The next assignment I chose for the 2 weeks of video was the Return to the Silent Era assignment from the assignment bank.

I started the pre-production for this assignment a couple of weeks ago, so it wasn’t hard to put all the pieces together in the two weeks we had.

I chose Django: Unchained because I felt like it could transfer easily to a silent film–since it’s a western style film and all. It was also pretty funny for me to think of a movie having the main character as a black bounty hunter killing white people during the silent film era. I’m sure that would have gone over SUPER well.

So first I found the trailer that had the least bit of talking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUdM9vrCbow

I removed all the “modern” stuff like the green preview screen and the text that is throughout the trailer. Then I used title cards I found from this website.

I found a couple of fonts that I liked on Dafont.com.

This font is used for most of the cards in the video.

This one was only used on the last card for the title of the movie.

I made each card in Adobe Photoshop then transferred the PNGs to Premiere Pro. With the cards and clips that I needed, I now only had to find some music. This was by far the hardest part. Finding music that not only sounded Silent Movie-ish yet still matched the clips…?

I eventually found some on Incompetech.com. I used “Dark Hallway,” “Comic Plodding,” “Villainous Treachery,” and “Iron Horse.”

Like I said in my pre-production blog post, I used a tutorial for After Effects to create a vintage feel to the clip.

Here’s a couple screenshots of my work.

As you can see, I had to find a way to repeat the film overlay that created a “distressed” look to the clip. I couldn’t figure out a way to loop it, so I figured it would just be easier to repeat it until the end of the trailer.

After watching this new trailer back, I realized that it may be interesting to discuss with my Civil War in American Memory class about how the film would be received in the silent film era. Like I said before, it would be quite a provocative and controversial subject to see a black man killing white people–and getting away with it–in the early 20th century.

Overall, I’m incredibly proud of this trailer. I thought this one would be one of the assignments that would be a throwaway video (we all have those! Don’t deny it!). However, after working on it and watching it back, I think it’s pretty awesome.