1935 Trading Bases

Our story starts out with a couple that has just gotten engaged but the next day, the husband finds out that he has been drafted byt the U.S Military to fight in World War I.  After some time apart the husband decided he can't stand the separation any longer so he fakes his death in order to return  home.  Meanwhile, his wife couldn't stand the separation either so she decides to fake being a boy so she can join the army to be with her soulmate.  In the process of all this, they "Trade Bases", the husband ends up at home while the wife is at war.  Obviously this movie is coming out about 20 years after WWI was over, but we thought that this was a good time with new advances that have been made in film to create a war drama.  We thought that a war drama would be a good fit for our movie because it wouldn't violate any of the conditions of the Hays Code.  There wouldn't be any graphic war scenes or intimate love scenes, just an honest story of two people who can't stand being apart.

We chose to use 20th Century Fox for our studio because they have a lot of money and a wide selection of actors and actresses.  Also, they had never really come out with a big war movie and we figured that we would make their first war drama.  We knew that we wanted to make a large scale movie and 20th Century Fox was a great choice because they had the money and the connections to make a real blockbuster.  For the role of the man in the relationship, we chose Tyrone Power because he was in his early twenties when this movie would have come out, and that makes perfect sense for someone who is getting drafted by the army.  Tyrone Power was also in contract with our studio se he was an easy choice.  For the leading female role, we chose Janet Gaynor because she was one of the main actresses of 20th Century Fox and also because she was in her late twenties so we could make he appear to be the same age as Tyrone Power.  One of our supporting actors is Raymond Griffith who plays the platoon leader of the the main character.  Also because he was in his forties when the movie came out and we thought that a platoon leader would have to be someone who looked a little more distinguished.  We chose a man named John Ford for the director position because shortly after 1935, he started making a lot of successful war movies.  He also had a contract with our studio so he was the obvious choice.  The area that we wanted to specialize in was cinematography and for that purpose we chose James Howe as our cinematographer.  James Howe specializes in deep focus shots which would be key for our battlefield scenes because we would be able to show a very large battlefield with detailed focus all over.  I think that the one thing I would have changed if I could do the project again would be to have spent our time more wisely.  We didn't end up having enough time to finish our poster because we got  little off task during our work time and I wish we would have been more focused.