18 Mind-Blowing Facts About Blade Runner
16. The Opening Sequence’s Sprawling Cityscape
Blade Runner’s mesmerising opening sequence looks like a massive urban sprawl illuminated by thousands of lights and punctuated by smokestacks spewing out black smoke and the occasional fiery explosion, but the cityscape was actually an extremely detailed miniature set measuring only 18 feet wide.
Affectionately dubbed the ‘Hades Landscape’ scene, it involved thousands of etched brass models lit from below by nearly seven miles of fibre optics and thousands of lights.
The smog filled sky was the result of smoke machines and fans while the explosions were borrowed from unused footage special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull had left over from working on Michelangelo Antonioni’s cult ‘60s film Zabriskie Point and projected onto the miniature set.