Tomorrow is Today: Blade Runner

$10 Suggested Donation

Ryan Ingebritsen presents sounds from Vangelis’s film score in Blade Runner (1982).

Description:
In 1982, Ridley Scott released what is still today seen as one of the greatest science fiction films of all time, Blade Runner. Set in 2019, the film follows a series of events surrounding a police officer trained and licensed to hunt down and kill “replicants”, artificial human life forms designed for specific functions (labor, war, pleasure, etc…) that have been declared illegal on the planet earth. Based on a novel by Philip K Dick, the film portrays a slightly dystopian future in which most of the earth’s population has moved to off world colonies and the population of Los Angeles speaks a street language that is a mix of Spanish, Japanese, Korean, and English while German is the language used by technicians and scholars. It explores the ambiguity of what it means to be human in a world where a machine can be given human attributes and achieve self awareness, as well as exploring the morality of using self aware machines as servants or slaves. Though the visual world Scott created in Bladerunner is one of the most stunning in the history of film, the sound score and sound track by Vangelis is also completely singular and recognizable and gives the film its completely unique atmosphere and tone. In this film, Vangelis integrated his sound track to at times blend with the already rich sound world that the sound designers had created to interpret what the future would sound like. He creates emotional content that becomes an extension of the sound world we are already in and at times compliments and plays duets off of the sound design itself.

So rich is this world that I one nigh decided to simply listen to the sound score without watching the film. As the “replicants” portrayed in the film were mostly born in 2016, I thought this would be a good year to share this experience with others in celebration of their inception.

For this evening of listening we will sit back, close our eyes, and just listen to an edited version of the film in 5.1 surround that takes out most of the dialogue allowing us to bask in the richly complex sound world that Vangelis and the team of sound designers created. We will follow it with a short discussion about the aspects of sound and composition that integrate in the work using only our ears as the guide for the discussion.

Participants that have not seen the film are encouraged to watch the full directors cut version AFTER this listening as it would be interesting to see what perspective someone takes away form hearing the soundtrack rather than watching the film for the first time.