Criminal Minds - S14 (8-15) Promo

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.

Blue Bloods S8 (11-22) Promo

Cops, crooks, politics and family drama; all elements in a typical Blue Bloods promo. This time, the slow-burning love affair between Eddie and Jamie had to make an appearance. Across the 11 episodes from the second half of Season 8, their moments start small, a look here, a disgruntled boyfriend there, tension everywhere, with Eddie being welcomed into the family by the end of the season. 

In a 40 (or 20) second promo, you don’t have the luxury to linger on those moments, so the trick was finding them within the action. There’s a great sequence where Jamie’s about to get taken out by a not-so-great assassin, but Eddie’s spidey senses can feel her partner under threat, firing back with a burst of gunfire that sends the guy driving into the support ballast of the elevated trains. 

The visuals are a level up from the typical action scene in Blue Bloods, the iconic elevated train tracks, shot on gorgeous long lenses that stretch the space and give the moment an unexpected jolt of production value. It’s the kind of scene that feels like it wandered in from a feature, and as we end with Eddie and Jamie embracing with a NY cop car screeching to a halt behind them, we know they’re going to be together. 

It was fun to end the promo with a short parallel edit, combining sequences of Jamie and Danny both dealing with the threat of a bomb. Jamie in a city bus staring down a rucksack bomb, and Danny storming into a booby-trapped apartment, ending on a cliffhanger as the apartment blows up. 

Criminal Minds - S14 Promo

It’s interesting to start work on a promo where the show is 14 seasons deep. It’s been going on so long that many of the cast have grown up on the show, and Joe Mantegna’s Just For Men has been dropped for a glistening head of silver hair.

I love delving into the show’s history and unravelling the characters’ backstories, understanding their relationships, and tracing the evolution of their dynamics. The numerous fan-maintained wikis are a goldmine for getting up to speed quickly on long-running series like this.

By this point, the show’s format is firmly established, but I was pleasantly surprised by its production quality. For a series with what must be an intense shooting and post-production schedule, it consistently delivers a polished “crime of the week” structure. Each episode manages to introduce and develop a complex antagonist within a tight runtime, no small feat. In that sense, it reminds me a bit of The X-Files, which, in its more procedural episodes, faced a similar challenge.

One particular hurdle in cutting a promo like this is that it needs to be suitable for pre-watershed viewing, before 9 PM. That restriction can rule out much of what makes the show so compelling: the crimes themselves, the darker investigative details, and sometimes even the criminals.

Working on this promo sent me down a bit of a true-crime rabbit hole. I ended up rewatching both seasons of the brilliant Mindhunter, which I finished just in time for the release of Ryan Murphy’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story, which featured a pseudo-crossover-style event with similar scenes and characters from Mindhunter, which sadly just highlighted how much better Mindhunter was. If only Fincher & Netflix would come around to a third season! David, if you can hear this, we’re on our knees!

Blue Bloods - S8 (1-10) Promo

Blue Bloods isn’t just another cop procedural (if anything, that’s what the creators were fervently against creating); at its heart are the Reagan family, who serve as our entry point into every corner of New York City’s justice system: beat cops, detectives, the DA’s office, the political minefield of the Commissioner’s office with the Governor, Mayor and the delicate balance of 35,000 NYPD officers.

Created by Robin Green and Mitchell Burgess, writers and executive producers of The Sopranos, I can’t help but think of the framework of this show as an almost parallel universe inversion of The Sopranos. Where The Sopranos explored crime through the family at its centre, Blue Bloods offers the flipside to that coin: the family is the law, navigating both justice and morality in a city that constantly tests both.

The challenge of creating a promo for a show this layered, and ten episodes worth, is finding a throughline that can act as a narrative spine, allowing the promo to have structure whilst allowing material from various episodes to shine through, to excite the audience to tune in.

There was a theme in these episodes around the grey area that the police encounter. Selleck’s Francis Reagan makes a great point at the family dinner that all of them, in their respective jobs, have ‘the book’, but it’s their job to interpret that book with the realities of the situation to make a true and fair judgment. In addition to this, there was a need to include a reference to Donny Wahlberg’s Danny mourning the death of his wife, which occurred ‘off-camera’ between Season 7 & 8.

NCIS: HAWAII - S2 Promo

Promo for Paramount/5USA, driving interest for the final seven episodes of the second season, airing through July/August/September 2025.

My approach was to ensure that the briefed aspects were met, showcasing some of Hawaii's beautiful locations, the team dynamics, the action and suspense, while bringing a cinematic feeling to the show.

The use of music helped build a suspenseful start to the promo, with a nod to some local instruments.
As the action begins, we transition to a Zimmer-esque driving track that ramps up the tension to the end.

A potent piece of dialogue from Ernie Malik (played by the great Jason Antoon - remember him from the brilliant Cyber Parlour scene in Minority Report?!), served as a strong way to frame the action sequences and provide some mystery to the storylines of these final episodes.

“Skullduggery. Chicanery. Deception. Spycraft, my friends. We’re through the looking glass.”

The 20 second edit, focuses on the final action section of the 40 second cut.