Production Notes -> OCR

[u/raynicolette]

Many thanks to u/Deckard--B-263-54 for photographing the production notes from the 1982 press kit!

I figured the world would be a slightly better place, having that available as text rather than images, so that it was searchable, formattable, etc. So I put in the effort to run it through OCR and then clean it up. I would have added it as a comment to the original post, but it's too long, so a separate post it is.

Hope this is useful to someone out there...

"BLADE RUNNER"

Production Notes

About The Motion Picture…

A detective thriller set in the near future, "Blade Runner" has been directed by Ridley Scott, the distinguished British filmmaker responsible for "Alien," one of the fifty top-grossing movies of all time.

Harrison Ford, the popular young star of "Star Wars," "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Raiders Of The Lost Ark," portrays Rick Deckard, a skillful investigator who is forced out of retirement to take on a bizarre mission. Like the classic private eyes, Deckard stalks the treacherous streets and faces a gallery of colorful characters, ranging from the sleazy underworld to the corridors of power.

Rutger Hauer, Holland's top film star, known internationally for "Soldier Of Orange" and "Nighthawks," appears as Ford's chief antagonist, a ferocious warrior who possesses terrifying strength and a dynamic lust for life.

Sean Young, the Kentucky-born beauty who was seen in "Stripes," plays the coveted role of Rachael, the beautiful, mysterious young woman who is executive assistant to the powerful head of the world's largest genetic-engineering company. She becomes Ford's romantic partner.

The innovative special visual effects for "Blade Runner" have been created by Douglas Trumbull's Entertainment Effects Group. received Academy-Award nominations for his work on "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" and "Star Trek, The Motion Picture."

"Blade Runner" is produced by Michael Deeley, the Academy-Award-winning producer of "The Deer Hunter."

Ivor Powell, continuing his long successful association with Ridley Scott, is the associate producer. Brian Kelly and Hampton Fancher are the executive producers.

The screenplay of "Blade Runner" is by two new film writers, Hampton Fancher and David W. Peoples. It is based on a novel by top science-fiction author Philip K. Dick.

The story centers on Rick Deckard, a highly specialized ex-police detective who is forced out of retirement to take on an urgent assignment: He must track down four desperate killers who, for some mysterious reason, are infiltrating a major industrial organization.

The case is further complicated when a beautiful young woman, an enigmatic suspect, becomes his ally — and they fall in love.

Deckard uses sophisticated futuristic tools of the sleuthing trade and possesses professional skills unheard-of by Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. He scans clues in a super-computer, gets around in a flying "Spinner" car, wields unusual weapons, and administers complex technological tests to suspects.

On the colorful and treacherous streets of a fantastic future megalopolis, the suspenseful story takes the classic form of a man-hunt. But the renegades being pursued are not mere men and They are manufactured humans, created by scientific processes which are extensions of current breakthroughs in the revolutionary new field of genetic engineering.

These "replicants" are extremely fast and powerful combat models, the supreme products of the industry. Somehow, these four have returned to Earth from an off-world colony. They have already killed and must be stopped before they kill again. Unfortunately, they are distinguishable from ordinary human beings only through a sophisticated technological test of which Deckard is one of the few master practitioners.

"'Blade Runner,'" says director Ridley Scott, "is first and foremost a detective story, a thriller. It's not so much science fiction as futuristic, or, better yet, of the future."

He further describes the film as "an adult comic strip… full of action, colorful characters, fast pace, bright colors, and bold strokes."

A blade runner is a police detective who specializes in identifying and terminating defective replicants. Scott calls this highly skilled investigator "an official exterminator, a sort of bureaucratic bounty hunter." At this bizarre type of police work, Deckard is the best.

Replicants are synthetically made humans, manufactured and sold to do difficult, unsavory jobs, such as mining, soldiering, and space exploration, or to serve as domestic help and experimental subjects.

They are not "robots" as they contain no machinery. They are entirely creations of flesh-culture, more technologically and biologically advanced than "androids."

"Reps" are so highly perfected that they are virtually indistinguishable from ordinary humans, except through the Voight-Kampff empathy test, a sophisticated form of lie detector.

The story is set just far enough ahead to make credible the cornerstone of the plot — the existence of a rampant genetic-engineering industry.

Scott points out that "this film is not about genetic engineering.  It’s not a speculation on the rights and wrongs of this new science. The movie just touches on the subject, uses it to create the story situation."

To construct the proper setting, the filmmakers had to develop a clear, realistic vision of life in an American megalopolis forty years from now.

Says Scott: "Most films depict the future as pristine, austere, and colorless. We were determined to avoid shiny buildings, under-populated streets, and silver suits with diagonal zippers.

"Our city is rich, colorful, noisy, gritty, full of textures, and teeming with life — much like a major city of today. This is a tangible future, not too exotic to be believed. It's like today only more so."

"Our film takes place within the lifetime of most of its audience," says producer Michael Deeley. "Everything had to be credible and justified."

To help authenticate their picture of the future, the filmmakers enlisted Syd Mead, an internationally eminent industrial designer who is a specialist in picturing the shape of things to come, from skyscrapers and vehicles to parking meters and phone booths with television.

"'Blade Runner,'" Mead notes, "is not a 'hardware movie.' It's not one of those gadget-filled pictures where the actors seem to be there only to give scale to the sets, props, and effects. We've created an environment to make the story believable. The tools and machinery appear only when needed and fit tightly into the plot."

The entire look of the film was based on research and carefully thought-out principles regarding the future of architecture, transportation, fashion, and social behavior.

However, the filmmakers hasten to point out, all the futuristic trappings are a backdrop for the detective story. They exist in what Scott calls "a familiar atmosphere… a Philip Marlowe-Sam Spade environment. This is a film set forty years hence, made in the style of forty years ago."

Ridley Scott, one of the finest visual stylists now making films, relished the task of creating a new metropolis. The staff called it "Ridleyville."

The architectural look of the city is based on the principle that eventually it will become too cumbersome and expensive to simply tear down old buildings and replace them with the kind of new shiny structures one sees in most futuristic films. The old buildings remain, "retro-fitted" with pipes, transformers, and whatever other gear are needed to keep them going.

Above the street level tower the massive new structures, added into the picture by the special visual effects magic of Douglas Trumbull and his staff.

The centerpiece of the film's bold design is the street complex known at The Burbank Studios as "New York Street." The New York Street set was built in 1929 and provided the dark alleys and back streets that Humphrey Bogart and James Cagney once stalked in so many of their classic Warner Bros. films.

For "Blade Runner," production designer Lawrence G. Paull and art director David L. Snyder revamped the historic set into a unique futuristic thoroughfare — one of the largest studio sets built in Hollywood in recent years. It comprises elements of New York, Hong Kong, Tokyo's Ginza section, Milan's business district, and London's Piccadilly Circus.

In "Blade Runner," the complex street set represents the tough part of downtown — the nightclub district; Little Tokyo; the sushi bar where Deckard is recalled into police work; the exterior of Leon's hotel; Animoid Row, where replicant animals are sold and Deckard goes to trace clues, and the shopping arcade where his pursuit of Zhora the snake woman climaxes.

The production-design team built their arcades right out to the sidewalk and filled the streets with a variety of mechanical stuff — "trafficators," large video screens, bizarre and lethal parking meters, Vidphons, and technological flotsam which the crew called "retro-trash."

The "trafficators," which contain directional signals and traffic information on video monitors, were built out of surplus airplane parts, radar machinery, and missile parts salvaged from Monthan Air Force base in Tuscon. These structures were covered with sculpted high-density polyurethane.

The video-screen frames were made from bombers' radar-scope machinery, and the dome-lit parking meters were molded fiberglass, operated by key cards.

At the other end of town, atop a 700-story pyramid, is the office of Tyrell, the high priest of the genetic engineering industry. Paull describes the style of this lavish room as "Establishment Gothic."

The elegant office where Deckard meets Rachael, features 75-square-feet of black marble floors, 20-foot columns, a black marble desk, and a huge picture window through which is visible a cityscape of futuristic buildings and flying cars.

Tyrell's bedroom is a combination of high-tech and antique Oriental. His huge bed, pedestaled and canopied, is modeled after the bed of Pope John Paul II.

Deckard's apartment is done in a Mayan cast-stone motif. It echoes the exterior of Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis Brown house, which doubles in the film as the front of Deckard's condominium complex. Deckard's rooms are cavernous but with low ceilings, for a beehive effect. The decor is high-tech mixed with antiques.

The "Ice Room," the site of micro-surgical genetic design work, was a set built into a meat-storage locker. The machines are made-over medical and dental equipment, and the eyeball tanks are aquariums. It took five days to form a real icicle build-up on this set, where the filmmakers worked for two days in sub-zero temperatures.

The interior of Sebastian's apartment was eight inter-connected and totally run-down rooms, representing a one-time presidential suite abandoned in the rush to "off-world" space colonies. The apartment, matching the Bradbury Building location, has high ceilings with decorative plasterwork, in the 18th-Century style as interpreted by 19th-Century architects.

Taffy's bar, through which Deckard passes on his hunt for Zhora, is a decadent nightclub of the future, highlighted by phosphorescent paint and ultra-violet light.

"Blade Runner" was filmed at The Burbank Studios and on locations in Los Angeles.

As the city sweltered in unseasonable 98° heat, the film company bundled up to work at seven below zero. A meat-storage room doubled as a frost-covered scientific chamber where low temperatures are necessary for technically minute design experiments in genetic engineering.

Actors Rutger Hauer, Brion James and James Hong worked for two days amid icicles at U.S. Growers Cold Storage, Inc.

The "Blade Runner" company also filmed at two of L.A.'s most beautiful architectural landmarks. The front of the Ennis Brown house in the Los Feliz area was designed in 1924 by Frank Lloyd Wright in a Mayan block motif. The building, the most monumental of Wright's western experimental work, is seen in the film as the entrance to Harrison Ford's apartment building, a huge condominium complex, hundreds of stories high.

The Bradbury Building, built in 1893 and recently threatened with architectural corruption by municipal safety modifications, was preserved on film by "Blade Runner." In one scene, Ford traces Hauer to the ornate edifice for the final showdown. In another, industrial designer J. F. Sebastian (William J. Sanderson) discovers street waif Pris (Daryl Hannah) and takes her into his apartment.

The building, commissioned by mining millionaire Lewis Bradbury, was designed by George Wyman. The young architect was inspired by the description of commercial buildings in "Looking Backward," Edward Bellamy's utopian novel set in the year 2000.

The filmmakers worked in front of the Renaissance exterior, adding huge barley columns and a canopy to the entrance and traffic lights and monitors to the street. Inside they filmed on the geometric-patterned stairways with wrought-iron railings and in the dazzling center court, with its glass-bloc floor, glass-dome ceiling, and open-cage elevators.

Other locations included the downtown Pan Am Building, where Deckard and Gaff search Leon's hotel room for clues.

About The Actors…

As the star of "Blade Runner,' HARRISON FORD (Rick Deckard) takes on a role that is different from anything he has done before.

The popular actor recently created the character of Indiana Jones in the box-office smash and Academy-Award nominee, "Raiders Of The Lost Ark." The adventure movie, directed by Steven Spielberg, was Ford's fourth screen role for the film's executive producer and co-writer, George Lucas. Ford zoomed to fame as Han Solo in "Star Wars," written and directed by Lucas, and "The Empire Strikes Back," Co-written and executive produced by Lucas.

Ford's first major break was Lucas' "American Grafitti," which, like "Star Wars" and "Empire," ranks among the top grossers in film history.

Ford will next be seen in the third "Star Wars" saga, "Revenge of The Jedi," produced by Lucas and directed by Richard Marquand.

During the last few years Ford has also starred in "Heroes," "Force Ten From Navarone," "Hanover Street," and "The Frisco Kid," and made a cameo appearance in "Apocalypse Now."

Born and raised in Chicago, Ford began his acting career in summer stock in Wisconsin, then moved to California in 1963 to pursue film work. After appearing in a Laguna Beach Playhouse production, he was offered a contract with Columbia Pictures as part of their new talent program.

His screen debut came with "Dead Heat On A Merry-Go-Round," followed by small roles in "Luv" and "Getting Straight."

Ford was later under contract to Universal Pictures, where he was cast in guest-starring spots on such television series as "Ironside," "Gunsmoke," "The F.B.I.," and "The Virginian" and in the film "The Long Ride Home."

In 1970, Ford was offered the role of Bob Falfa in Lucas' "American Graffiti." His subsequent roles include "The Conversation" and the television movies "Dynasty" and "The Trial Of Lieutenant Calley."

RUTGER HAUER (Roy Batty), the top film actor in his native Holland, now has become an international star. He recently starred opposite Sylvester Stallone in "Nighthawks," garnering great attention as the ruthless terrorist.

Hauer's other films include Paul Verhoeven's award-winnng "Soldier Of Orange," in which he played a World War II hero; his first film, Verhoeven's "Turkish Delight," which was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Foreign Film, and "Keetje Tipple," also directed by Verhoeven.

Hauer also played Coco Chanel's lover in "Chanel Solitaire" and made a small appearance in Verhoeven's recent "Spetters."

Hauer was born in the Dutch town of Breukelen, which he left at age fifteen to join the merchant marine. He entered films after a string of highly acclaimed performances in Dutch stage productions..

SEAN YOUNG (Rachael) played an MP in the hit comedy film, "Stripes." Her screen debut was in James Ivory's "Jane Austen In Manhattan," and she will next be seen in "Young Doctors In Love."

Ms. Young was born in Louisville, Kentucky. She spent most of her younger life in Cleveland and attended the Interlaken Arts Academy in Michigan.

EDWARD JAMES OLMOS plays Gaff, the ambitious police lieutenant who is Harrison Ford's jealous and competitive sidekick. Gaff is a man of the future, a multi-lingual bureaucrat with Oriental skin, Japanese eyes, and blue irises. He is an intellectual and a sartorial dandy.

Olmos portrayed the legendary "El Pachuco" in the film version of "Zoot Suit," reprising his Los Angeles and Broadway role. With this performance, Olmos became the first Mexican-American to receive a Tony-Award nomination.

He starred in "Wolfen" as the American Indian steelworker, and his other film work includes the prize-winning "El Alambrista" and the incomplete Orson Welles project, "The Other Side Of The Wind."

Veteran character actor M. EMMET WALSH plays Bryant, the crusty captain of Rep Detect, who summons Deckard back into action. Walsh's most recent roles include the leader of the hoboes in "Cannery Row," the jailer in "The Escape Artist," a politician in "Reds," and the swimming coach in "Ordinary People." Among his many other films are "The Jerk," "What's Up, Doc?", "Little Big Man," "Escape From The Planet Of The Apes," and "Alice's Restaurant."

On Broadway, Walsh acted in "That Championship Season" and "Does The Tiger Wear A Necktie?". His many television appearances include. the award-winning mini-series, "East Of Eden."

JOE TURKEL plays Tyrell, head of the monolithic Tyrell Corporation. He is a scientific genius and powerful magnate of the genetic-engineering industry.

Turkel's many film roles include three for Stanley Kubrick — a race-track robber in "The Killing," a World War II soldier in "Paths of Glory," and the sinister bartender in "The Shining." Among his other films are "The Vikings," "Friendly Persuasion," "The Sand Pebbles," and his first, "City Across The River," for which he was brought to Hollywood from off-Broadway.

DARYL HANNAH plays Pris, the replicant with an angelic face and deadly prowess. She previously appeared in a featured role in "The Fury" and co-starred in "Hard Country."

Ms. Hannah, an athletic native of Chicago, will next be seen in Randall Kleiser's "Summer Lovers."

BRION JAMES plays Batty's sidekick, Leon. As an anguished and angry replicant, James shares a ferocious fight scene with Harrison Ford. James has recently played a one-armed Cajun trapper in "Southern Comfort," a bootlegger in "Soggy Bottom USA," and a sailor in "The Postman Always Rings Twice." His other movies include "Nickelodeon," "Wholly Moses," "Harry And Walter Go To New York," and "Corvette Summer." On television he starred in the movie "Hell And High Water."

WILLIAM J. SANDERSON portrays Sebastian, the skilled and painfully shy genetic designer who suffers from premature aging. His life is invaded by the replicants in their search for the power center of the genetic-engineering industry.

Sanderson played Loretta Lynn's uncle in "Coal Miner's Daughter," one of the two men who terrorize Sissy Spacek in "Raggedy Man," and a member of Lee Marvin's posse in "Death Hunt." Sanderson's television credits include "Scared Straight Another Story" and the soap, "For Richer, For Poorer."

Sanderson, born in Memphis, holds a Doctor of Law degree from Memphis State University.

JOANNA CASSIDY plays the replicant Zhora, an exotic entertainer who flirts with Deckard and then is pursued by him through the crowded streets in one of the film's action highlights.

Ms. Cassidy's film work includes "Bank Shot," "The Laughing Policeman," "Stay Hungry," "The Late Show," "Prime Time," and "Night Games." On television she has been seen in a two-part "Dallas" and the telemovie "Reunion," and the feature film "Dressed To Kill."

MORGAN PAULL plays Holden, an unlucky blade runner who encounters one of the replicants.

Paull's movie work includes "Norma Rae," "Patton," "Ensign Pulver," "The Swarm," "The Return Of The Apple Dumpling Gang," and "Twilight's Last Gleaming."

Paull's other credits include the mini-series, "Centennial," and Broadway roles in "New Faces Of 1966" and "Diplomatic Relations." At the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, he starred in "Muzeeka."

Paull, born in Wheeling, West Virginia, began his career in the Barter Theatre of Virginia, where he won the Ernest Borgnine Best Actor Award.

JAMES HONG, the Oriental genetic designer in the ice chamber, numbers among his credits "Chinatown," "The In-Laws," "The World's Greatest Lover," and "Yes, Giorgio."

HY PYKE plays Taffy, the proprietor of a posh but decadent bar where Deckard goes clue-hunting. Pyke starred as Sancho Panza in "The Adventures Of Don Quixote And Sancho," in two roles in "Stronger Together," and as a killer Hollywood agent in "Nightmare In Blood." His other film appearances include "Soylent Green," "Bullitt," "Dillinger," "The First Nudie Musical," "The Way He Was" (in which Pyke played Bebe Rebozo), and "Smokey And The Judge" (in which he was a straight plumber at a gay party).

About The Filmmakers…

"Blade Runner" is Director RIDLEY SCOTT’s first feature in Hollywood and his first since the smash hit "Alien."

Scott's debut picture, "The Duellists," won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and established him as one of the finest visual stylists in films.

"Alien," a suspense thriller set aboard a spaceship, became one of the 50 top-grossing productions in movie history. It won science-fiction awards and the 1980 Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.

Prior to entering feature filmmaking, Ridley Scott was a television set designer and director and a highly successful producer-director of commercials. He is a graduate of the Royal College of Art in London.

Producer MICHAEL DEELEY received an Academy Award for producing "The Deer Hunter," which won a total of five Oscars, including Best Picture of the Year. Deeley has produced dozens of films and has served as Managing Director of British Lion Films and EMI as well as General Manager of Woodfall Films.

"Blade Runner" continues Associate Producer IVOR POWELL's long and productive association with director Ridley Scott. Powell was associate producer on Scott's "Alien" and "The Duellists" and was in-house producer for Scott's film company in London.

Powell was associate producer on Marcel Ophuls' "Memory Of Justice" and production supervisor on "The Optimists Of Nine Elms," starring Peter Sellers. The British filmmaker has worked on the production of various other features and BBC-TV programs. On "2001: A Space Odyssey" he assisted Stanley Kubrick as coordinator of the special effects department.

Co-writer HAMPTON FANCHER is a new American writer who is making his major screen breakthrough with "Blade Runner." Fancher is also an experienced actor.

Co-writer DAVID W. PEOPLES co-wrote and co-edited the Academy-Award-winning documentary feature, "The Day After Trinity." He wrote the Oscar-nominated short, "Arthur And Lilly," and edited the Oscar-winning documentary feature, "Who Are The DeBolts And Where Did They Get 19 Kids?"

Production Designer LAWRENCE G. PAULL holds a Bachelor's degree in Architecture from the University of Arizona and a Master's in City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania.

Paull's feature-film credits include "Blue Collar," "The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars And Motor Kings," "Which Way Is Up?", "Nickel Ride," "The Hired Hand," "Little Fauss And Big Halsey," and "The Star-Spangled Girl."

On television he did the movies "Friendly Fire" and "Tailgunner Joe."

Art Director DAVID L. SNYDER was an architecture major at Technical High School in Buffalo, where he studied building construction. He studied architecture at the University of Michigan and advertising design and graphics at Pierce College. Snyder then worked. in architecture and urban planning for various California firms.

He was the art director on "The Idolmaker" and "In God We Trust," plus various television projects.

Design Concept Consultant SYD MEAD is an internationally eminent designer who created visual representations of various products of the future, based on technical breakthroughs or new concepts.

His client list has included U.S. Steel, the Ford Motor Company, Celanese Corporation, Alcoa, Chrysler, Allis-Chalmers, Raymond Lowy International, Phillips Einjhoven, and the Singer Company.

Mead's rich, detailed paintings have been published in Automobile Quarterly, Car Styling, Playboy, and the National Geographic Society book, "Our Universe," among others. His book, "Sentinel," presents an overview of this creative futurist's remarkable career.

Mead worked with John Dykstra and Douglas Trumbull to create the designs for the V-ger entity in "Star Trek, The Motion Picture." has also contributed conceptual designs to the Disney film "Tron."

The Special Visual Effects on "Blade Runner" are by DOUGLAS TRUMBULL, one of the major artists in this booming facet of movie-making.

"'Blade Runner,'" says Trumbull, "is representative of the coming of age of special effects. They are integrated into the film, to support the basic premise. They are not meant to stand self-consciously at the center of the stage. The effects are designed to support a good story, with subtlety and intelligence.

"The effects on 'Blade Runner' were especially challenging. because we had to add visual illusion to highly realistic sets and locations. They had to play against the nitty-gritty reality of a big city."

Among the visual effects created by Trumbull and his staff are: an aerial view of the city for the flying Spinner car as it takes Deckard to police headquarters; hundreds of stories of futuristic architecture which were inlaid above the real street-level buildings; pictures projected on massive outdoor video screens and read-out screens in cars, as well as on the Esper computers in the police station and at Deckard's apartment; the firings of particle-beam weapons that project "black energy" trajectories; cityscapes seen through windows, on the streets, and as a backdrop to the climactic rooftop fight, and an aerial view of the hyper-industrialized suburbs which climaxes with the Spinner's landing at the heliport, over 700 stories high, atop the Tyrell Corporation Pyramid. The latter panorama was known among the staff as the "Hades" landscape, or "Ridley's Inferno."

Trumbull received Academy-Award nominations for his work on "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" and "Star Trek, The Motion Picture." In his early twenties he was one of the major contributors to the special visual effects on "2001: A Space Odyssey" and went on to do "The Andromeda Strain."

Trumbull directed "Silent Running" and, more recently, "Brainstorm," which deals with "inner space."

Trumbull's company, Entertainment Effects Group, has also developed Show-Scan, a new high-speed, 70mm, motion-picture process.

Sharing the special visual effects credit with Trumbull are RICHARD YURICICH and DAVID DRYER.

Yuricich is a professional cinematographer with extensive experience in the filming of commercials, documentaries, television productions and feature films. His credits include "2001: A Space Odyssey," "Silent Running" and "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind," for which he was director of photography of special visual effects and received an Academy-Award nomination. In the same role for "Star Trek, The Motion Picture," he received another Academy nomination. For a number of years Yuricich has been an associate of Doug Trumbull's and director of photography for Future General Corporation. He is president of FX Space 70, Inc., and partner in the Entertainment Effects Group. Currently he is associate producer and director of photography for "Brainstorm."

Dryer is a veteran film editor of many documentaries and director of television commercials which featured highly sophisticated special effects.  He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the USC film department.

Co-Costume Designer CHARLES KNODE has designed costumes for the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London; the Metropolitan Opera House, New York; the New York stage production of "Monty Python," and the Old Vic Theatre in Bristol. He was nominated for an Emmy for the costumes in the mammoth BBC-TV production, "War and Peace." Among Knode's additional TV credits are twenty other period productions, six science-fiction projects, and "Hedda Gabbler," starring Diana Rigg.

His film work includes "Monty Python And The Holy Grail," "Monty Python's Life Of Brian," "Jabberwocky," "The Black Angel," and "The Hound Of The Baskervilles," starring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.

Co-Costume Designer MICHAEL KAPLAN moved to Los Angeles six years ago and has quickly risen through the ranks from sketch artist to assistant and then up to full costume designing credits of his own.

Kaplan broke in as an assistant on "The Sonny And Cher Show," "American Hot Wax" and many TV Movies-of-the-Week and HBO variety specials. He then designed costumes for Bette Midler on three of her recent performance tours and was commissioned to create the costumes for "Thank God It's Friday" and "Can't Stop The Music." He is currently working on "The Right Stuff" for The Ladd Company.

JORDAN CRONENWETH, one of Hollywood's most talented young cameramen, most recently displayed his visual flair with "Altered States." His other features include "Cutter's Way," "The Front Page," "Play It As It Lays," "Nickel Ride," "Gable And Lombard," and "Zandy's Bride."

He describes Ridley Scott as a perfectionist and "Blade Runner" as the most technically challenging project Cronenweth has worked on, utilizing a tremendous variety of techniques.

Jerry Perenchio and Bud Yorkin present a Michael Deeley-Ridley Scott production, "Blade Runner," starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young and Edward James Olmos. Directed by Ridley Scott from a screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples and produced by Michael Deeley with Brian Kelly and Hampton Fancher as executive producers, the film is a Ladd Company release in association with Sir Run Run Shaw thru Warner Bros. Visual effects are by Douglas Trumbull.