Building a Book Trailer - Part One

We all love a good movie trailer.

It's the first thing we watch before deciding what film to see at the cinema or buy on DVD.

IMDB is stuffed with them - we watched Jason Bourne at the Cinema this week. It didn't disappoint...




But what about books?

I don't know about you, but I walk into my local branch of Waterstones and after I've spent a few seconds appreciating the wonderful smell of books I then cruise around the colourful maze of literary and entertainment potential, before freaking out.

I find it all so overwhelming, and inevitably, I walk out empty handed or buy some lovely stationery

instead!

 If you can have a trailer for a film, surely you can have one for a book?

This was something that had been on my radar for The Sheridan and Blake Series but it had never progressed beyond a shiny idea.

That was until I met Ros Shennan at a networking event a couple of months back.

Ros was looking for projects to work on to build her portfolio as an independent film maker and I pitched the idea to her.

The concept I had in mind was around an investigation board.

 In The Bronze Box, Sasha Blake arrives at The Agency and is introduced to her partner, Tom Sheridan.

In Tom's office is a wall covered in newspaper cuttings, photos, images, scraps of paper, maps etc. It's everything he has on the investigation into the missing bronze box, all laid out on the wall in front of them.

With basically no budget, my trailer concept can't involve big expensive set pieces, pyrotechnics or lots of actors. I had to think small and achievable but also something appealing enough to make people want to know more.

We started with regular meetings to plan it out. I gave Ros signed copies of all the books in the series.

She is now working her way through them and pulling out lines, snapshots, bits of dialogue to inspire the scenes on the investigation wall.

In the mean time, I'm collecting images, cuttings etc from magazines, newspapers and printing things off.

I found two big canvases at the back of my craft cupboard that will be perfect to set up the 'wall' and pin everything in place.

There is one scene that requires two actors to play the parts of Tom Sheridan and Sasha Blake and I put a call out on Social Media. I've recruited a friend of mine to play Sasha. I'm yet to find my Tom, but I'm working on it!

We're getting rather carried away with this concept, and have already talked about how we could make the books into films or an online TV series...

Trailer first, but it's exciting to think about the future possibilities.

Say Hello to Amy C Fitzjohn, Author...

I first started blogging in 2013 – here’s my first ever blog post.

It was just a hello, with some sketches from an idea about a buzzing, clicking, squeaking robot that generates ideas in little puffs of smoke, grab them quick before they dissipate. 

My second blog was a snapshot, another random idea:

A Head Full of Popcorn 

Take a handful of popcorn corn, throw it into a pan and see it scatter.

 
Some of the corn will pop and settle.

 
Some will pop and fly out of the pan, forever lost down the back of the cooker.

 
Some will just smoulder and burn and smell bad.

 
Some will stubbornly refuse to do anything, no matter how many times you try to cook them. 

 
You can take a handful and enjoy it, but there will always be a few that taste funny or didn't pop properly.

 
That's how I would describe the way my brain works - I just have a head full of popcorn! 

 

What started as a way to explore ideas, evolved into a 365 ‘Operation Author’ project and later became:

Idea’ism = The syndrome of having too many ideas

My mewsings have been more and more writing related so it seems like the time to just call this what it is… this is the home of author, Amy C Fitzjohn.

I've come full circle, when I first started blogging it was in my guise as an author...

 

I’ve been writing all my life, ever since I was old enough to string a sentence together. 

I’ve always been a storyteller, and would make up stories to tell my younger brother and sister when we were kids. 

I officially started making money from my stories when I published The Bronze Box in 2013. 

Since then I’ve completed the Sheridan and Blake Adventure Series. 

I now have 4 fiction books published as Amy C Fitzjohn (my maiden name) and a growing portfolio of non-fiction business books in my married name Amy Morse.

I've taken all the lessons I've learned in the last three years of blogging and compiled them into my latest non-ficiton book:

Blogging for Business

I've just started writing my next fiction book 'Finding the Scream'.

I'll keep you updated on progress but for now, I've set up a Pinterest board to start collecting research links