Blade Runner and The Hold Up

Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) is a source of controversy regarding science fiction film. The film was of course released in 1982, followed by the director’s cut coming out in 1992. The main source of controversy between these two films can be found in the director’s release which contained a voice over. Much of the debate revolving around this subject rested within the voice over’s necessity. This debate greatly reflected the debate which surrounded the “need and function of sound in cinema during the transition to sound” (Whittington 169). This voice over is of course reminiscent of film noir, which Blade Runner contains qualities of both film noir and science fiction “drawing on a stylistic approach that looked forty years forward into the future and forty years back” (Whittington 169). With our project in class The Hold Up, we had to at first create a short film out of the footage using conventional linear editing techniques. The second project was used to explore the characteristics of montage editing. I preferred the montage project over the conventional editing project because of the freedom that is allowed through montage techniques. Within this project I prioritized rhythm and image, by cutting on the pieces of movement and action within the footage. I also placed on importance in communicating that nothing in cinema is in “reel time”, as in we place emphasis, while we watch film, on past and present, but technically everything we have seen on screen is in the past. I wanted to bring this to light by using the slate in my montage to show the audience that they were in fact watching a piece of film, also a piece of film from the past. This is of course very much different from the affect which was created by the linear editing style of the first The Hold Up, where a simple account of a bank robbery was told.