19/12/11: Filming Report

Today, after months of planning, location hunting, casting and negotiating filming times with our actors, our group members and our actors finally met up for the filming of our trailer! We scheduled to meet up at 10:00 at Folkestone Bus Station, then head to Dymchurch where we could use Megan's house as a base for getting our actors dressed and made-up and then set out to the vast and deserted fields as the location for our filming. However, one of our actors (who was meant to be acting as the antagonist - 'Bully Edwards') made a last-minute decision to drop out due as he was not feeling well. This meant that we had to make quick changes to some aspects of the trailer by cutting out our comedic character, 'Grave Digger', and reassign roles with the actors that we had remaining. It was decided that our actor who was orginally casted for 'Grave Digger' would play our bad boy of the movie, 'Sheriff Bully Edwards'. Although, we were slightly behind on our schedule, we managed to get all our actors dressed up and to our filming location.

For the first filming site, we chose a deserted field near Megan's house as it thought it would be the best representative of the vast, dry lands of the Souther parts of USA that Western movies are set in. In this site, we were to film the ending scenes of the trailer - the 'shoot-out' scene.

Here, we had a few problems in terms of trying to find the perfect camera angle in which modern developments and technology would not be seen. Although, the location was rather deserted, there were several interuptions such as buildings in the distance, telephone and electricity lines and so on. However, after a bit of moving around and with Megan's excellent camera skills we managed to find angles in which none of them were present!

We then managed to get all the necessary shots that we needed from the location so we decided to move on. We would've liked to re-do some of the scenes in order to get even better shots, however, although we had checked the weather forecast beforehand, the weather was not on our side with sudden showers of rain so we were unable to spend much longer in that location. After that, we managed to get a few establishing shots (such as of train tracks and so on). Then, we headed over to Sophie's (our actress) house, which with its all wood and rustic charm was the perfect filming location for our indoor scenes.

We used Sophie's kitchen area, in which we had to create our 'bar' set. The covering up of modern appliances and products turned out to be much harder task than expected ... But after a lot of moving things around and a lot of covering things with towels, we finally managed to turn Sophie's kitchen into a convincing Western bar! We also adjected the lighting to make it dimmer, in order to recreate a more older and natural feel. Also, we felt that the shadows would aid in conveying a mysterious vibe to the audience.

So, after a long while of shooting inside Sophie's house (the actors found it very hard to keep a straight face ... haha), we finally managed to finished the filming! We then moved on to do the photoshoot for the magazine cover and the posters, for which we had to use several other light sources such as extra lamps and torches from several different angles in order to create light and shadows exactly where we wanted it. And that concluded our long day of filming! Despite having to cope with last minute changes, time constraints and after giving much direction to our actors and with Megan diligently working behind the camera, we managed to get some good material for the trailer.

And now the long process of editing begins ...

Trailer Storyboard

Casting

After getting together and pulling together a shortlist of our friends who could be suitable for the roles required in our trailer and then contacting those said friends to ask if they would be willing to help ... we have finally got ourselves the actors and actresses who will be portraying the characters of our movie!

Here they are ... I present to you the main actors for our trailer!

JOSHUA HOLLIER as 'EAGLE'

ADAM COMPTON as THE SHERIFF

and last but not the least

SOPHIE O'CONNOR as LORETTA

Ancilliary tasks: Film poster

Drawing from the style of the True Grit posters I found during my research, I have created my own possible template for the marketing of our film. I have taken the idea of a full-page photo with a lot of text over the top, in varying fonts, and applied to 'The Eagle'

Instead of cast information, I have used a quote from the film's dialogue because we do not have a famous cast like Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon to help sell the film - using a quote may create suspense and intrigue into the plot, attracting viewers.

Potential poster template:

Fonts used: Carnvalee Freakshow, Woodcut, Wild Rodeo

Location update:

I have recently heard back from the owner of our ideal filming location and unfortunately, he was not able to offer us concession on the price of using the area so we are unable to film there. However, as we realised this was a possibility before we contacted Laredo, we have made contingency plans concerning our filming locations.
We plan to film in local areas that have a look reminiscent of the empty planes of classic western films, and around the steam railway as this is a classic element of western mise-en-scene.

We plan to meet up with our actors and film on Monday 19th December.

Our original trailer storyboard only needs altering slightly and as we have already drawn out a contingency storyboard, this should not be an issue.

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Poster & Magazine Cover Template

After analysing several posters and magazine covers, we have come up with rough ideas for the creation of the poster and the magazine front cover:

Poster Template:

(By Bhawana)

Magazine Cover Template:

(By Megan)

As you can see I have chosen the title of the magazine, after having searched through common Western slang. I decided to play on the term 'Iron Horse' which is the term for a steam train. I then combined it with 'bullet' as the magic bullet/hypodermic needle theory came to mind, suggesting that a lot of information is provided quickly.

It is also apparent that I have started the piece, using the same font title for the film title as a method of tying the two together and creating a house style. There is also an article title which I used the film 'Cowboys & Aliens' for, as it is the most recent Western themed film to have been released.

Font Choices

In the end, we decided to use 'Carnevalee Freakshow' (1st on the 2nd row) because we felt that the font best represented the 'classic Western' vibe that we were aiming for as the font is one that audiences would have seen often on Western boards and signs and they should be abe to instantly recognise the genre of the film as a Western.

Rough Poster Ideas

I drew some rough ideas for the poster based on our findings from the analysis into film posters.

Ancillary Tasks: film magazine cover and poster

From my research, I have found out that western films very rarely feature on magazine covers. This is most likely down to that they are no longer a popular and proliferant genre, despite well-recieved, well-liked and good quality modern western films being released in recent years. Due to the lack of covers featuring western films to analyse and draw conclusions from, I have had to research elsewhere for examples to refer to.

The publication 'True West' is a magazine devoted to 'preserving the American west' and occasionally features covers about western films. Its illustration and styling are very traditional and reminiscent of the classic westerns of the 'Golden Age of Westerns'; a style I feel our group should attempt to emulate in the house-style of our production. 

Recently, the film 'Cowboys and Aliens' was released in an attempt to reboot the western genre by crossing it over with sci-fi. The film magazines that featured the film had very different approaches to how ro represent it - some choosing to show the sci-fi element and others the western conventions.

To the left, 'True West' magazine, although not a film magazine, has a more dominant western style where as 'Empire' uses a much more modern, sci-fi style. When we create our magazine cover, we will need to consider which style to choose and whether it will tailor to our audience.

The film 3:10 to Yuma kept the same traditional house style throughout its marketing, was aimed at fans of westerns and hoped to reboot the classic style of the genre. This is similar to our ideas about the production so to emulate this style would be an option. Alternatively, we could use the same approach as True Grit, combining traditional typography with photography to create a more minimalist style than the old posters which were often crowded with a lot of different images.

By studying these films, we can formulate ideas concerning the format of our film magazine cover and promotional poster.

 

 House-style:

 This traditional style would include images that appear to be hand-drawn or painted in a sketchy but realistic way; impactful 'western' fonts such as 'Rio Grande', 'Carnevalee Freakshow' and 'Woodcut' from the font site dafont.com; feature key elements of the mise-en-scene of westerns such as weaponry, horses, steam trains or elements of costume like hats;

 more text than conventional for other films (poster); possibly a weathered, dirty appearence - shown through textures; dark colours based in browns and yellows and strong poses by the characters featured.

Initial ideas:
We have decided to name our production 'The Eagle' after the protagonist so here I have tested some different typefaces and colours to see the effect created.