Editing the BOTB trailer

There are two reasons for this success. One is the high quality of the original source material. The second is the excellent structure of the trailer, which uses well known film-making techniques.

When creating a trailer, filmmakers almost universally omit many elements from the movie's screenplay. So while the BOTB novel and elevator deck include Ananya's step-parents, boyfriend Rakesh and the third act, the trailer wisely omits these elements. Those supporting characters are essential for the finished film, but including them in the trailer would greatly dilute the energy of the teaser.

If you watch almost any trailer, you will see that endings and many supporting characters are removed. A great example is the Love, Actually trailer, where critical characters from the film are completely missing from the promo.

I am following the Rule of Threes. A) Juju confuses sex with love, B) Siddharth confuses solitude with freedom, C) Tamana confuses her insecurities with reality. Because of the Rule of Threes, there is no fourth example of a character flaw.

For example, after the 9/11 scene, there are are three seconds of black, followed by a smash cut to Mumbai. The voice over during the black is as concise as possible, free from bloat and verbal fluff. So the line, "...the myth of First World impermeability shattered," destroys the rhythm. Including that line too early in the trailer foreshadows too much and kills the surprise. It walks on the image. A picture tells a thousand words. And the picture is already telling a great story.

When the narrator says, "Manhattan was great...but it was Bollywood that would change her life," including the words "and Mumbai" is redundant. It kills the cinematic rhythm.

The line, "Tomorrow belongs, clearly, to the sexy, sophisticated assistant director, Siddharth," is too verbose. The viewer already knows that Siddharth is sexy, purely based on the images. The chemistry between Tamana and Siddharth is obvious in the video and the editing. And Juju already feels professionally over the hill just from the trailer. You don't have to gild the lily.

The voice over should only say what is not obvious in the video. It should not include long-winded redundancies. Trailers have much less tolerance for counter-productive loquaciousness than two-hour films do.

In the opening of the film Manhattan, Woody Allen's character delivers an intentionally self indulgent and bloated voice over. Allen successfully makes fun of his very flawed hero. And Diane Keaton's character is very funny, precisely because her dialogue is so ridiculous.

You will remember that your original voice over for the 35 second Manhattan scene was 140 seconds long.

This trailer is already a huge success. Even though it omits much of your novel and film, it will get producers and directors to read your screenplay and audiences to watch the film. And that is what matters.