For my movie prop assignment, I have chosen this naval message from The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou by Wes Anderson.
The context behind this prop is as follows:
• It was sent by the I.M.U. Coast Guard to Alistair Hennessey's ship, informing him that his sea lab had been broken into.
• The I.M.U is a fictional organization that was created for the film.
• Though the time period never seems to be stated in the film , it appears to take place in or near the 1990s.
Though this letter appears to look somewhat military/official, it does not actually conform to a real military standard. Wes Anderson's movies are known for their stylization, so it makes sense that this letter may not be entirely realistic in its formatting, but I thought it could be interesting to recreate it in a more realistic format.
During my research, I discovered that official Navy messages use a standard 16-line message format (also called Basic Message Format). I also discovered that the Navy's website has a public database of official messages, which I can use for reference. An example of one of these messages is shown below.
These are just text files, however, so there is no font information. Luckily, I was able to find this document on their website as well, which states that official correspondences should use 12 point Times New Roman. It also states that "Bold, underline, script, and italics may be used for occasional emphasis, but not for entire letters."
At the end of the research phase, it was clear that this project would be a bit too simple, so I made a couple changes to the concept. First, since the message in the movie is from this fictional I.M.U. Coast Guard and not the U.S. Navy, I took some creative freedoms to create a heading to the paper. I also decided to re-imagine the context of the screenshot a bit. In the film, Alistair Hennessey's ship is extremely high-tech and clean (intended as a comedic juxtaposition with the main character's ship). Given this, I decided to re-imagine the screenshot of the film as if his ship were older and dirtier.
