This was a really fun promo to work on. It was a particularly solid batch of entertaining episodes, with some compelling ‘bad guys’ who brought potent visuals to their narratives. They also had enough similarities that, as a half-season promo, it could feel like one story playing out, rather than a hodge-podge of varied storylines that are complex to blend together, or worse, when there is one stellar episode which can dominate.
I did, however, let the excitement of the varied serial killers get the better of me, and my first edit, which I was really happy with, would never pass the broadcast rules in order to play at any time of the day. My first edit would be deemed a post-watershed affair. So it was back to the drawing board! (Unused edit below).
There was a thread of a storyline in one of the episodes, which felt good to explore, as it’s rare that the central characters in this kind of procedural get the time to showcase any huge personal issues, but Joe Mantegna’s Rossi has a bit of a crisis of confidence, after being outwitted and attacked by an ‘unsub’.
This was the perfect storyline to build a promo around, as the lead character, Rossi, having this kind of crisis, adds a real sense of jeopardy for the audience, to entice them to the show. Some elements of my first edit still made it through and just needed a change to any sensitive visuals.
The 20 second, focuses on the final 20 seconds of the longer edit.
Perhaps most interestingly, when I watched this episode, the opening shots of children leaving their homes in the dead of night reminded me of ‘Weapons’, Zach Cregger’s new horror film, which I’d seen just a few months before.
I’ve put together a short edit with some of the similar shots, to George Harrison’s Beware of Darkness (which Cregger used over the start of his film). I loved Weapons, and thought it brought a contemporary spin on the Pied Piper of Hamelin folk story; it built so many more rich ideas around it. I love the construction of the film too, seeing the film play out through different perspectives is such a potent way to tell a story, you’re really telling the audience to have empathy for anyone they encounter, to truly understand their situation and the reasons behind their actions.