The Ridley Scott film Blade Runner, begins with opening credits, these are plain, bold, white text on a black background. This along with quiet music and sudden beats of drums creates a very tense atmosphere and helps with suspense; there is a very mil...

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Euan MacNeilage

Film Studies

Blade Runner/Ridley Scott/1982/W.B

Mise en scene, in discussions of film, refers to the composition of the individual film, the relation of objects, people and masses; the interplay of light and dark; the pattern of colour; the camera’s position and angle of view, as well as the movement within the frame”. The complete film dictionary.

The Ridley Scott film Blade Runner, begins with opening credits, these are plain, bold, white text on a black background. This along with quiet music and sudden beats of drums creates a very tense atmosphere and helps with suspense; there is a very military feel to this opening sequence. We are then given an update of events, this tells us the film is set in the future and that it is a time when technology has enabled cyborg human clones, colonisation on planets in outer space and a world dominated by Large Corporations, this tells us that the genre of this film is sci-fi.

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        The opening sequence shows a vast futuristic urban backdrop, which includes massive towering buildings, fire and space ships. This is the first usage of Mise-en-scene, the key factor here being setting, as with films such as The Fifth Element, the setting of Blade Runner is not an actual place but a created world set in the future, this helps us identify with a world where laws and rules may be different to our own as well as the people in it, and shows a general aspect of sci-fi films.

The lighting is another prominent feature of Mise-en-scene used here, ...

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