Fake Trailer Project

In Time-Based Media we had to reconstitute imagery and sounds from at least two other movies to make a new movie.  I decided to extract Arnold Schwarzenegger from The Last Action Hero and transplant him into Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo.  The content of the films is very similar, so I thought I would have an easy time putting them together.  It was much more challenging than I thought, but I'll let you watch the video before I continue talking about it:

The form content came together nicely, but working around the methods these two directors (John McTiernan of Die Hard fame is the other one) was hard.  Since Last Action Hero is an action movie, the edits are extremely short, and the lighting is always very stylish and dramatic (with kind of source-y keys and hard kickers).  The Purple Rose on the other hand was shot by Gordon Willis (Godfather, among MANY others...) and in this movie he goes for a lot of natural light and a soft, diffused look (it's a period piece set during the Great Depression).

I think Woody Allen's also got some responsibility, since he strikes me as the type who likes to give the actors room do their thing, i.e. long takes, defaulting to wide lenses, etc.  As such, compared to LAH, it seemed like there are a lot less closeups (maybe even fewer shots in general)!  So, as you can see in the trailer, rather than hunting down eye-lines to match up, I used a lot of audio underneath disparate video sequences to make it seem like they're talking to each other.  A little misdirection to get the project done.  It's not perfect, but it is complete.  Ever onward!  Let me know what you think.