When I was a kid there was no world wide web. The backbone of the internet already existed but it wasn’t something the general public got to use. So when big movies wanted to generate advance hype they had to do it by television and radio. the bigger the movie they more they would throw at it. There would be tie-in singles released by famous bands and half the time the track wouldn’t even appear in the film. The director, the stars, the producer and the person that wrote the book they were largely ignoring for the plot would all get interviewed. They would be on day-time TV and late night chat shows. If the film claimed to be high brow the director would go on Radio Four. If it didn’t then the star would go on Radio One.
The big franchise moves used to get these ‘documentaries’ about how they were made. In retrospect they were just extended trailers but I loved those things. I would sit in rapt attention while Harrison Ford explained that the reason why Indiana Jones always wore his hat was so you couldn’t tell when it was him and when it was the stunt man.
My intention for these project files is to write the blog equivalent of those ‘documentaries’. I hope that they’ll be entertaining in their own right and will make you want to read the finished work. Maybe they’ll even be useful to other writers.
Alternatively they could just end up being self indulgent trash but that would still be pretty close to some of those ‘documentaries’ so I wouldn’t be too far off target.
H.F. Calder, author and artist. 