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.