almost a wow & flutter effect. It is now much more present and consistent without totally taking over the bustling wild track. When it cuts to the vidphon around the corner from the main club area, I left more of the music track in the Left surround than the Right surround to embellish the orientation of the wider room etc.
To match up the WP audio with DC footage it meant there were a few frames missing from the slightly tighter edits of the conversation with Taffy in the DC that had developed from the original WP editing. I lengthened the shot of the photo of Zhora using Twixtor Pro - Whilst trimming a frame at the end to remove a slight backward thumb movement to bring less attention to the edit. This filled a third of the void and cutting the remainder of the music down to suit the rest of the DC edit didn’t throw the audio continuity out too noticeably as there was already an unavoidable jump cut interrupting the track during the original WP audio when Taffy’s voice was coolly ending the conversation - At which point it is conveniently the loudest his voice was in the mix.

For the 3 shots replacing Joanna Cassidy’s stunt double I scale matched the footage from the FC & graded to match the DC, but also cropped the additional FC footage to a small inset area to focus only on the FC changes - allowing as much of the original neon tube lighting from the DC to show through as possible. The original primary colours of the neon tubes are nearly impossible to replicate satisfactorily using the FC footage whilst retaining the skin tones and ambient light elsewhere. Dr Dre’s software did it nicely too, but the contrast wasn’t as good so I went with the fast colour grader in Premier.

The shots at the liquor stall and the road side chat to Bryant where Deckard’s cheek scuff is repaired in the FC. I graded all the cheek repairs from the FC to suit the DC and then I cropped and isolated them each to let as much of the original DC frames show through as the liquor stall blue lighting looks very muted in the FC. Also the colour spectrum in the FC is such that when you get rid of that green darkness you are left with weak blacks that fall to pieces, so there are limitations to how closely you can match the archive tones when using the FC footage in spite of some very powerful software available these days.

Deckard’s eyes. The footage of Deckard over Rachael’s shoulder in the bathroom doorway is from the DC. Then I used After Effect’s motion tracking of the blurred pixels of Deckard’s retinas. This wasn’t very accurate so then it was frame by frame node nudging in order to map out and mask the reflections.

“…I want more life…fucker” Using “father” is painfully obvious and remedial symbolism and undermines Battys’ demeanour entirely.

Tyrell’s head crushing scene is mostly DC – The expression’s on Hauer’s face were to me far more telling and moving than the blood and gore. Also the inclusion of Tyrell’s owl bearing witness to it’s maker’s demise at the hands of it’s own manufactured brethren was aesthetically cerebral. I did include a timely run of blood and briefly featured the eye sockets when Batty was done but it never needed more than a sprinkle – both are from the FC & graded to match the DC.

The 2 latter shot’s of the spinner querying Deckard’s ground traffic activity uses footage from the FC & graded using Dr Dre’s software to match the DC and then overlayed over the DC whilst being closely trimmed around the spinner and also masking it’s wires.

The shot of Deckard arriving outside Sebastian’s building is from the FC & graded to match the DC in the same fashion as the previous shots featuring Pris’ arrival. *This has now been replaced with colour matched grading using Dr Dre’s software.

The IC version of Pris’ death scene has the fingers in nose shot and the extra footage of a 3rd gunshot to kill Pris. I kept the fingered nostrils, but with a 2 gunshot scenario - using the footage of Deckard’s expression from his second gunshot in the IC in place of the footage of his expression from the IC’s 3rd gunshot which is used for the final shot in all cuts. The expression from the 2nd gunshot is more of a grim distortion – A distaste for the task at hand and showing a little of his desperation setting in. More…human if you will. Not that the replaced expression wasn’t similar, but this one was more apparent, and crossed with Pris’s horrific screaming in animal terror just felt more acute.

Where Deckard climbs through the floor and sits on the bath on his own and Batty is shown driving a nail through his hand, also on his own - is the same room and edited to appear to be at the same time as though in matching but separate rooms. They fight in this room briefly just afterwards. I have re-edited the sequence to reflect the chronological order of the shot list as filmed. The original shot order was obviously Batty having tracked Deckard to the bathroom, they fought (Batty let Deckard hit him with stylish bravado) and after Deckard exited, Batty found a nail to put through his hand to induce a desperate resurrection of nerve response as his body starts to shut down. This mean’t losing a few frames to join some shots of Deckard together earlier in the bathroom in a more natural way. Others had to be chopped up - like dividing a long shot of Deckard on the ledge into 2 to correspond with return cuts to Batty using the nail, which I augmented with an added blanket flash of lightning on Deckard just as it cuts to Batty with the sound of thunder. Cutting the next long shot on the ledge around the corner into 2 allowed me to retain Batty’s exclamation “YESSS” and by the interleaving of re-used audio for rain sounds and the external South East Asian slow chanting, the whole sequence has been re-shuffled to suit the chronology of the use of the same room.

The back of Roy Batty’s hand simply looks too fake in the IC and FC when the nail comes through and it looks too distorted – like soft rubber as it’s being held and squashed with his other hand. So that’s gone too, but I kept the extra camera angle on his facial expression as he collects himself, cutting short his frenzied breath after the initial burst of pain signals feeling.
All shots of Deckard climbing and hanging from the building are re-cut from the DC to suit the FC sequencing. The external matte painting composite shots are from the FC and graded to suit the DC except for where they have used the same shot twice of the corner of the building. In the first instance we see it is oriented to show the left side in the DC which makes more narrative sense than in the FC where they show the right side orientation – As it then goes on to show the reversal of the frame after Deckard has traversed the corner, thus seeming to be the right side.
In the first instance of the corner shot, I have replaced the shot entirely. Making use of the surrounding detail in the classic shot of Deckard dangling – as seen from above. I have taken a still and illustrated and animated a reversed angle view to suggest it is what he sees as he steps out onto the ledge. I painted out Deckard and replaced him with girders and details etc and turned it around by about 180 degrees. I distorted the gap using photoshop to make it appear a little further away etc and then added a falling piece of wood to be consistent with the slats he kicks out. This was done by animating a tumbling 3d texture mapped rectangle panel using Blender, which was then layered into premiere via an alpha channel .png sequence. Then I added a few layers of stock steam footage to incrementally envelop the falling wood as it falls, creating a perception of depth. On top of this there is also a forced perspective overlay of rainfall with some wet pitter-patter on the opposing girder using stock footage samples. Added a 3 frame lightning flash which freezes and helps embed many details nicely for a split second.

In the 2nd corner shot where Deckard climbs round to the right side and meets Batty kicking out the window slats, I took the footage of Batty in the window from the matte shot in the FC and re-composited it into the DC footage to better match the grading of the original footage. The FC version of this shot also has awkwardly painted shadows in the top right. I have instead introduced some lighting FX in the top right of the DC’s wide shot to mimic the background when the close up on Hauer leaning out of the window shows the part of the set swinging and dripping with flashes of distant neon etc. I also added a slight green/blue cast to simulate the slight foreground light on Deckard and his corner of the building. Over all of this I simulated a few blue flashes of lightning over the whole frame to match the lightning featured in the close-ups either side of this shot for colour continuity as a whole. I also augmented the rising steam in the matte shots with an extra layer or two of smoke footage, which when tinted bluish, fitted in just like steam.

Most of the remaining shots were from the DC except for the matte FX shots looking down at Deckard clinging on for life above the street which I regraded far closer to the DC, using elements from both the DC and FC in composite. Other regraded FC shots were Deckard standing on the roof for the first time, Batty sitting, Battys’ tears in rain dialogue – Which is adjusted visually to grow lighter more slowly towards dawn. The dove’s flight into the new skyline is also obviously from the FC graded to suit the DC. The credits are from the FC with it’s necessary technical and staff info updates, but with the Warner Brothers logo from the DC.

Added a stereo track option as an alternative to the surround track. Also added a third track featuring Ford’s voice over for those who like it. It is stereo and it involved using the final phrases from the TC car scene, but placed over the hallway scene at the end. Had to cut it down a little and re-order it to make it work. It’s a little obtrusive, but I wanted to give the V.O. option, and I definitely didn’t want to include the original ending.

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Running time: 117 mins
01:57:32:03

would love to take a look at your hard work if I may. Could I get a link?

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hi,
me too,
would love to take a look at your hard work if I may. Could I get a link 😃
thx

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Could you share a link for your edit, please. Thank you