Ridley Scott

Sir Ridley Scott (born November 30, 1937 in South Shields) is an influential British Film director and producer.

Career

Scott initially studied, until 1958, at the West Hartlepool College of Art. He was to progress to a Photography course at London's Royal College of Art for the 1960s. There, he was to contribute to the college magazine ARK and help to establish its film department. For his final show he made a black and white short film 'The Boy on the Bicycle' starring his brother Tony. The film's main visual elements would become features of Scott's later work. After graduation he secured a traineeship as a set designer with the BBC leading him to work on the popular television series Z-Cars. He was also assigned to design the second Doctor Who serial, The Daleks, which would have entailed realising the famous alien creatures. However, shortly before he was due to start work a schedule conflict meant that he was replaced on the serial by Raymond Cusick.

Along with Sir Alan Parker, Hugh Hudson, Hugh Johnson and his younger brother Tony Scott, he established an advertising company. Having cut his teeth on UK television commercials in the 1970s-most notably the 1974 Hovis advert "Bike Round" (New World Symphony) filmed in Shaftesbury-he graduated to Hollywood, where he produced and directed a number of top boxoffice films.

His first feature, The Duellists, was produced in Europe and made limited impact in the US. He planned next to adapt an opera but after seeing Star Wars became convinced of the potential of large scale effects driven films and accepted the directing job of Alien that gave him an international hit. After a year working on the film adaptation of Dune, Scott signed to direct Blade Runner even though he was reluctant to follow up with another science-fiction film. The film was a flop on initial release but achieved cult film status on video. In 1993, he released the "Blade Runner Director's Cut," which many people consider a vast improvement over the original version released in theaters.

His striking visual style, incorporating a detailed approach to production design and innovative, atmospheric lighting, has been tremendously influential on an entire subsequent generation of filmmakers - many of whom have simply imitated him outright.

In 1995 Scott, together with his brother, Tony Scott, formed the film and television production company Scott Free Productions in Los Angeles. All of his subsequent feature films, starting with White squall, have been produced under the Scott Free banner.

The huge success of Scott's film Gladiator (2000) has been credited with the revival of the nearly defunct genre of the "Sword and sandal" historical epic. In 2005, Scott attempted to follow it up with the less successful Kingdom of Heaven, a movie about the Crusades that consciously sought to connect history to current events. While on location in Morocco during the filming Scott reported receiving death threats from Islamist extremists. It was reported that the Moroccan government sent hundreds of soldiers to protect the set and crew. However, the Moroccan cavalry were actually on hand as extras in the epic battle-scenes.

Although some of his films have been highly praised, others have been less successful with audiences and critics. G.I. Jane and Hannibal are the two major works most often attacked by critics, while 1492: Conquest of Paradise was a major commercial failure. Legend (1985) was, like Blade Runner three years before, an initial box-office disaster, but it too has since found cult status thanks to Jerry Goldsmith's critically acclaimed (but rarely heard) score, and a 2002 revised "director's cut" that is closer to Scott's original vision.

Scott has been nominated for three Academy Awards for Directing. He was knighted in the 2003 New Year Honours.

His latest movie, named "All the Invisible Children", is supposedly an ambitious multi-national project consisting of 7 short movies directed by 7 different directors from different countries, Scott is supposedly directing the British segment with his daughter, Jordan. The other directors are John Woo, Spike Lee, Mehdi Charef, Emir Kusturica, Kátia Lund, Stefano Veneruso.

Scott is Currently teaming up again with actor Russell Crowe, directing the movie A Good Year, which is based on the best selling book.

Currently 5 members of the Scott family are directors, all working for RSA.

Filmography

Upcoming films

  • Shadow Divers
  • A Good Year (2006): Filming
  • All The invisible Children (a.k.a. Take 7) (2006): Completed

Released films

Robert De Niro   Index

This page is based on the Wikipedia article ''Ridley Scott''. It is licensed under the GNU free documentation license.

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