October November Live Magazine

as much as possible. Basically it
was for my own mental sanity. I hate
green screens. I’m not comfortable
with that color, I’m not comfortable
with what it means to work in a virtual
world.
I need tangible things. I need real
objects, I need real props, I need
real environments, because those
environments will trigger ideas, will
trigger shots, will inspire cinema. At
the end of the day, my movies are
inspired by actors. And those actors
need to be fueled by a world.
My movies are dreamed by actors
first. And for me I need to give them
all they could need to be inspired.
So that’s why it’s the first thing
that I decided with Roger Deakins,
my cinematographer, to construct
everything.
We used very little green screen on
the movie. Of course there will be
CG in extension, because obviously
you were creating a whole world.
But, everything you are seeing in the
movie is, at first glance, at the beginning,
in the foreground, it’s real.
That is a big victory and I’m grateful
that we went in that direction.
How was the work with Roger
Deakins, on set and prior to shooting?
Roger came onboard very early in
the process because I was doing
another movie and I felt I needed
a lot of prep. And I wanted to have
time to dream about the movie, to
design the movie with a very, very
small unit before I starting the official
prep. I spent weeks in a little
hotel room with Roger Deakins and
my storyboard artist Sam, to storyboard
the movie, to design and create
the world that we will be in.
So Roger was part of the birth of
the cinematic language of Blade
Runner 2049 from the start. So I felt
that, at one point, in a great way for
me, it was as much Roger’s movie
as mine. And he cares about the
movie as much as I do.
I said to him, from the start, “For
once, you could go an impressionistic
way, you could let it go. You’re
totally free. You can do whatever
you want.”
So I think that people will be blown
away by what Roger Deakins did in
Blade Runner 2049 because I think
it’s among his best work. And we’re
talking about the best work of one
of the best cinematographers of
all time. So honestly, people won’t
be disappointed. Visually it’s very
strong.
How do you make advertising
evolve in this new movie?
Los Angeles in 2049 will look like
the worst days of Beijing. Multiplied
by ten. So it means that the
atmosphere is so thick that you
can project things and the world is
in 3D. So the ads are not just huge
billboards in 3D dimension, they are
among us.
We tried as we were designing the
movie to do what they did in the first
movie, which is to try to feel what
it’s like in the world, what will happen
in 30 years. And we met scientists,
doctors, architects, computer
designers. People that told us what
they thought could be the future.
And that inspired a lot of the design
of the movie.
Talk about using miniatures in this
movie. Talk about the process, and
where did you use those?
The dream was to do as much as
possible in the practical way. To
use as little CG as possible, that
was my dream. It was a success
sometimes, but sometimes less of
a success. There’s always a link