Ridley Scott’s 1982 film, Blade Runner, had such a profound effect on science fiction, film making, and technoculture, that we’ve never really gotten over it. It continues to inspire successive generations of cyberpunks to this day.
Slice of Life is a 25-minute fan film that takes place in a Blade Runner-like universe and is presented as a “love letter” to 80s sci-fi films in general.
During the production process, the Slice of Life team (um… that’s basically Luka and Dino in their basement) posted lots of video diaries on YouTube, forming something of a master class in low-budget sci-fi film-making.
In the above 35-minute video, Luka gives us an impressively informative run-through of the process of building and shooting miniature structures.
Starting with nothing more than a crappy cardboard box, some kitchen trash, electronic junk, and a few plastic model and 3D-printed bits, he builds a cyberpunk-y building and then shows how they went about filming and compositing everything into a final scene. Impressive.
Here is the official trailer for the film, followed by a 20-minute documentary. It’s in Croatian, but you can turn on the English captioning. The film has been sent out to its Kickstarter backers and has played at a number of international film festivals. No word on when it might be available online.
You can also listen to Luka and Dino talking about the film on a brand new cyberpunk podcast, Underground Hardware.