Wes Anderson's The Avengers

​ I want think about your favorite movie, a piece of art you know and love. Now I want you to step outside of you imagination comfort zone and if you can, imagine that beautiful movie being filmed in a completely different style. Whether the genre has been replaced with another type of film that is completely different, or the director has been replaced by an auteur whose style is very unique and completely recognizable, and nothing like the original director, the original film you love has been drastically changed.

What if for example, Wes Anderson, the genius behind Moonrise Kingdom, Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Grand Budapest Hotel among others directed Joss Whedon's the Avengers. Since these two directors both have their own very unique styles and because their styles vary drastically from one another, I thought it would be interesting to try and compare these two directors in a film featuring writing by Mr. Whedon, and Directing by Mr. Anderson, with some minor edits by myself and my partner Shane. We had already study a work by Anderson. We watched The Grand Budapest Hotel which is a great example of Anderson's style of directing and how the camera work, turns and moves through the scene. Each scene seems very choreographed which is what we tried to capture. The actors walking into the scene at around the same time and the camera does a few one hundred and eighty degree turns. The camera work in Anderson's films are very deliberate and we tried to mimic that in our film.

Another thing that is very prominent is Wes Anderson films is symmetry. He loves when shots are very symmetrical. For example to people walking to the same spot in a scene or objects behind the actors having symmetry. As something my partner and I recognized in his film, we tried to mimic that as well. There are some parts of my film the involve at least some symmetry, unfortunately because the world isn't quite symmetrical and we didn't have enough time to build our own set there isn't too obvious. Although if you look hard enough you will find some things symmetrical about the way we shot our scene.

The final aspect that we decided to capture, among the many aspects that make something a Wes Anderson film, or that are well known from him, is the close up. It was noticeable that Wes Anderson like to use close ups quite a bit so we decided to put a few in there

Some examples of camera work you will see in this film is one hundred and eighty degree turns of the camera similar to the very blocky way that Anderson likes to turn rotate or move his camera. You will also see a ninety degree turn of the camera in a similar block fashion. There are some deliberate moments with the camera moves forward toward a character while saying a line to create a close up shot. We tried to make it seem as if there was a choreographed feel to the camera angles and movements as well as the slight movement of each character. And Finally we also went for symmetry as there were railings on each side of us and symmetry when we both walk into the shot.

Unfortunately actors such as Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, and Jason Schwartzman could not be present for the making of this film but we made due with what we had.