Slice Of Life Pays Homage To Blade Runner In A Major Way!
“Slice of Life”, an original short SF movie and a homage to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, is made by a small group of young Croatian filmmakers and fans of the genre.
This short has been filming for over 3 years, due to the usage of old school techniques, like miniatures, back projects, matte paintings, and practical effects, which takes a lot of time, skill, and energy. The team includes Director & Producer Luka Hrgović, Director of Photography and Producer Dino Julius, and Screenwriter Anton Svetić. The film stars Anton Svetić, Ivica “Dragonrage” Pustički and Emilija Habulin. Original score and sound design is by Tim Žibrat.
Although it’s still in post-production, a trailer is finished and ready to be shown to the general public and fans.
The production of Slice Of Life started in the summer of 2014 in a Citroen BX car. It was super hot inside our studio, and our actor had a really hard time sitting in the car for 8 days — in a warm leather jacket. How they found the car? It was in someone’s back yard for 10 years, but fell in love after seeing the inside of it. They decided to buy it and transform it into a SciFi scene that the film needed. They took it to Hrgović’s studio.
After thorough cleaning they started to change it into a SciFi flying car. They spray painted the car red, and pulled out the passenger seat. In the passenger seat’s place, they started to build consoles from scrap material that Hrgovic collected. Computer monitors were fitted into the consoles, and footage was given to the monitors from dvd players and a laptop. with monitors and blinking lights.
They used around six blinking lights for each setup, with red and cyan color gels to give it that signature 80’s look. To make the shots interesting they sprayed rain on the windshields and used a lot of smoke. To give the illusion of a city, they put miniature real buildings on a dolly and placed them outside the car windows. For one shot, they put the camera inside of the car and created the parking lot exterior with miniatures. In the camera, it looked realistic even though the miniatures were a couple of inches outside the car window.
They want you to know that miniatures are very powerful and to not underestimate them! They said so to CGI when filming. Just miniatures! They spent a lot of time in the workshop building the city in Slice of Life.
In terms of special effects we wanted to film Slice Of Life almost the same way as the original Blade Runner and other 80’s films were filmed. So, no CGI — just miniatures!!! -Slice Of Life
They spent a lot of time in the workshop building the city in general. They built the buildings, platforms, and vehicles. According to Slice Of Life team, to make the city look realistic, you need to have a lot of buildings in various shapes and sizes. They used old computers, printers, TVs, cardboard packaging and similar stuff. They said there a lot of good use in everyday materials! After adding details, the paint blends everything together and the LED lights give the buildings life. For the billboards in the project, they used real projections, especially since that’s how most films were done in the 80’s.
A special touch? They really wanted to go over top in honoring to Blade Runner by recreating the Sushi Bar. In Blade Runner, they decided to use it only as a background building. But in the Slice of Life, they used it as the main setting of the film.
It’s a little known fact that they used a plastic water bottle for the miniature, so naturally — we did the same.-Slice Of Life
For more information on Slice Of Life, go to http://sliceoflifefilm.com/.
Originally appears on the Huffington Post.
Hello! I’m Alesha, Royalti Virtue is my squad! You will also find me writing a lot of posts for Royalti Virtue! As a artist on the Indianapolis independent label, I sing, make beats and play the guitar. I write love letters to Instagram to food (I’m not joking about this, my handle is @aleshampeterson), spoil my dog Dijon rotten by giving him hugs and kissy (kisses). Nice to meet you!
