RCA Society

“Bladerunner” Day at the BFI - Ridley Scott

RCA Society goes to the movies…

“Bladerunner” Day at the BFI - Ridley Scott

To mark the 75th birthday of the BFI a poll of members - taken through the BFI’s “Visions of the future” project - elected Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner’ as the most iconic sci-fi film of all time.

The ‘Visions of the Future’ project was created to ‘generate a national debate on the future of film’. This debate raised not only our interest in Ridley Scott as an RCA ‘film’ graduate, and celebrated film maker, but also brought back into question the College’s ongoing fractured relationship with film as an ‘art’ discipline…evidenced through the demise of the film School at the RCA and Evironmental Media – both invaluable repositories for ‘time based’ practice. 

During the early 1960s Ridley Scott started out as a commercial art (graphic design) student at the RCA. At a time when art schools were predominantly craft based institutions – and where, in most departments, technique superceded “academic (intellectual) rigor”.

Art Schools were for emotionally messy technophobic misfits. In the eyes of “hand crafted” art school tutors the ‘clinical’, time based practices such as photography and making movies were, tantamount to ‘cheating’ and the click and whir of the camera sounded their collective death knell - “Art is Dead -Photography lives”. 

Film courses were virtually non-existent within the ‘art’ school. If you wanted to study ‘film’ you were to be geared towards documentary film-making technique and you went to the London Film School (est 1956). British cinema excelled in the ‘documentary’ – and painting likewise excelled in the “documentary” (landscapes, portraits and all that). This is not to sniff at our great heritage of beautifully crafted documentary filmmaking 9or painting) - but a seismic shift was imminent. A new generation of “art” students were discovering time bases and other ways to ‘visualize’. The era of ‘the white heat of technology’ (1963) was bleaching out the traditional approaches of the ‘fine art schools’. Time based medium of film, performance and sound was in the air and a new dynamic was building.

Ridley Scott, was part of this shift… according to Arthurian (or should that be Robin Hood) legend he actively participated in setting up the ‘film school’ at the College. This was denoted by his (seminal but raw) 16mm b/w film ‘Boy and a Bicycle’ (1963 / (5) ) – Shot, during his time at the College, on a borrowed Bolex cine camera.  (note: the  College owned a Bolex Cine Camera “and the manual” - so there was, after all, a chink in the armour letting in the light)! 

And ‘you’ll see why 1984 wont be like “1984” *

So why, some 20 years later, did the College (under the well connected, ‘typewriter thrower’, Jocelyn Stephens) jettison time based media practices in the 1980s? And why was there no resurfacing during TV documentary “groupie”, Chris Frayling’s tenure? Maybe there are some obscure connections between the Titanic and the balast of history.

 

Bad timing

Both the RCA film school and Environmental Media ‘bit the dust ‘ at the very time a technological revolution that gave us DTP, web surfing, and virtual societies emerged. Ridley Scott’s  “commercial” for the launch of Apple Mac computers in 1983 reinvested the apocalyptic energy of “Blade Runner” (1982) into a $1.5million TV commercial which, like “Blade Runner”, is now considered a “watershed” event in Apple’s history. A serious question here is how come the Royal College of Art (the vanguard of progressive art practice) had got the timing so wrong and sank with the boat…?

 

So…getting back to the BFI. 

All things being equal…. On the day of the ‘Winter Equinox’ a group of RCA Society members met up at the BFI’s ‘Visions of the Future’ event and O/D’d on 8 hours of “Blade Runner”.

The programme kicked off at 2pm with a screening of the Channel Four production “On the edge of Blade Runner” (dir Andrew Abbot) featuring Mark Kermode’s interviews with Rutger Hauer, Ridley Scott, Daryl Hannah and others (including a rare interview with the Blade Runner “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” author Philip K Dick). An intriguing panel discussion on the making of “Bladerunner” with its producer Michael Deely and ‘film writers’ Paul Sammon (USA/Japan) and Will Brooker (Kingston University) followed.

Those lucky enough to secure tickets for the next session were in for a real treat – the directors cut of an upgraded version of the movie ‘Bladerunner’ followed by Paul Sammon talking with ‘Bladerunner’ lead actor Rutger Hauer  (aka: Nexus 6 Replicant (M) Des: BATTY (Roy). (Is there a subliminal RCA connection here?). Following a couple of hours of entertaining and insightful discussion the final session brought another brilliant discussion between Francine Stock and Ridley Scott, spiked with movie clips from Blade Runner, Alien and of course the completed “Boy and a Bicycle” (1965)

 

Fellowship

The relaxed and entertaining day was topped with an even more relaxed and entertaining bestowing of a BFI Fellowship onto Ridley Scott by Stephen Frears – (fellow director and former BFI Governor). BFI Fellowships are given in recognition of "outstanding achievement of those who have helped shape film and television culture in the U.K." I think everyone in the audience that day would agree that this award was timely! 

Watch out for Ridley Scott’s next movie ‘Robin Hood’ – remember that ‘s the guy who robbed the rich and gave the loot back to the poor…!  (recommended viewing for Sir Fred Goodwin)

A huge thanks for mobilising us all to be at this event goes to Doreen Wilcockson (RCA Soc - membership) and to David Somerset (BFI – events organiser).

For more info on this BFI event: http://www.bfi.org.uk/about/media/releases/20090305_ridley_scott.pdf

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSiQA6KKyJo&feature=related

 

Here we see Steve Jobs at a keynote in 1983 showing for the first time ever the famous "1984" ad by Ridley Scott to an exclusive audience. The ad was shown on tv shortly after that only once during the 1984 Superbowl & never aired again & is considered to be one of the greatest ads of all time.

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