Bay Area Fires Footage Set to BLADE RUNNER 2049 Score

Fires have been raging along the west coast recently, with blazes breaking out from Southern California to Washington. And while all of the footage of the fires has been ominous, some glimpses have been beyond bleak. Like the below drone footage of San Francisco amidst the Bay Area fires, which just so happens work perfectly with the score from Blade Runner 2049.

Gizmodo picked up on the above video, which Terry Tsai recently posted to YouTube. Tsai doesn’t provide much information about himself—this is his only video on YouTube—but he obviously has mad drone videography skills. In fact, Roger Deakins should probably get Tsai’s number.

Tsai recorded the drone video on September 9, amidst a dark-orange, and occasionally demonic-red, sky. Those Martian hues, incidentally, are the result of the way smoke particles in the atmosphere scatter sunlight. Unlike a clear sky, which we perceive as blue thanks to Rayleigh scattering, a smoky sky appears red and orange; this is because smoke particles scatter—or reflect—wavelengths of light in the red portion of the visible spectrum. (Red light has a lower frequency than blue light, and therefore scatters less frequently than blue light when the sky is clear.)

Cool science aside, Tsai’s video of smoky San Francisco does look exactly like a landscape out of Blade Runner 2049. So much so that Tsai had to pair it with a portion of the film’s score—written by Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch—dubbed “Alcon Sleeping Giant.”

Above are some other images and video of the current Blade Runner 2049-ish atmosphere in San Francisco. Compare them to the film’s trailer below for a sense of their shocking similarities.

What do you think about this drone footage of the Bay Area fires set to Blade Runner 2049 music? And are you as over 2020 as we are? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Feature image: Terry Tsai