Blade Runner

Analysis of 'Blade Runner' Opening Scene 

In the opening shot we get a Extreme Wide shot/Establishing Shot of the city of Los Angeles. Our first view of the city is a very dark one, all we can see is dark buildings with a dark sky, no natural colours are in sight. We can also see the lights from buildings and fire bursting from the top of them. All of these visual factors connote that this futuristic world is a distopian world. They connote this because they are all very closely related to the key visual representations of Hell. Fire, dark colours, dark skies, only light coming from fire and unnatural sources.

In this opening scene we also get the feel of a very unnatural world as we do not see any nature or natural settings, all the colours we see are very bleak and dark colours. We do not get to see any greens or blues, any colours associated with nature. We also don't see any sign of Human life, this may suggest that this world isn't a very safe to live or that it may be inhabitable.

With all of the first 3 shots we get of this futuristic distopian world the camera is constantly moving forward, this may be to create a sense of space, to show that the whole of what we can see is like what we can see in the first shot and this dark bleak world is never ending. Also while the camera is moving forward it is moving towards pyramids we see from the second shot onwards, this may be suggesting to us that the pyramids have a lot of importance and we should be moving towards working out what they are for or what their importance is.

The pyramids we see in the second shot onwards may be there to represent power to a certain character as pyramids in ancient Egypt were built for Pharaohs, people of high status and power and all the land the Pharaoh can see from his pyramid is his land. This may suggest that whoever owns or is in this pyramid owns this land or may be the reason the world is the way it is. Also the colours coming from the pyramids are slightly different to the colours on the rest of the buildings we can see in the first few shots. The pyramid has lights blue lights, this may suggest that the person inside or owns the pyramids is a cold person, suggesting they are emotionless, this links in with the film because it is about how replicants/Androids have no ability to feel empathy. This may suggest that this world has been taken over by these Replicants/Androids.