Headmaster - Blade Runner lecture

On the 5th of September, the Headmaster of the school, Brendan Wignall, came into our media class to discuss his passion for Blade Runner.
I found out some interesting things about his life regarding film and some facts about both films of Blade Runner that I didn't know of before.

Before he became a Headmaster, he used to write about fantasy and sci-fi from a philosophical point of view since he studied philosophy and got a degree in it.
Part of his career, he had to interview authors and writers, and he got the chance to interview fantasy novelist, Terry Pratchett. Brendan Wignall also had to review five books a week as well as teaching. His daughter studies film direction at University of California, Los Angeles and she had to write an essay on Blade Runner 2049 and due to Brendan Wignall's extreme passion, he was able to help her with it and it gave him the excuse to watch the film 5 times in 2 days.

Facts

• Blade Runner (1982) was the last film to use models and not computer graphics.
• The writer of Blade Runner, Philip K. Dick, had to show the film to a test audience and the didn't like it so he had to re-run the film and pinch a shot from another film to add it to the end to make it a happier ending, which was a car driving on the road into the distance with the sun shining, setting a positive scene as well as adding a voice-over during the film although none of these were used in the finished film.
• When they were filming the scenes in the hotel-like rooms with all the dolls, due to the budget, it was originally an office in a building. But each time they filmed those scenes, they had to get rid of all the office and throw water on the ground, put the toys everywhere, etc. and each time they finished filming for the day, they had to clean the rooms up completely and put the office back to where it was originally. This would have been extremely difficult because they would have had to put the toys and dolls exactly in the same place than the last shot because otherwise it would not look right at all.

His own opinions

• Brendan Wignall says that he will always prefer Harrison Ford as the Blade Runner since he mentions how he thinks that nobody can ever play the part as well as he did although he did like Ryan Gosling as the character.
• Himself and his daughter think that Blade Runner 2049 is sexist due to the fact that there is too much emphasis on women as objects.