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.