The Apes Will Rise

As traditional with our course we are to enter in various competitions throughout the year. The first being the Roses, and this one being the YCN Student Awards. A number of briefs were available for us to choose from and create something unique and fresh. The brief that caught my attention was one titled 20th Century Fox. This brief was to create a campaign advertising the film companies latest release, Rise of the Apes. This is an upcoming prequel to the popular film series of Planet of the Apes. This film is a complete reboot of the series as well as a prequel film.

I wanted to design something that was yes new and could be a stand alone film, but wanted to create something that was inspired by the original five films. I wanted to create a back story to the film, a prequel to the prequel. The plot of the latest installment is that a young scientist is trying to create a cure for Alzheimer's disease and is using apes to experiment various antidotes on, and because of this accidentally creates an intelligent ape named Caesar, who will rise up against mankind.

The campaign I created was inspired from a scene in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes where the main ape has become a slave and is forced to choose a name from the bible, but in my version the ape will choose his own name, this is where the "My Name Is Caesar" campaign comes from. I wanted to show an evolution within the campaign.

It starts off with pop ups appearing around the Internet that contains scribble but over a period of a few weeks will develop into words spelling out the title of the campaign. Clicking on this final pop up will link people to the website I created which contains posters, trailers, audio tapes, brochure and newspaper articles.

More posters would follow this as well as a prequel graphic novel to this film Birth of the Planet of the Apes. I created a basic plot for this and have included on my storyboards. T-shirts and free merchandise would also be available to advertise the movie.

The two trailers seen here are almost identical but with a few major differences. The second trailer is seen at the top, where the first teaser can be viewed just above this paragraph.

I have found that even though this project did drag at times, I still really enjoyed working on my campaign. I felt inspired and self motivated into designing something that I felt others would enjoy and get the excited about the film.