A Crucial Difference in Scoring Between Versions of Blade Runner (Plus a Minor But Un-unseeable One)
I was editing together the director's cut and workprint versions of Blade Runner (1982) to make an ultimate cut that doesn't have the drab, Inside Llewyn Davis-esque blue/green filter added in the Final Cut or the unicorn sequence/heavy-implication-that-Deckard-is-a-replicant added in the director's cut, or any narration from the theatrical and workprint cuts...
...and while doing that, I also noticed a couple things about the different scoring between versions (interpretation mine):
At the end of the workprint, Deckard notices the origami unicorn and there's the voice-over flashback to Gaff saying, "It's too bad she won't live! But then again, who does...?" and it's a hopeful ending...as if to say, "be that one in a million who really lives" (I think Gaff really likes Deckard), and the music swells into some strings and twinkly, baby-mobile sparkles as if to reflect that...
...whereas in the director's cut (and The Final Cut), there's instead some mysterious, depths-of-space Twilight Zone kind of twinkling when Deckard's looking at the unicorn in his hand, as if to say: "what a twist!" (I've been gradually watching the first season of the original Star Trek and this seems like the kind of music that would play going into the break at the end of a first act, just as some horrible truth has first been glimpsed). In fact, I am just finding out this new cheeky scoring was even in the theatrical cuts, which don't have the unicorn sequence...meaning Deckard is a replicant in every finished version of Blade Runner.
And secondly (this is more of a visual editing thing): the intro of every version but the workprint - with the shots of the city and fire and the eye - has been cut up a lot compared to the workprint intro and the score fits the editing of the workprint version a lot more closely (in particular, the additional shot with the fast zoom towards the windows on the exterior of the blade runner building feels tacked on - which it is, but I mean re: scoring - while in the workprint the music fades nicely with the camera dropping into the first interior shot). To my ear/eye.
Anyway, the name Raincatcher Records was made in reference to that line from Blade Runner: "All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain..." (I hadn't actually watched the movie in a long time when I came up with it though, just the South Park Return of Covid special that references it...). I originally had a blog of that name up a few years ago in expectation of one day using it as a professional portfolio...but alas. It got to be mostly filler and not a lot of it was worth renewing the domain for. Maybe some highlights will appear here...