Who would distribute our film and its promotional material?

We looked at Western films past and present to choose a distributor for our film. We came up, eventually, with a list of six, which we researched further.

Lions Gate Entertainment Corporation is a Canadian-American entertainment company. They are the distributor for one of the main films we looked at: 310 to Yuma. Founded in 1996, in Vancouver, as of 2010, it is the 8th most successful production company in North America. Its highest grossing films are 2004's Fahrenheit 9/11 and 2010's The Expendables. Besides 310 to Yuma, it has no more Westerns to its credit.

Warner Bros. Pictures is a subsidiary company of the hugely successful media conglomerate TimeWarner. They have been the distributor and producer for numerous Westerns, such as Unforgiven, The Assasination Of Jesse James, Wyatt Earp and the Western-style comic book adaptation Jonah Hex. Founded in 1918, it is number 1 in the list of the top six major film distributors in the world. Its top-grossing films include The Dark Knight and The Harry Potter series.

New Line Cinema distributed Apaloosa, one of the few Westerns of recent. Founded in 1967, it was an independent studio until 1996, when it became a subsidiary of TimeWarner. It was merged with its sister Warner Bros. in 2008. Now less than ten films are released per year using the name.

Paramount Pictures is America's oldest film studio, founded in 1912. A subsidiary of media congolmerate Viacom, it has distributed many prominent Westerns such as Once Upon A Time In The West, Brokeback Mountain, Seraphim Falls and the upcoming remake of True Grit. It has also distributed the film No Country For Old Men, a film that, while not being set during the typical "Western" period, arguably includes many commonly seen Western elements. It is number 2 in the top 6 film studios of today.

After looking at all these studios, we have decided our film could be distributed by Warner Bros. Warner Bros. has a number of successful Westerns to its credit already, and given its power as the most successful film distributor in the world, would ensure the film has a large distributional area.

Setting research

Before scouting for locations for our trailer, we needed to research typical Western locations and landscapes. We managed to gain some feedback from the forum featured in genre research, as one person decided to discuss some locations:
"As far as locations go, when I think westerns, Monument Valley often comes to mind and after that, probably the Badlands. I also think of wagon trains and cattle crossing rivers, towns either full of stages, horses and people, or just before a shootout, I think of completely empty, dustblown streets."

Looking up Monument Valley on Google, we discovered the place is on the border between Arizona and Utah, USA.

It looks like this, with strange rock formations and striking orange and red sand. The Badlands national park, also in Arizona, is similar.
Unfortunately this sort of landscape does not exist in Britain, so we decided to carry out some more research.

3:10 to Yuma and Unforgiven use open ranch land and heathland for their settings.  This is a lot closer to the sort of landscape we have available here in Dorset.

Although we don't have the mountains, we definitely have the open, desolate heathland, in areas such as Canford Heath. This is an establishing shot from 3:10 to Yuma's trailer.

Here is some heath land in Unforgiven. Landscapes such as this are definitely something we can find, minus the wooden shacks.






We also researched Sergio Leone's The Man With No Name trilogy, including that legendary Western, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

 
This landscape shot shows the series' setting of open desert, appearing to be the sands of Nevada or Arizona, although actually shot in Spain.

Again, this type of landscape simply can't be found in the local area, and unlike Unforgiven and 3:10 to Yuma, ranch land isn't shown in any of the series of films; the setting is much more desolate and isolated.

Props and Costume Research

  In order to create a realistic looking trailer, poster and website for a Western, costumes and props must appear to be like those of which people of the era would have worn/used.

    Costumes

  Throughout our research we noted conventional clothing of the time and together found enough for four of the five characters appearing in the trailer. For the fifth character we felt a rough jacket would work well. In order to make the jacket look like it was made by someone of the time one of us purchased material that imitated buffalo hide and created the jacket (evidence shown below) whilst the other purchased a duster coat to improve further the appearance of another character.

  We discovered that traditionally Outlaws would have worn darker clothing to Lawmen or Bounty Hunters.
They were likely to have worn black, either leather or otherwise, with a black hat. They may have worn duster coats or jackets but would usually always wear a bandanna around their neck. or on their face. These were often to signify that the person wearing them belonged to a certain gang. Their shoes would have most likely been either brown or black leather. One of the reasons for this, was to protect their feet from the harsh wilderness and the creatures within it.

 On the left is a shot from 3:10 to Yuma, showing the clothing of the outlaw and the "hero". On the right is simply a diagram of typical Western wear.

We can see that the jacket of the "good guy" is of a light colour, whereas the jacket of a "bad guy" is a darker colour. This black-and-white depiction of good and evil is often found in Westerns. 

Props

The main props in Westerns are the firearms which the characters most certainly use. We know that, in this time setting, guns as we know them today had only recently been developed; the revolver was patented by John Colt in 1836, and the Winchester rifle, a firearm symbolic of Westerns, was invented in 1873.

No matter how historically accurate a Western is, revolvers are always used by characters, as modern pistols were simply not invented; at least not until 1911, generally regarded as "the end" of the "Wild West" period.

In this clear example from Unforgiven, the character on the right holds a revolver which at least appears to be very similar to a typical weapon of that period: a Colt Single Action Army, also known as "Peacemaker".

This was the US Army's official service revolver from 1873 until 1892, placing it firmly in "Western" times.

In 3:10 to Yuma, the character of Ben Wade uses a .45 Peacemaker, with special gold crucifixes. Pictures of the weapon can be found on this website, which is website of the prop maker who created the holster he used for the weapon in the film.



 The character on the left holds a double-barelled shotgun, also common during these times.

The character standing next to the revolver wielder appears to be using a Winchester-type rifle, like these.














Also on the prop-maker's website can be found details of the Bowie knife which one of Ben Wade's gang used in 3:10 to Yuma. It was common for cowboys to carry around a knife for hunting, combat, survival etc.

This shot from Unforgiven also shows a character carrying a a type of knife, confirming it as a convention.