This article is about scene 9, “Replicants in Question”. In this scene, Deckard and Bryant in a small room called “Blue Room”, where they view the manufacturing data of the escaped replicants. It is also known as the “Blue Room scene”.
They use a supercomputer called “esper” to view the manufacturing data of replicants. Paul M. Simon described “esper” as follows in his book “The Making of Blade Runner”.
- It is the supercomputer run by the police
- It is going to be everywhere – inside cars, out of the sidewalk, every-where
In terms of modern technology, “esper” may be the name of the entire system of supercomputer at police headquarters and the terminals networked to it.
Now, you can see the “esper” terminal in Syd Mead’s production sketch.
The “esper” terminal in the Blue Room is probably based on this sketch. However, in the Blue Room scene in the original film “Blade Runner”, you only see a close-up of the monitor, but not the whole terminal.
Then, I was wondering that the “esper” terminal based on the Syd Mead sketch did not made as a set at all?
It was wrong. In one of the rejected scenes of “Blade Runner”, there is a scene where Gaff and Bryant are using the “esper” terminal to spy on Deckard. You can see the whole ESPER terminal in this rejected scene!
You can see that it is a pretty perfect reproduction of the “esper” terminal as Syd Meat sketch.
In “Blade Runner White Dragon Cut 5”, I modify the rejected cut to integrate the entire “esper” terminal image into the Blue Room scene.
- Replacing the image on the monitor with an image of Leon getting the “Voigt-Kampff Testing”
- Making Gaff look like Deckard by changing a image of Gaff to only silhouette
- Erasing the coffee cup in Gaff’s hand
- Adding cigarette smoke
Now, there is a problem that the color of the neon lights on both sides of the monitor is different between the one in the Blue Room scene and then one in the rejected scene. The color in the Blue Room scene is blue, while the one in the rejected scene is orange.
＜モニター両横のネオンの色：「ブルー・ルーム」シーンのものは青色でボツカットのものはオレンジ色＞
Which one is correct?
If you would look at Syd Mead’s original sketch, you could see that the color of neon is orange.
Since one of the concepts of WDC5 is to perfectly reproduce Syd Mead’s original sketch, I decided to use orange to match Mead’s sketch.
I also added Deckard’s rejected narration to the first half of this scene.
There are pros and cons to Deckard’s, but I am in favor of it. The film “Blade Runner” is often associated with “film noir”, and the monologue is one of the techniques often used in “film noir”. I believe that Deckard’s monologue helps to give “Blade Runner” a film noir feel.
<Scene 9 : Replicants in Question>