r/BladeZone

My concept art post yesterday included a concept origin of a new replicant. I thought this model I made some years ago would be a fitting choice for my next post.

One of the most unsettling and visually striking scenes in Blade Runner 2049 is the introduction of Niander Wallace, where we witness the “birth” of a new Nexus-9 replicant.

Denis Villeneuve deliberately avoided explaining exactly how replicants are manufactured. Ridley Scott was apparently concerned that revealing too much would lose some of the mystery established in the original Blade Runner. Instead, Villeneuve approached the birth almost as a religious event, with Wallace assuming the role of creator while treating the life before him as little more than a product.

I made this display as my interpretation of the scene, building the wooden structure around the figure and using clear material to recreate the birth membrane, with an overhead light illuminating the natural golden wood to capture some of that eerie Wallace Corporation atmosphere.

Definitely one of the more unusual and unique pieces in my Blade Runner collection.

A few folk have asked about my profile picture, so meet Brick Deckard!

I don’t personally collect LEGO or Pop Vinyl figures, but I couldn’t resist this little guy when I saw him.

Complete with Deckard’s shirt, tie, trench coat, ID and, of course, his blaster. He’s got his own little display case with a street scene behind him and he sits within the rest of the Blade Runner collection.

Not quite screen-used memorabilia or anything special, but definitely one of the more fun pieces in the collection!

Here’s part 5 from my Blade Runner 2049 concept art collection.

Another varied batch this time, including two vehicle design pieces by the incredibly talented George Hull, along with environments, street infrastructure and character work. I particularly like seeing the more everyday elements of the world being worked out, such as the street furniture and waste units. They’re the sort of details you barely think about while watching the film, but collectively do a huge amount to make the world of 2049 feel believable.

There’s also a beautifully dark replicant origin concept piece by Lukas Harris. I really like the city environment artwork in this set too. It captures that oppressive scale and atmosphere of the film incredibly well.

Also included is a Rachel piece by Madhav Kumar, who, along with the other artists he credits, worked on the digital recreation of Sean Young for the film. I have another four pieces from his Rachel work which will appear in the remaining posts.

For anyone coming across these posts for the first time, I acquired this collection from a source I consider very credible, and I was told these prints were used during the production of Blade Runner 2049. I don’t have individual certificates or documentation to independently verify the production history of each piece, so I can’t claim that as absolute fact, but the collection contains numerous artist details, project labels and other production information across the prints.

More to follow…

Another obsolete format from my Blade Runner collection, and probably one of the more unusual.

This is Blade Runner on CED (Capacitance Electronic Disc), released by Embassy Home Entertainment in 1983.

CED was RCA’s unusual answer to home video. The film is stored on a large grooved disc inside the plastic caddy, but unlike LaserDisc, there’s no laser. It’s actually read using a physical stylus. The whole caddy is inserted into the player, which takes the disc inside while you remove the empty case.

RCA launched the format commercially in 1981 after years of development, but VHS and Betamax were already taking hold. Player production was discontinued in 1984, making CED a fascinatingly short-lived piece of home-video history.

Blade Runner was released on CED in March 1983, less than a year after its original cinema release.

There’s also a great little detail on the back. It describes the film as “A futuristic tale set in the Los Angeles of 2020”, despite Blade Runner actually taking place in 2019. It also lists the running time as 117 minutes.

The synopsis on the back is interesting too, mainly because of how much of the plot it gives away. It’s remarkably spoiler-heavy by modern standards, casually revealing story details that would probably be kept out of the packaging today.

There’s something wonderfully appropriate about a film that imagined the technology of the future being watched at home on a grooved plastic disc read by a stylus.

The future didn’t quite go that way.

More Blade Runner formats from the collection to come.

Another slightly different piece of Blade Runner history.

Marvel adapted Blade Runner into a two-part comic in 1982, with the film split across these two issues.

The artwork is wonderfully of its era, with Deckard, the Spinners and 2019 Los Angeles all reinterpreted in that distinctive early-80s Marvel style.

The adaptation is particularly interesting because it preserves elements from an earlier version of the screenplay, so some dialogue and details differ from the finished film. Roy Batty’s final moments are different, giving the comics a fascinating glimpse of Blade Runner before everything reached its final form on screen.

One detail I particularly like is the Spider-Man head where you might expect to see a barcode. These are direct-market copies intended for specialist comic shops. Newsstand copies carried a UPC barcode, while Marvel often used Spider-Man in that space on its direct-market editions.

Fittingly, both of mine still have their old 35p Forbidden Planet price stickers, a nice surviving trace of their comic-shop history.

So yes Spider-Man has absolutely nothing to do with Blade Runner, but that tiny face actually tells you something about how these particular comics were originally distributed and sold over 40 years ago.

I finally decided to add this TOME set to the collection. It’s a porcelain reproduction of the classic 1982 ERTL 1/64 die-cast cars and Spinner, presented in a tribute box very similar to the original packaging. I remember being asked about this set around a year ago, when I didn’t have it yet. It’s one of those pieces that turned out to be over expectation. The small porcelain cars have a really nice look to them, and the attention to the original ERTL packaging makes the whole set feel like a thoughtful tribute.

Following on from the Betamax I posted recently, here’s the VHS counterpart from my Blade Runner collection.

This is an early 1983 Embassy Home Entertainment release. At the time, VHS and Betamax were competing formats, so it’s great to have Blade Runner represented on both.

Like the Betamax, the packaging is a brilliant little time capsule. The back makes a particular point of advertising “never before released sequences of graphic violence” that had been edited from the theatrical release. It’s such a different way of selling Blade Runner compared with how the film is presented today.

And there’s another familiar detail. The box gives the running time as 119 minutes, while the label on the cassette itself says 122 minutes, exactly the same as on my Betamax copy. Maybe there’s a perfectly normal explanation for this, but I did wonder if it was simply a mistake.

The VHS also has the white star Embassy logo on the spine. There are actually several variations of these early Embassy releases, including different star colours, running times and cassette labels, which makes something as seemingly straightforward as an old VHS surprisingly interesting to collect.

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m not trying to collect every variation of every Blade Runner release. My goal is simply to have one example of the film on every physical format on which it was commercially released.

Betamax and VHS down. Plenty more obsolete media to come.

This is one of the very first 1983 Embassy Home Entertainment releases of Blade Runner, on Betamax.

I’ve always found the early home-video releases fascinating because they capture the film at a very particular point in its history, long before the Director’s Cut, the Final Cut and the reputation Blade Runner has today.

The packaging itself is a great time capsule. The back proudly advertises that this version contains “never before released sequences of graphic violence” that had been edited from the theatrical release. It’s quite a contrast to the way the film tends to be marketed now, with much more emphasis on its visual design, atmosphere and philosophical themes.

There’s also a curious little detail. The box lists the running time as 119 minutes, while the cassette itself says 122 minutes. I’d be interested to hear from anyone who owns this particular Embassy Betamax release, or the equivalent early VHS release, whether yours has the same discrepancy. I’m curious how common it is.

There are some incredible Blade Runner collections out there with every variation of every release. My own media goal is a little different: I’d simply like to have one example of the film on every physical format it was commercially released on. I’m still missing a couple of the rarest, but that keeps the hunt interesting! I’ll share the different formats I’ve collected so far in future posts.

There’s something particularly appropriate about owning Blade Runner on Betamax. It was released in 1983, back then, this was cutting-edge home entertainment, carrying a film that imagined the world of 2019.

Now both futures are behind us.

Issue 58,May 1982

Here’s part 3 from my Blade Runner 2049 concept art collection.

For anyone coming across these posts for the first time, I acquired this collection from a source I consider very credible, and I was told these prints were used during the production of Blade Runner 2049. I don’t have individual certificates or documentation to independently verify the production history of each piece, so I can’t claim that as absolute fact, but the collection contains numerous production markings, artist details, project labels and other information across the prints.

This batch really shows just how much thought went into the world beyond the characters themselves.
There are vehicle studies, street infrastructure and technology, huge architectural environments and some beautifully atmospheric city concepts. I particularly like seeing the more functional design work alongside the finished-looking environment pieces. Things like the different vehicle iterations and pieces of street equipment might only occupy a small part of the finished frame, but collectively they help make the world feel believable.

A few of these are also fascinating because you can see ideas that feel immediately recognisable as Blade Runner 2049, while others show directions the production explored before arriving at what we eventually saw on screen.

The Q-BORO pieces are particularly striking. They have that oppressive scale, darkness and tiny human in a vast world feeling that 2049 does so well.

Part 3 of 9. More to come.

Some asked if I could share the production notes from my original 1982 Blade Runner press kit, so here they are in full.

The complete press kit contains around 80 pages of material, but these 20 pages make up the Production Notes section.

I find these particularly fascinating because they give us a contemporary view of Blade Runner, written before the film had acquired the reputation and enormous influence it has today. We're so used to discussing the film through 40-plus years of criticism, different cuts, documentaries and books that it's quite refreshing to see how the production itself was being presented in 1982.

There are some great little details throughout.

Ridley Scott describes Blade Runner first and foremost as a detective story and thriller, rather than straightforward science fiction. Elsewhere, the filmmakers talk about deliberately rejecting the pristine, shiny vision of the future common in science fiction at the time. Their Los Angeles was intended to feel crowded, noisy, dirty and layered, essentially the contemporary city pushed several decades forward rather than replaced by an entirely new one.

That idea comes through particularly strongly in the production design notes. Existing buildings weren't simply swept away in their imagined future. They were retrofitted, with new technology, pipes and machinery added on top of the old. Reading that now, it seems remarkably close to one of the things that ultimately made Blade Runner's world so convincing and influential.

There are also some wonderful descriptions of the terminology used by the production. The crew apparently called some of the technological clutter filling the streets "retro trash", while the enormous effects landscape surrounding the Tyrell Corporation was known as "Hades" or "Ridley's Inferno."

I also enjoyed the section on Syd Mead. The notes stress that the technology wasn't intended to dominate the film simply because it looked futuristic. Mead describes the machinery as appearing only where it was needed and fitting into the story. Douglas Trumbull makes essentially the same point about the visual effects, saying they were there to support the story rather than become the centre of attention. Considering how visually celebrated the film eventually became, that's an interesting insight into the thinking behind it.

And there are plenty of other curiosities. Deckard is compared with classic private detectives such as Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe; the notes describe the enormous effort that went into turning existing Los Angeles locations into this future city; and there are contemporary biographies of Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young and the rest of the cast written at a fascinating point in their careers.

Even some of the wording feels like a little time capsule. On page 9, Harrison Ford's forthcoming third Star Wars film is still referred to as "Revenge of the Jedi", before the title became Return of the Jedi.

These are photographs of the original 1982 pages from my press kit, rather than a modern reproduction or transcription. I've photographed them over some of the original publicity material from the kit as well.

If you'd like to see the press kit itself, including the original folder and publicity stills, have a look at my previous post.

Enjoy!

I cannot even begin to fathom how deep his design sense goes, in creating such tangible glimpses of the future, that IMO we're still trying to catch up to, in terms of combining visual style and conceptual design depth.

A timeless master!

Something a little different from my Blade Runner collection.

This is the first part of a large collection of concept art from Blade Runner 2049, which I'll be sharing in full across nine posts.

I have it on very good authority that these were used during the production of the film. They're professionally printed on substantial, heavyweight paper stock, and many retain production details, artwork labels, artist marks and Blade Runner 2049 branding within the images.

Looking at the artist names and markings on the individual pieces throughout the entire collection, I've identified work by a wide range of artists and designers who contributed to Blade Runner 2049: Jon McCoy, George Hull, Victor Martinez, Peter Popken, Jeremy Paillotin, Kamen Anev, Dan Baker, Mike Hill, Emmanuel Shiu, Adam Baines, Nick Keller, Adam J. Middleton, Madhav Kumar, Axel Akesson, Krishna Prasad Anthara, Stefano Carta and Lukas Harris, along with work from Wētā Workshop.

One of the things I find fascinating about this collection is being able to see the visual development of the film through its environments, architecture, vehicles, technology and other design ideas. Some are immediately recognisable from the finished film, while others show concepts and variations that evolved along the way, and some didn't make the final cut, if you'll pardon the pun!

Rather than trying to squeeze them all into one enormous post, I'll be sharing the complete collection across nine parts, each featuring different pieces.

More to follow in time…

“All these concepts will be shared in time… like posts over nine.” IYKYK

This is not new but I thought I'd share for those who never saw them. Made by Pablo Olivera back in 2021. Check out more of his awesome artwork here https://pabloolivera.artstation.com/