The Bradbury Building looks timeless. You can place it in the past, present, or even a dystopian future, as director Ridley Scott did in his film Blade Runner. Audiences of Blade Runner may be surprised to see the recognizable and beautiful landmark so dilapidated in Scott’s vision of 2019. Although Blade Runner is set in the future, the Bradbury Building looks old, and worn down in the film. It looks as if no one cared enough to maintain the building, and that feel is not far from the truth. When Ridley Scott filmed Blade Runner, the Bradbury Building was in disrepair. It was dusty, dirty, and run down. Blade Runner emphasized the batteredness of the building by soaking the floors and making it look as if the only light in the lobby is coming from the windowed ceiling and gray sky. Exploiting the building’s flaws added to the tension of the film as viewers pondered what was about to happen between the replicants and humans as they rode the elevator to a top floor apartment. The gray lighting, damp floors, and scrap pieces of wood seen in Decker’s first entrance into the building, added a sense of despair to the film. The contrast between the beautiful architecture and disrepair emphasized the destruction of what we know today and this dystopian future. The Bradbury Building in Blade Runner acts as a warning to what our future could look like if humans are passive and indifferent to the places around us.
Not only did the Bradbury Building have the perfect atmosphere for Blade Runner, but it was also a practical place to shoot. Filmmakers love shooting in the Bradbury because the many balconies create a multitude of options for camera angles, the large ceiling accommodates the necessary lighting and camera equipment, and it is near a spacious parking lot that could store vans and trailers.
It is a little ironic that the Bradbury was designed in the late 1800s with the future in mind and Ridley Scott chose the building to look classic in his futuristic project. The Bradbury’s designer, George Wyman, was inspired by a novel set in the future that described a building with a long hall and plenty of light from overhead. The novel that inspired him, Looking Backwards by Edward Bellamy, specifically said, “It was the first interior of a twentieth-century public building that I had ever beheld… I was in a vast hall full of light, received not alone from the windows on all sides, but from the dome, the point of which was a hundred feet above. … The walls and ceiling were frescoed in mellow tints, calculated to soften without absorbing the light which flooded the interior.” Pictures prove this passage had a great impact on the final design of The Bradbury Building.
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Loved your blog post! The Bradbury Building is so beautiful and it was so interesting to see how they transformed such an iconic structure into a deteriorated, dark and gloomy set for Blade Runner. I think its so cool how the architect of the building was looking to create a more futuristic looking building – a perfect set for a futuristic movie!
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I like how you explain when the Bradbury Building was built and all the many different ways filmmakers are able tower inside this building. The building is beautiful and like you said, it can be placed in the past, present, and future and still be significance in the film.
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I love how you talk about the practicality of using the Bradbury building. I would have never thought about how the balconies create more options for camera angles. It’s so interesting how the building can be seen as futuristic to one person, but vintage to someone else.
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