My first mashup assignment of the week was an interesting one. I decided to be bold and go for the “Movie Mashup” assignment worth a well deserved 4 stars. Just by reading the description, i knew this assignment would not only be difficult but time consuming. I was looking at other people who completed this assignment and all the simple movie comparisons were used up. I really wanted to do the Hunger Games and Divergent. Oh, well! I suppose i’ll use this time to introduce a movie you’ve probably never seen! Well, movieS. I spent a decent amount of time thinking of movies to compare and i ended up choosing movies by Wes Anderson. I know that films directed by the same person tend to be similar but i was in a debate with my friend on HOW similar Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel. I recently watched the GBH and it was just so great. I’m not sure if it was because i’m attracted to pastel colors or what, but it was fantastic.
Similarities:
What makes both films similar is the basic storyline. In both movies, the protagonist, or protagonists set off for a journey. In GBH, the Lobby Boy sets out to bust Gustave out of jail. In MK, the scout and his lady friend leave and go on a mini vacation. Of course the scenes in between are totally different but still! I’m just summarizing this up because i’m nowhere near being a movie critic. It doesn’t help that Wes Anderson has a distinct directing style. Thinking about both of these films made me realize that they were perfect for mashing up, so i did!
Mashing
My biggest issue was how was i going to mash this up into a post? Which setting do i use? Which characters do i include? I originally chose the lobby of the Grand Budapest Hotel because that seemed like a good choice. I could fit a reasonable amount of characters/props and it would be O K. Well, i realized that the colors clashed too much. It would have been weird if i added the scout to the lobby because his clothes were too pale and the lobby is so dark. I shifted towards the beach scene in MK because that looked even better. Now that i had the setting, i needed to include characters and props from GBH. I spent way too long trying to find Gustave, Lobby Boy, and Edward Norton. The problem was that i needed to find full body photos of each character. That was really difficult. I REALLY wanted to include Agatha in the poster but a full body picture of her was nowhere to be found. I ended finding three characters from the GBH that i could include in the poster. I wanted to include a prop but i was stuck on which to include. The delivery truck for Mendl’s was too large and not appropriate for a beach scene so i chose the Mendl pastry box instead. Now that i had the photos i needed, i had to strain my hand in cutting and cropping each out. After i did that, i added them to the beach scene.
New Title
The title was not as bad as i thought it would be. It was impossible to find a font similar to the GBH movie poster so i stuck with a simple one already downloaded in GIMP. I chose purple as the color because it went well with the colors in the poster. A light pink wouldn’t have shown up and yellow wouldn’t have either. I obviously had to combine both movie titles in the poster so i ended up choosing “The Grand Moonrise Hotel”. I thought that was cute! Overall, i’m really pleased with this poster. I think i might make it my new background because it’s perfect. Below, i’m going to include original photos and the final piece! Enjoy!
The Grand Moonrise Kingdom:
Stars: 4
