Adam Savage Explores the Props of Blade Runner 2049!

if you're at all a regular viewer of test it you know that I kind of have some affection for the props from Blade Runner it's hard to keep a straight face when I say that I'm a complete freaking nutter when it comes to Blade Runner props and behind me is the Blade Runner 2049 prop department overseen by legendary Doug har Locker he has worked on absolutely everything men in black films twelve Monkeys Naked Lunch the matrix and he's overseeing the Blade Runner prop Department and he's gonna give me a walkthrough of what they built I'm gonna try and keep it together all right here we go so yeah we're just gonna take a walk through the prop shop this is our warehouse where we're storing all of our props we basically move it out to set whenever we need it we've designed over 45 things for this movie and fabricated them from scratch illustrating them 3d modeling them and then prototyping them and reverse-engineering them and building them and this is also sorry just to it involves looking at I'm sure there are props from the from the original film that you're referencing or updating or upgrading and kept calling into the future we're using them the first movie as a study because it's but it's 30 years in the future and so we're the vernacular in that movie we're carrying over to this movie but of course obviously all the scenery is quite different the you'll see in the movie things are become more distressed and whatever and in terms of the genesis of design again we're trying to maintain some vernacular from the first movie but but we're taking it into our own little genre I mean you can definitely tell it's in it's in the Blade Runner tradition right of this but your creators a new space it's on space where your old movies model-like and archaeology yeah I think it's it's it is yeah it's a it's a archival moment for us yeah and we're using elements of that archive to to really push the design forward that sounds like the best of both worlds like Yongsan pieces that are lovely from the old bits but also completely reinventing the present it's great you have its you have total freedom of design but your but you have slight direction that that helps offer you down those paths and they're complicated design paths for the most part all of our devices are you know hero hand props often mechanical and electronic and you know so they put a lot of thought into the the packaging of that you know this movie's a huge analog esque movie like the first movie and so we're trying not to and we do not introduce you know iPads and iPhones and you know there's not a wristwatch in the movie for instance there's you know these are things that that we're trying to you know really maintain how much did you guys do obviously did a bunch of pre-production but how much got done before and then how much have you been building on-site we we usually I I'm hired 20 to 22 weeks before we start filming and that's our design period and it's you can imagine if you do the math and you've got 40 or 50 things to design from scratch you your illustrator has to design it has to illustrate it you have to bring it to the director to get some kind of sign off if he wants to improve on it that's another few days so it could take a full week to get a sign-off on a particular design it's a lot of work then you have to model it and then you have to to build it so you know 40 weeks we're taking 20 weeks which means we're invading yet the film process we're shooting and still designing and still building right up through the movie and that's something we try and get as much design and build built in pre-production as possible we try and get it certainly the main the main pieces guns and you know all of the personal you know interval parts for the movie you try and get done before we start shooting sure yeah no this is beautiful what looks like a toolkit it's really a manicurist cart of the future and this is for one of our characters who literally is just sitting in her chair and and having her nails done and there's a little Japanese man on a on a tatami mat and he's he's wearing specific headgear and using laser instruments to to affect her nails so it's a it's just an interesting thing that we made all this you know we didn't animate it because it didn't need to but he basically made it so it could you know fold up look as though he could wheel it in yeah and then set it up wherever he is so well let's let's yeah so guns we can talk about a little later new generation blaster this is the original Deckard blaster replica and rubber these are some scab weapons that we made this is this shoots a harpoon essentially this is basically a visual effect at this point it's used out in the field this is just an original design looked kind of kludgy yeah we designed it and there was a there was a practical one built on furfle this this is basically what we're doing with this is that it the muzzle flash and the because it shoots a projectile that is always a visual effect so we'll shoot him aiming with the bolt in it and then we will remove the bolt and shoot him effects will take over and they'll they'll shoot a CG bolt and a puff of smoke at that point there's a cable huge cable that goes up with it as well these are some virtual reality glasses these are little guys that is on one of our actress this is a very you know virtual reality glasses are those things that you know can either look just like regular dark glasses or they can look like something that's too big and clumsy to wear but these are just very austere pieces it's got a piece of sprung steel in it so we can make it nice and tight and whatever but this is what I hope the future looks like yeah oh I did that or they'll just build them into our glass exactly yeah this is an example I can't really tell you what this is but this is a device that's used and it's completely analog this every ring moves basically by touching any button and basically they move at different speeds and the speed is controlled by a little button over here so it actually looks like a little bit like focused pullers yeah instrument us but when it's moving and the and operated properly it's sort of like conducting a little bit of a symphony you guys you can slow things down make little tweaks and then you can speed it up and when you want certain thing but this is an interactive device within the movie that again I can't tell you much about at this point but that's it so man the actor actually you make a prop that the actor connect you can interface with and has to learn to kind of operate yes and you know this is the alternative to building it all into the device and making it an animatronic and allowing them to operate it is a big cable that goes up their sleeve and down the bottom of their pants and you know that's something that it's problematic you know they can't move around they don't feel really free you're always doing cable removal in post-production to eliminate some cable coming out of the bottom of the pants and so yeah we try we go to great lengths to take a lot of technology and put them into small objects is that your is that your directive or is that does that come from Denny it's my director is great and that we trip until it becomes an impossibility sure we do it and if then then we have to go to Denny and say you know we tried to put a whole lot in this and we're only getting a percentage of what we want but the rest will have to be done in post this is uh like an eye scanner it's a little again a little device that that one of our character uses and basically it is a device that Wow you know goes up to you and we will see GN that's an eye and that it's a beautiful object that really look I was in Heathrow yesterday like shopping around and these all look like they could have been sitting on one of the technology counters that I was looking at yeah trying we really try and add like bolt details and things that make it feel like it's real you know it's not just a you know it has weight yeah it has you know its mechanics we try and make sure that there's enough you know material in there to tease the audience with the same way and of course electronic and then we put we make rubber which gets thrown around so this is a lightweight version ah and we make a closed rubber as well that's lightweight so he can toss this around and we won't go through a whole lot of breakage I have always been astounded by how much destruction an actor can impart on a hand prop but I'm not sure how I could have broken it in a specific way that they've returned it to me oh I remember doing the first men in black and I've done all of them Tommy Lee Jones used to take the neuralyzer which were very sensitive yeah we made six of them and they kept breaking and he would just toss it to me for like BK Doug hey here's a go don't don't don't and he would just throw it up in the air I play I have people will be trying to catch it end up on the ground making you know trying to fix it on a table on Fifth Avenue at four o'clock in the morning is not my idea of a good time it's some knives you know these are these are designs of knives that actually this was from a knife maker that Danny we showed him a series of knives and he particularly liked this this style of knife oh wise one yes very lethal there you go oh that's the real that sir that is a real one yeah and then we have of course rubber for every single thing that we do shown in every configuration oh wow no leave that out this is the second pattern that he liked and we had a knife maker make this particular that's just very feminine and small I'm cure there actually sharp yeah we don't I mean these are what we use is these aren't are incredibly far yeah but we use we try and always for the close-up of the knives we want them to be metal we want them to look like we haven't told the edges that much clearly safe for the actor but the moment that they get into any action so this would be one that for instance behind the actress is back she did that you know so you wanted to listen you want to see it it has to be metallic you know my idea of making props anyway is that you know we can 3d print everything we could make everything huh and paint it beautifully to look like metal but what really sells it is like a little piece of build aluminum here you know real bolts or screws you know a little metallic plate or anodized plate here there they really sell it they as a veracity they really do yes could I see one of the rubber ones I'm always fascinated by so then this is for stunt work and oh yeah there's yeah that one's been used for stunt work you can see that and this is this is rubber you've had metallized yes yeah we this is just a paint process it's not it's not we don't use sort of the vacuum metallized process you know our case and then also I mean it's the boxing you've done it's really beautiful but I can see it also has a utility to you is that you can clearly see and if anything is missing you don't lose track of anyone it's true and that's a huge deal for us because if one goes missing it means it's out there in the real world and you know you could turn up on the internet and it could spoil part of the movie well and also as a fellow shop person I find that when I make a space for something that something wants to go back into that space well you can you know this is this is the difference between me and a lot of other problem ask was just that organization is like is it must clicking and keeping a really clean shop it's maintaining that organization is like paramount to like you know feeling confident about the movie in clearly skeletons these are is this for transport or they is this is heart of the problem and the route this is again part of our organization is that is that we have to lay this out as a full skeleton at a couple of points and we want to make sure that we keep we remember how it goes sure each little because to be honest this entire skeleton can fit in a lady's purse this yeah so you take all of those bones and you'll be it's like a it's like a treasure hunt trying to find the you know third digit of the unifor 'the metacarpal yeah yeah this is a scav communication device this is a Russian radio that we just basically graffiti'd up and did some stuff too however and we have not done this a lot in the movie where we've taken of real object and kind of adapted it we have made a custom one of these that is on its way here and will be here in a couple of days from LA and this was almost like a paint study for me it's like weird but it's it's got a great scale and in the distance it may not be such a critical thing again I like to use original things in this movie but occasionally you've come across something go yeah you know it's so cool it's just there to by color too and yeah I mean the Chinese and different Asian characters definitely have that Bladerunner feel but I love the two colors yeah right we're trying to you know that's that's part of this movie is to have a lot of introduced a lot of different languages of course the last movie was so japonesque in its approach to that part of asia but now we're trying to get you know arabic and you know every conceivable language where it's really the melting pot this moves now and and so we get to have fun graphically we get to do graphics passes and incorporate all sorts of language and nomenclature and things from different cultures and languages this is what the esthetician the right you know I'm not really it worked on the little Japanese man it worked really well we basically like these up so it'd be nice and these you know we use of course magnets for everything to kill everything together but this was you know something that he wore on his head and then he used our laser scalpel switch [Music] this is another design and these light up this is a little bit of acrylic at the end and we basically have a little LED so that ends lights up in points a little if you find that the the continuing miniaturization and brightness of different color LEDs and Arduino is increasing your ability to make practical props that I love it yeah and especially you know you know being able to adjust light levels and color obviously the whole color spectrum is now that's true you know footstep and anti flicker and all of those things oh yeah if it's not a problem at all but what's great is that all that technology has gotten really really really small so you take a rheostat or you know a limiter and it can it's this big you know and you haven't fit into you know a very small device that most the devices here we have a way to dim them so the director of photography can say Wow can you make that a little brighter given the scene that we're shooting or can you make it a little can you take the curse off that and we used to be able to have to gel them or you know we put a little CA on it just to basically diffuse it a little bit or you know whatever now we have you can do it practically it's good these are these are for another character a female character in our movie and we we tried to make something that was these all out moving parts so you pull the trigger and these make a movement there's a light as well but we tried to give it a little bit of a high-tech feminine part of it and that's basically you know adding color to grip and to other parts of it well that's beautiful Wow and this is just a variation of that of that theme for some of her bad guys that are with her in which case we just altered them a little bit we don't see these really much is made as a inside gorgeous the closer I can look the more detailed there is it's an astounding love or multiple levels of intricacy you've put into everything well you know it's it everybody shooting 4k now and so you know the the you know the camera sees so much now it's so crisp so clear almost that you can't get away with bad paint jobs or like anymore you can't get what you really have to be conscious of the fact that it can be you know it's gonna be a close-up is going to be a righteously crisp and clear close-up and beyond 150 what scream fascinate so have you found that that yeah I would guess I mean you just had to adjust to increase the accuracy and veracity and those layered paint jobs really have to be they have to be perfect if they're not great to the eye if they don't sell to you you keep yeah and I you know if you if you don't have confidence in it you know then all is lost it's such a difference from 20 years ago and it's it's hugely it's a you know from a financial standpoint it's changed dramatically because of course the more you spend on a prop the more time you spend on it sure the more it's gonna cost and we buy fortunately the movies that I work on we have the budget and we we use that budget specifically to make our stuff look as perfect as possible on this close-up so this is again in the world of our analog oh look it's it's like well we are branding certain things this is where we have marketing partnerships well and you know people were careful about like what name we put or how those partnerships take place but there are certain products in this movie that end movie and the last movie for instance Atari and all of these different companies that were actually part of that that world we have done it very few times on this movie but Sony is actually one of those people but that we liked and it's it's not overt mmm-hmm you know you might remember from the first movie when Deckard uses Polaroids to go in a sperm analyze them yeah so this is a more lovely portable version of this in which he can take basically he does that as that and you know this is green oh that's great because we don't have the images we're shooting the images actually now but there we've already shot this out it'll be done in post but we put some you'll see I put a rotation of a few other images on here and something else but yeah it's and that's ultimately but then in post they we will go down and down and down into this image but we did this as a as just a small pocket device something that he could carry around and this is his iPhone you know yeah it's yeah you know again we're trying to stay away from but you've also you're in a Blade Runner world where it's a little more clunky yeah then are yeah it's it's you know it's it's a metallic object that has you know it's again there's more stuff to do but you know he gets to play with it you open and close it and whatever that's fine that's gorgeous and it feels I mean just for the actor alone that the the level of real interactivity of that is gorgeous do you have a count of how many hundreds of separate pieces you guys are fabricated for this movement overall oh I couldn't I couldn't count but it's definitely hundreds and hundreds of pieces even and this gun there's probably 50 pieces that we every wow because we basically you know we could have molded this texture into the gun but when we mold this as a separate piece when we grew that and then molded it we realized that you know if you really get a sense of of separation I'm guess I see the lines in between it feels like it's actually a real grill or a real you know how to textures pure that way thank you for showing me your your toy remember yeah a pleasure a pleasure thanks come back anytime I will [Music]

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 578,868

Keywords: tested, testedcom, adam savage, blade runner, blasters, blaster, tomenosuke, behind the scenes, prop, replica, stunt, gun, movie, spoilers, props, prop department

Id: 1fAk0CObPE4

Length: 21min 15sec (1275 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 30 2017