Activity: Last 10 WeeksRevisiting older works
How do you feel about improving your completed works or, if you are a consumer, about other people changing their films? For example, I read that Ridley Scott decided to have the sound design in Blade Runner updated for its 25th anniversary, citing technological assumptions (e.g., hydro-electric power sources) not being in tune with today’s world. I do not know if the article is true, but it would be disappointing if so. Blade Runner to me represents a projection of the future; a possible one… an interesting one. So what if it turned out differently? Besides, mistakes are fun to catch, so long as they do not distract.
I tweak my work all the time from festival to festival, but if I had a feature I would draw the line at theatrical release. After that, one more cut for DVD (the director’s cut) and move on to the next film.
I posed this question to Zeki Demirkubuz at this year’s Boston Turkish Film Festival and he said the notion of never completing a film made him restless. How do you feel?
on August 23rd, 2007 at 17:34 Quote
I think the popular response to the news of RS introducing changes to the film has been too much along the lines of “oh my god this is my favorite film you can’t just change it.” People get emotionally attached to the film or the characters, and then protest against changes. This is silly of course.
That said, I entirely agree with you about the equal silliness of RS’ supposed motivation to change the hydroelectric sound effects to those of internal combustion. When one makes a film that represents a vision of a future, that vision always originates at a certain era, and one should understand that in a few decades the film may be become a valuable historical curiosity that shows us how we previously viewed our “present” future.
I have a little hypothesis about all this: I believe (I may be wrong) that RS never originally intended to use hydroelectric sounds at all (feeling that the absence of combustion sounds would reduce his intended “grittiness” of the film), but eventually reluctantly caved in to whoever insisted in post-production that hydroelectrics are the future and that it is impossible not to show them. So now RS goes, “Aha, I told you we should have used combustion!”
Personally, I find this quite interesting to discuss because I have been cutting out parts of my past from memory all the time, just like many other people. Just the fact that I went back to correct grammar in this comment and to add this very paragraph can tell you something about me.
on September 4th, 2007 at 18:09 Quote
Great, new interview with Ridley Scott about Blade Runner (transcript).
on September 28th, 2007 at 08:46 Quote
Wired Q&A with Ridley Scott.