To create my establishing shot, I have looked at a few different images and films that have establishing shots of small towns, as well as images of desert planes.
The idea of a long distance shot came from Red Dead Redemption 2. It inspired me because as I was playing it I found myself at the top of a canyon overlooking the entire valley with Armadillo (the town) located in the distance in the middle of it (as seen in the image below). As I was over looking it, I suddenly though that a shot like this would make for an excellent establishing shot as it shows the view everything they need to know, where the town is located and how small and isolated the town is.
This image is a hand drawn image of a small town in the desert. In this image, I really like the orange/yellow lighting from the sun as it sets in the distance. This is something that I will use to inspire my lighting for my scene as I feel that it will help give the scene some life as the scene will take place during the evening instead of the day time showing that the fight happened during a time of day when the saloon would have most likely been really busy, giving it a certain eeriness seeing it abandoned knowing that this is a time when it is expected to be busy. The way the sun light shines through the canyon giving everything an orange tint is just really nice and I think if I am able to replicate that I will create a very nice and dynamic lit scene. Another thing I really like is the ledge at the front of the shot as it adds some depth the the scene with the plants and ledge in the foreground, kind of makes it feel like you are actually standing there looking down at the town.
This shot from Star Wars has sort of inspired me with the way the town of Mos Eisley is in the far distance and the camera is over looking the entire valley. With the way the town is just placed at the bottom flat part of the valley surrounded by all the mountains is how I want my shot to look. to give it the feeling that the town is located in the middle of desert, sort of in the middle of nowhere.
This shot from News of the World gave me an idea based on how the camera moves. In this shot, the camera starts off following the cattle and tilts upwards to reveal the town where they are headed to. This camera movement has given me an idea how I want to move the camera in my establishing shot. Like in the scene with the tilting, instead of tilting it down from the floor up to reveal the town, I want to start the camera off pointing to the at the sky and it tilts downwards to reveal the town and as the town comes into frame, the lens will focus on the town putting drawing the viewers attention to the town.
At the start of the shot, before the camera moves whilst it points at the sky, I want the title of the animation to show "The Unlucky Hand" in an old retro western movie font and style as seen in the image below. After the title has faded out, then the camera will start to tilt down to show the town. This idea was inspired by the way the original Toy Story film opens where it shows the title with the sky in the background then tilts down to the opening scene where Andy is playin with his toys. Depending on the feeling it gives, I may change the idea so that the title card will show after revealing the town as seen in the image below on the left which is taken from the film "Ride Lonesome". The reason I want the title card to show like this and in this style so to pay homage to classic western film and to hopefully to make it feel a little bit like a classic western film.
