In “Memories of Blade Runner: Ethics of Film Restoration in the Digital Age”, I focus upon the digital restoration of the film Blade Runner (1982), and whether the changes made to the film are contrary to the fundamental ethics of film restoration. In addition, I explore the effects of these changes and their impact upon our cultural memory of the film. I wrote this paper for the Moving Image Preservation and Restoration (MIAS 210) course, taught by Michael Pogorzelski, Director of the Academy Film Archive.
*Note, although video on this page was obtained from the Domestic Cut of Blade Runner, the soundtrack (i.e. narration and music) is not that of the Domestic Cut and could not be ‘ripped’ from the DVD. However, the picture and events correspond to those of the Domestic Cut of Blade Runner and are presented here for the sake of illustration.
It is considered sacrilege to film restorationists to make any fundamental changes to a film during its restoration, as many consider that the restorationist’s job is to fix aesthetic flaws that have occurred since the film’s initial release. The restorationist’s primary objective is to correct the ravages of time, such as scratches and dirt, without altering the film’s structure and/or meaning. This is because many consider films to be historical artifacts that should be preserved and restored using the same theories that are applied to the preservation and restoration of fine art. However, this is not such a black and white issue, especially if the original release of the film does not match the filmmaker’s vision, as in the case of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) and the restoration that took place for the Final Cut version of the film.
In her book, The Past is a Moving Picture, Janna Jones writes that the general aim of film restoration tends toward reconstructing the first chapter of a film’s existence. Restorationists focus not just on a film’s premiere, they also consider a film’s multiple histories and versions, and any imperfect restorations that may have taken place. While working on a film, restorationists will use the knowledge of a film’s history to fill in visual, audio and narrative gaps from what remains of the original film and its variants. This is the key to the completeness of a restored film as it enables an audience to experience the film’s original intention as understood by the restorationist.
Furthermore, archivist Giovanna Fossati states in her book, From Grain to Pixel – The Archival Life of Film in Transition, “On the textual level, for example, the film as it was shown at its premiere can be considered as original as the film the director originally wanted before it was altered by the production company or cut by the censorship [sic] before the premiere. When considering film as a material artifact, the original black and white camera negative of a silent film can be considered as original as the derived film print in which colors were added, by stencil, tinting or toning. The discussion on the original in restoration is central to film archival practice and needs a broader reflection.”
It is important to consider how the restoration of a film affects our culture’s memory of it. In addition, one must also wonder who does the memory belong to? The audience? The filmmaker? The studio or producers? What happens when a viewer has seen the restored version, and not the original? All of these questions arise when studying the restoration of Blade Runner and the release of Blade Runner: the Final Cut because the latter contains the fixing of numerous errors.
During the filming of Blade Runner, director Ridley Scott faced numerous issues that prevented him from releasing his vision of what the film should be. The biggest issue that Scott faced was that the film was over budget, and there was significant pressure from Tandem Productions (one of the film’s financial backers) for him to finish production as soon as possible and for the film to be released. In acting as the film’s completion bond guarantors, Tandem would pay for any additional costs that resulted from the film being over-budget, in exchange for ancillary (television and video) rights to the picture as well as wresting control of the film from Scott. The film had originally been budgeted at $22.5 million, and cost slightly over $28 million once the film was finished. This caused problems as Tandem was pressuring Scott to wrap production, and he was unable to complete scenes (such as the climactic dove shot) or provide the ending that he wanted (the original version ends on an incongruously optimistic note, at odds with the rest of the film’s somber tone).
In an interview with writer Paul M. Sammon, Scott reflected on the issue, “I discovered this fairly quickly, I found out that Tandem and I just didn’t think on the same wavelength. They were people who were basically – well, let’s call them sophisticated television people. People who weren’t capable of visualizing the type of accurate film budget I required for a film. Tandem, I think, always felt that my asking for additional funds while we were shooting Blade Runner was, to some degree, some kind of indulgence. It wasn’t. It was me, as the director of that film having a certain vision. And I was sticking to that fucking vision.“
Because Scott was unable to produce a polished version of the film and work out its errors in time for its June 25, 1982 release, there exists no fewer than five known variants of the film. The variants include, but are not limited to: the Workprint (also known as the Denver/Dallas Sneaks Fairfax Cut, UCLA cut, NuArt/Castro Cuts; shown in 1982, 1990, and 1991); the San Diego Sneak Preview (shown only once in May 1982); the Domestic Cut (the original 1982 American Theatrical Release), the International Cut (1982 version that was shown in Europe and Asia), the Director’s Cut (released theatrically in 1992); and the Broadcast Version (United States network broadcast 1986). In 2007 an additional version was released, The Final Cut, which is the restored version of the film, and the Domestic Cut are the variants that this paper will focus on.
Prior to the release of Blade Runner on home video in the mid-1980s, the general public was unaware of the existence of different versions of the film. When the film was released on home video, it was promoted as having additional scenes of violence that weren’t included in the Domestic Cut. One of the first articles informing the public of the numerous versions of the film, “Do Androids Dream of Unicorns? The 7 Faces of Blade Runner” was published in the November/December 1993 issue of Video Watchdog, written by Paul M. Sammon.
According to the Restoration Producer of Blade Runner, Charles de Lauzirika, the Workprint version of the film was leaked in 1990 at the Cineplex Odeon Fairfax 70mm film festival. This version was leaked because it just happened to be the one that Director of Warner Bros. Asset Management, Michael Arrick pulled from the vaults for the festival. The Workprint differs from the Domestic Cut, or the original release, in that it contained temporary music during the fifth and sixth reels (the filmmakers didn’t have all of Vangellis’ score in yet); there was no voice over narration from Deckard (Harrison Ford), except at the end of the film; the film contained a slightly different opening; and there was no happy ending with Deckard and Rachael (Sean Young), driving into the countryside together. The success of that screening inspired Warner Bros. to release the Workprint version theatrically in limited run at the Nuart Theater in Los Angeles and the Castro Theater in San Francisco. The release of the Workprint was so popular, it broke house records, and sold out for every showing. As a result, Warner Bros. extended the run.
However, Scott felt that the Workprint was still not his vision of what the film should be. He said of it, “I think it was a great fuss about nothing. I mean there was really just the accidental removal. A print was run without voice over, and it ended in the elevator. That’s really about it.”
The popularity of this version, and the fact that Scott said this was not his vision of what the film should be, led Warner Bros. to release the Director’s Cut version of the film. Calling it a Director’s Cut was a bit of a misnomer, since Scott had little involvement in it as he was busy finishing Thelma and Louise (1991) and preparing for 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992).
The Director’s Cut was closer to what Scott intended for the original release of the film, as it lacked the voice-over narration and the happy ending, and it also included Deckard’s dream of a unicorn, which was cut out of the Domestic Cut. Scott compared the Director’s Cut with the Domestic Cut stating, “They are two different movies. But the director’s cut is closer to what I was originally after.”
In interviewing Scott, Sammon mentioned that in almost all of the scripts he had read, the character Deckard does narrate the film in one form or another. Sammon asked Scott about his feelings regarding the voice-over narration, and he replied, “The bottom line of Deckard’s narration was that we just couldn’t get it. We wrestled with it and wrestled with it. Which frustrated Harrison to no end, because he’s clearly a talented and formidable actor. So neither he nor I were comfortable with it. The trouble is, the more you do it, the more you start to convince yourself that, well, it’s going to be okay. You don’t become pragmatic. That’s unfortunate. It’s only when your really view and hear these things years later that you think, “Oh my God! Its awful! Because A) Blade Runner’s voice over was over-explanation, and B), the narration, although admittedly influenced by Raymond Chandler, wasn’t Chandleresque enough.” Scott elaborated further, “Anyway, I was losing wicket at that point. So we ended up struggling to put the voice-over onto Blade Runner not for street poetry, which was our original intention, but to clarify things. Which I think became ridiculous. So did Harrison.”
As mentioned earlier, Scott was unable to provide the ending he wanted for Blade Runner, due to pressure from Tandem to release the film with a happy ending. As he recalled to Sammon, “By the time I agreed to add the happy ending, I was so beaten up, so on the ropes, that I was spitting in the bucket. I was punchy, really. Because prior to this I had been insisting that we had to end Blade Runner when Rachel and Deckard go into the elevator.”
Tandem however, felt that this ending was too depressing and wanted to end it on a heroic up note with Deckard and Rachael, driving off into the countryside. Scott objected, “At first I fought that. I said, ‘But there is no countryside! It’s all either industrial wasteland or factory farms!’” As Tandem refused to buckle, Scott came up with a solution of his own, calling filmmaker Stanley Kubrick and asking him if he had any leftover footage from The Shining’s opening sequence. Kubrick agreed to donate the footage, on the condition that it could not have been previously used in his film. ““Within two hours I had seventeen 2000 foot rolls of helicopter footage. And that’s how it happened.”
The Director’s Cut, and subsequent versions of Blade Runner, included the unicorn dream shot that Scott had originally shot for the film during post production. This shot is important as it suggests that Deckard may be a replicant. Sammon states in All Our Variant Futures, a documentary on the restoration of Blade Runner, that there has been an assumption that the unicorn dream was actually repurposed footage from Scott’s own Legend (1985), a common misconception amongst film buffs in 1992. “By this time in 1992 home video was so firmly established that there was a whole new audience – the home viewing audience, so a new version of a popular film [Director’s Cut] could obviously generate more revenue.” However, Sammon notes during his interview with Scott, that despite Scott’s stating for years that he wanted to get the deleted scene back in the movie, Scott ultimately didn’t object when producers told him to get rid of it.
Scott underscores the reason for the unicorn dream as follows: “It is not the unicorn itself which is important. It’s the landscape around it – the green landscape – they [critics of the scene] should be noticing… But before that happened my original thought had been never to show a green landscape during Blade Runner. We would only see an urban world. But, I subsequently figured, since this moment of Deckard noodling at the piano offered the pictorial opportunity of a dream, why not show a unicorn? In a forest? It’s an image that’s so out-of-place with the rest of the picture that even if I only run it for three seconds, the audience will clearly understand that they’re witnessing some sort of reverie.”
In early 2000, Warner Bros. approached Scott about working on a special edition DVD of Blade Runner. These discussions led to the agreement on a restoration of the film which would become the Final Cut version. This version is the cut of the film that Scott claims best suits his original vision, and unlike the Director’s Cut, he was fully involved in the making of it.
The team that worked on the restoration included Charles de Lauzirika (Restoration Producer), Kurt P. Galvao (Restoration Consultant), and John Scheele (Visual Effect Supervisor). De Lauzirika states that his agenda in restoring Blade Runner “was to make sure that basically Blade Runner was not only treated to the best picture and sound quality possible, but Ridley would finally get to make any last tweaks and edits and cuts to the film that he wanted to make.”
The restoration began with de Lauzirika and Galvao searching for all of the original elements of the film that were known to exist. After locating some of the elements in England and in the United States in the Warner Bros. vaults, they were able to locate the final elements at Preferred Media, in Burbank, CA. These final elements belonged to Tandem Productions’ Jerry Perenchio, and consisted of numerous boxes of all different types of elements such as negative, print, and duplication; and different sizes such as 35mm, 65mm and 70mm. These elements had been marked as junk to be destroyed. However, since Preferred Media had never received the final orders to destroy the materials, they sat on palettes for twelve years. As de Lauzirika recalled, “Honestly, I got to go through 977 boxes and cans of mag, IP, INs, 65mm visual effects comps, 35mm original dailies … everything ever printed,”
Shortly after the elements were located and cataloged, the project was put on hiatus, until restoration efforts resumed in 2005. This delay ultimately proved beneficial, as it allowed the technology eventually utilized for the Final Cut to advance to match the director’s vision.
As it was imperative to maintain the integrity of the restoration by changing the visual effects (VFX) as unobtrusively as possible, the restoration team asked the original VFX artists (David Dryer, Douglass Trumbull, and Richard Yuricich) for their input. Scheele recalled working on the project, saying the hardest thing to come to terms with was, “to perfect certain shots, to bring them to a higher level, to clean them up, and touch them up, but to do as little changing as possible. That was an unusual assignment.” Scheele also said that in reviewing each shot of the film and erasing its flaws, he was conscious about going too far and not touching the flaws that many fans of the film find endearing and refer to as, “beloved flaws.” It was important to de Lauzirika to bring the team’s mindset to 1982 and look at the restoration through “a purist standpoint, which is more about restoration, not revisionism.”
In order to restore the VFX at the highest quality possible, the restoration team needed the original elements used to create them. Rob Hummel, who worked at Technicolor when Blade Runner was made, helped locate the original negatives for the VFX at CFI, where they were neatly packed and labelled in each can, unlike the elements at Preferred Media. The cans even contained the lab sheets from Technicolor.
A list of the continuity problems and errors in Blade Runner was presented to Scott in order to see what he wanted fixed or polished. Scott didn’t agree to fixing all the flaws on the list, which made de Lauzirika realize that there was no need to perfect everything, and there was a charm to the film’s flaws, stating “I think these flaws, strangely, give Blade Runner its life.”
Several of the most egregious flaws in Blade Runner occur when the character of Zhora (Joanna Cassidy) is chased and then “retired” by Deckard. The scene contained the most flaws of any scene in the film due to the fact that the production team was rushed to complete the scene in one take because the sun was rising, and the scene occurs at night.
The first error of this sequence that is seen is when Zhora is in the dressing room, putting on her high-heeled boots. Seconds later, when she is being chased through the streets, the boots she is wearing are flat-heeled. This was one continuity error that the restoration team left in the Final Cut.
The more serious of the multiple errors of this scene occurs when Deckard shoots Zhora. Immediately after Zhora is shot the first time, the scene cuts to a shot of her stunt double (Lee Pulford) crashing through the window, and no wound is visible on her shoulder where Zhora was shot. When Zhora is shot the second time, she is shot in the exact same place as she was the first time. The reason for this was that the sequence could only be shot in one take, and was thus filmed simultaneously by a number of different cameras at different angles. Consequently, both the first shoulder wound and the second shoulder wound are actually the same moment within the sequence, but are shot from two different angles. Later, when Zhora’s body is seen dead on the street, there are two bullet holes in her shoulders.
In addition to the errors mentioned previously, when Zhora is shot the second time, she is clearly clutching something in her right hand, which is connected to a black tube running up her sleeve. In reality, Pulford was holding a trigger mechanism in her right hand, which was used to explode the blood bag beneath her costume. The black tube housed the wires running up to the squib.
What is probably the most obvious error of this sequence is when Zhora crashes through a series of display windows, as it is obviously not Cassidy, but Pulford standing in for Cassidy. Furthermore, the color and style of Pulford’s wig does not match Cassidy’s hair.
To fix this problem, the restorationists digitized the original photography of Pulford’s head, in order to isolate individual movements. This allowed them to see what they needed to digitally replace Pulford’s head with Cassidy’s. Twenty-five years after the filming of Blade Runner, Cassidy was brought in to reshoot the scene. In reshooting this scene, only her head was used, and she mirrored the stunt double’s performance. Using computer generated imaging tracking tools, Cassidy’s head was slightly rotated and her motions sped up so she could move better with the dynamic of the photography in the shot. The restored sequence still contains 80-90% of the original sequence, including the visible trigger mechanism Pulford was carrying, and side view of Pulford as she is crashing through the final store’s panes of glass.
Another visible error occurs when Deckard visits the artificial snake merchant, Abdul Ben-Hassan (Ben Astar). During this scene Deckard’s lip movements do not synchronize with the dialogue that he is speaking, and at the end of the scene his mouth moves but Ben-Hassan’s voice is heard. In the Workprint cut of the film, this was not an issue, due to the fact that the dialogue wasn’t changed until after the Denver and Dallas sneak previews. The producers of Blade Runner decided that the existing dialogue needed to be changed as it didn’t provide enough insight into their character’s motivations.
Hoping to find the original dialogue that matched the scene in the Domestic Cut, the restoration team combed through all of the audio elements that Ford and the voice actor filling in for Astar had recorded in post-production. The team was unable to locate the matching elements. Although the idea of digitally replacing Ford’s head was discussed, it was decided against, as this would mean drastically altering his performance.
The team determined that if it was acceptable to replace Pulford’s head with Cassidy’s, then it would be acceptable to replace Ford’s mouth with his own, as the goal was to keep as much of the original performance as possible. However Ford was unable to participate, and a different solution was found, utilizing Ford’s own son, Ben as a replacement for his father’s mouth. Coincidentally, Ben was the same age as his father when Blade Runner was shot, and his lower facial features also matched his father’s. Ben was brought in to read the dialogue from the film in front of a green screen where his chin, mouth and lower face were recorded and subsequently superimposed upon the footage of his father.
The most noticeable alteration to the original film occurs during the climax, when Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) releases a dove upon dying. The dove flies off into an incongruously clear blue sky, when no other blue skies have been seen in the film. This sudden appearance of a pristine sky conflicts with the tone and dystopian feel of the film, and briefly takes one out of the viewing experience. During the initial shoot, Scott was intent on using a live dove, however, this dove became too wet to fly when cameras rolled. Since Tandem was pressuring Scott to finish production, he decided to film the dove later on as an insert during post production in London. Scott remembers, “Then I needed a shot of the dove Rutger releases flying away into the sky. We’d tried to grab that earlier, but the bird had become rather wet underneath the sprinklers we had going, and when it was time for it to fly off, it merely hopped out of Rutger’s hand and walked away. So I shot another bird during the day, as an insert, in London, next to the incinerator at Elstree Studios. Which of course didn’t look quite right.”
David Dryer, one of the film’s original VFX team members, was brought in to assist in correcting this scene. Dryer originally recommended building a computer generated image (CGI) of a dove, animating it to match the motion of the original dove and replacing the background. Instead, the footage containing the dove from the original release was scanned from the negative, and digitally composited into new matte paintings.
In deciding what to replace the blue sky with, de Lauzirika drew a sketch to serve as a basis for what the new shot should look like. Afterwards, he digitally photographed clouds and photoshopped them to tonally represent what the sketch looked like. He then approached Scott with several drafts to see which concept Scott preferred.
The dove was then digitally composited by Illusion Arts into new matte paintings, and color timed to Scott’s tastes. To keep with the original look of the dove (but not the background), new steam and rain elements that were used in the digital matte painting were step-framed to match the original dove. Scheele stated what the restoration team was aiming for: “Even there we looked at what has become ingrained and embedded in people’s mind about the film. We looked very carefully to match the angle of the building so the shot would subconsciously remind you of the take that was in the original.”
This particular scene is important to the structure/ambiance of the film, because as de Lauzirika states, “The shot is not about technology, it is not about future architecture, it’s about that dove getting up to the sky because that represents Batty’s soul going to heaven” (though Scott in an interview with Sammon points out, “Of course, technically, in that particular world of 2019, there would be no live pigeons there. Everything would be dead.”)
One of the themes of Blade Runner is the power and importance of memory, and the role of photography as a testament to experience. When Rachael is in Deckard’s apartment, in the attempt to prove to him that she is human, she recounts memories of her childhood. Rachael produces a childhood photograph of herself and her mother, in the attempt to prove that the photograph corroborate her memories. Deckard informs Rachael that the photograph means nothing, and that her memories were implanted and in fact are those of Tyrell’s niece. Hearing this, Rachael breaks down in tears and leaves.
In the Final Cut, when Deckard sits at the piano and is surrounded by photographs, and daydreams of a unicorn running through a forest. The photographs serve to suggest that Deckard himself may be a replicant. As mentioned previously, in the Domestic Cut, there is no unicorn dream, so only the photographs in this scene are needed to elude to Deckard’s status as a replicant. However, at the end of both Domestic Cut and Final Cut versions of the film, when Deckard picks up the tinfoil unicorn that has been left by Gaff, it is a visual cue that implies that Gaff has knowledge of Deckard’s reveries.
The theme of false and inaccurate memories can be applied to film restorations and how they affect the culture’s memory of a film. Although it can be assumed that most people who saw the first release of Blade Runner in 1982 are alive today, a new generation of viewers who will have only seen the Final Cut, will have the Final Cut version to serve as their memory of the film. With the passage of time it is not unfair to say that the Final Cut of Blade Runner will supplant any previous iterations of the film.
Prior to writing this paper, my memory of Blade Runner was only of the Final Cut, as I had yet to see the other variants of the film. To comment on the impact that a restored version of a film can have on a viewer’s emotional response to the film, I decided to watch the Domestic Cut. There was approximately one year between my viewing of the Final Cut and the Domestic Cut.
My first impressions of the Domestic Cut, was that of an unreliable memory: though the film was familiar, the imagery was brighter and more colorful than I remembered. This conflicted not only with my recollection, but also with the tone and mood of the film. This led me to question my recollection of the Final Cut and it was only when I saw screen shots comparing the two versions, that I realized that the Final Cut was more representative of Scott’s vision.
It occurs to me that had I not viewed the Final Cut, but had only seen the Domestic Cut, my current and future impressions of the film would be different, and I would not consider Blade Runner to be the masterpiece that I think it is now. My memory of the film would have been unduly influenced by Deckard’s stilted narration, the numerous continuity errors, and the discordant happy ending. These elements would have detracted from my appreciation of the expertise and craftsmanship that went into the making of the film.
In seeing who owns the memory of Blade Runner, one could look at online forums and judge the film’s fans to see how they felt about the changes done to the film since its first release. One fan, “airdave”, compared the Domestic Cut and the Director’s Cut, “So what is all the fighting over old version / new version? We all know (except for Ridley Scott) that the old version is the best!! Seriously, most of us fell in love with this movie when we saw the theatrical release. Thats [sic] what stuck in everybody’s head for so many years and to criticize it now is ridiculous. The fact that Ridley Scott did not like the theatrical release is very interesting. The fact that he got the opportunity to alter the film (to his original design) and release it to the public, is fantastic. Fans have at least 2 versions of this amazing film and that just adds to the pleasure…but to put down or ignore the original theatrical film that started the interest is completely unfair.”
Although the shot of the dove at the climax of Blade Runner lasts only a couple of seconds, it carries significant weight and emotion to fans of the film. “Feyhra” commented, “I don’t like the new CGI dove sequence. I don’t really much care for the new CGI dove shot. I don’t mind a little CGI to fix certain shots because it wasn’t intrusive, but that whole shot was constructed with CGI and it doesn’t fit and looks like it’s from a much cheaper movie. I know there’s a continuity problem with the original but I still much prefer it. I know [it] isn’t actually daylight shining on him just moments before he releases the dove, but it is suggestive of *some* kind of light and to see the dove fly away into it.. Well, it fits somehow with the theme of Batty’s fall and his redemption..”
“ridleynoir” responded to Feyhra, “The hard part it [sic] that it isn’t something we are used to, and have ingrained into our memories. Compared to many of the other changes, it also isn’t as subtle. I like how the frame is just about exactly the same, and elements of the original still are there including the brightening sky and smoke stacks. It may just take a few hundred more viewings before I can erase the memory of the original version. As a matter of fact I got to see the DC [Domestic Cut] again recently on a large screen and the changed cuts seems a bit trite and dated, while the rest of the movie still seems pretty vital. I also found it interesting to see how when you are viewing the movie with others, you can almost see it through their eyes, and have a different perspective of it. I am not sure if it is that I was just sensing their emotions and tensions and relating to them, or if I was just more self-aware thus detaching me from how I usually connect with the movie while watching it.”
Archivist Paolo Cherchi Usai stated in The Death of Cinema, “Experience teaches us that loss of memory is as inevitable as anxiety for the future. In the hopes of avoiding both, the maker of moving images fabricates memories or visions of what is to come in the cherished belief that they will exist forever in an eternal present of the spectator’s will. Exposing the spectator to a single viewing of that moving image is enough to reveal the futility of such ambition.”,
When Deckard is attempting to identify who owns the snake scale that he found in Leon’s bathtub, he scans a photograph that he found in Leon’s apartment in the Esper machine. By enhancing and enlarging the photo numerous times, Deckard sees a woman in the background that we later learn is Zhora. However, due to a continuity error in the film, the woman that he sees in the photograph is not immediately identifiable as Zhora, although there is some resemblance. This is one of the flaws that was left uncorrected in the Final Cut.
Rutger Hauer explains the Esper scene as, “So that whole Esper sequence shows how you can play with images and tell a story and, at the same time, completely bullshit someone. Which is just like making the motion picture, come to think of it. But the truth of that photo is — there is no truth.”
The original theatrical release of Blade Runner is not the version that Scott intended, and it is understandable for people to take issue with alterations of films that they have a sentimental connection to. Many feel that the original release of a film is a historical artifact, and that much like memory, it should never be corrupted. However, any restoration of a film must be seen as a new version of that film. As Giovanna Fosatti states, “In the restoration of a film, theory and practice should meet eventually and result in a new artifact, ready, once again, to be (re)interpreted.”
We expect film to serve as a testament to our memory, however, as Blade Runner succinctly illustrates via plot and its role as a cultural artifact, memory is not always a reliable or incorruptible witness.
Bibliography
Books:
Booker, M. Keith. 2006. Alternate Americas science fiction film and American culture. Westport, Conn: Praeger, 170-186.
Cherchi Usai, Paolo. 2001. The death of cinema: history, cultural memory and the digital dark age. London: British Film Institute.
Fossati, Giovanna. 2009. From grain to pixel the archival life of film in transition. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 64.
Jones, Janna. 2012. The past is a moving picture preserving the twentieth century on film. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Sammon, Paul. 1996. Future noir: the making of Blade runner. New York: HarperPrism.
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Perenchio, Jerry, Bud Yorkin, Michael Deeley, Hampton Fancher, David Webb Peoples, Ridley Scott, Harrison Ford, et al. 2007. Blade runner. Disc 5, “All Our Variant Futures”. Burbank, CA: Distributed by Warner Home Video.
Perenchio, Jerry, Bud Yorkin, Michael Deeley, Hampton Fancher, David Webb Peoples, Ridley Scott, Harrison Ford, et al. 2007. Blade runner. Disc 3, “US Theatrical Cut”. Burbank, CA: Distributed by Warner Home Video.
Deeley, Michael, Ridley Scott, Hampton Fancher, Harrison Ford, Sean Young, Rutger Hauer, and Philip K. Dick. 2008. Blade runner the final cut. Neutral Bay, N.S.W.: Warner Bros. Entertainment.
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Paul M. Sammon, “Do Androids Dream of Unicorns? The 7 Faces of Blade Runner.” Video Watchdog, No. 20 (November/December 1993)
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“Exclusive: The Real Deal.” www.creativeplanetnetwork.com. <http://www.creativeplanetnetwork.com/dcp/feature/exclusive-real-deal/50667> (16 December 2013).
Feyhra. “I don’t like the new CGI dove sequence,” BladeZone’s Off World Forums. 20 May 2009. <http://www.bladezone.com/bz_forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3094> (17 December 2013).
ridleynoir. “I don’t like the new CGI dove sequence,” BladeZone’s Off World Forums. 20 May 2009. <http://www.bladezone.com/bz_forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3094> (17 December 2013).
Sam. “Blade Runner: Final Cut Image Comparisons,” BladeZone’s Off World Forums. 24 December 2008. <http://www.bladezone.com/bz_forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2555> (16 December 2013).
Skywalker 80. “Favourite Version?,” Los Angeles 2019 Blade Runner Forum. 11 May 2008. <http://tyrell-corporation.pp.se/forum/index.php?topic=43.0> (16 December 2013).
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