Re: (Re) building the Blade Runner Voight Kampf Machine
Some notes -
All of the monitors are/were CRT's. The smaller ones were viewfinders off of studio grade television cameras. The larger one was a small, stand alone monitor.
All were fed to a series of 3/4" tape decks that had the playback material. From what I've been able to determine, the eye in the large monitor is Sean Young's (shot at EEG for this purpose). One of the smaller screens is running a graphic that looks like a rotating waveform - that's from ALIEN. I forgot what the other one was.
The bellows were nothing more than vacformed plastic parts. There was no time to make a proper rubber (or latex) bellows. In fact, the plastic bellows don't even nest properly (they were all pulled from the same plug), which made them stutter a bit as the thing "breathed". They were operated via a rod that was glued to the inside of the top bellow and passed through all the ones below it and through the table it was resting on. There were little strings attached to all the other bellows so that when the top one was lifted, it would rise a bit, and then the one below it would start to rise, and so on. There was also a spring on the last one so they would close up. If it sounds like a half-baked scheme - it was. they had about 3 days to get a non-functioning prop that fell apart in front of Ridley into filming shape. (The Tyrell office was one of the first scenes filmed.) with that amount of time, you can't come up with a technical solution. You have to go with what you know works - strings and rods and holes drilled in tables.
Gene
Some notes -
All of the monitors are/were CRT's. The smaller ones were viewfinders off of studio grade television cameras. The larger one was a small, stand alone monitor.
All were fed to a series of 3/4" tape decks that had the playback material. From what I've been able to determine, the eye in the large monitor is Sean Young's (shot at EEG for this purpose). One of the smaller screens is running a graphic that looks like a rotating waveform - that's from ALIEN. I forgot what the other one was.
The bellows were nothing more than vacformed plastic parts. There was no time to make a proper rubber (or latex) bellows. In fact, the plastic bellows don't even nest properly (they were all pulled from the same plug), which made them stutter a bit as the thing "breathed". They were operated via a rod that was glued to the inside of the top bellow and passed through all the ones below it and through the table it was resting on. There were little strings attached to all the other bellows so that when the top one was lifted, it would rise a bit, and then the one below it would start to rise, and so on. There was also a spring on the last one so they would close up. If it sounds like a half-baked scheme - it was. they had about 3 days to get a non-functioning prop that fell apart in front of Ridley into filming shape. (The Tyrell office was one of the first scenes filmed.) with that amount of time, you can't come up with a technical solution. You have to go with what you know works - strings and rods and holes drilled in tables.
Gene
