Writing Fake Movie Trailers

So one of the projects I’ve been working on is writing a series of fake movie trailers for my wedding. I’m used to writing comic scripts, so thinking visually is nothing new – however, a shooting script is quite different from a comic script.

In a comic, there’s no actual motion. So you can plot by panel, and control the flow of time with the kind of panel you use. However, with a shooting script you have to control the flow of time in real-time – with dialogue, images, whatever.

You also establish tone very differently, since trailers are a medium in motion and also engagement more senses – namely, visual and auditory. You can reply on tone of voice, tone of music – and you can change tones very quickly and quite differently.

So adopting to the new techniques has been an interesting and fun challenge, to be sure. A few friends of mine are working on the shooting scripts, which I’m sure will change radically on the day of shooting. Carl had already done a series of movie trailers (my favorite is embedded below), and he said a lot of improv was thrown in. And since we want these trailers to be funny (or so over the top they’re comical), I imagine a lot of improv will be used again.

The man’s done it before, and I love movie trailers – so I’m sure we’ll put together an entertaining product. I’ll be sure to share once we have stuff to share.