Prima Donna's Book Trailer

I don't think I've talked at all about Prima Donna's book trailer. And I'm not sure why because it is consuming huge amounts of my time this week!

So a couple of weeks ago Prima Donna took on an assignment with our Student Library Board to write a book trailer or a commercial, teaser, whatever, for one of the Top Ten Teen books for a national library program. It will play in libraries across the country! She chose the book Eleanor and Park although she had never read it. She liked the look of the girl on the cover and the author's name is "Rainbow" so that has to be good.

She immediately started dreaming up the perfect way to stage this trailer including herself as the main character. Then she met with the librarian. Her dreams were immediately dashed when she was told that usually somebody just puts in a few pics from Pinterest and they call it a day. She came home pretty devastated.

Of course I had to get involved (why do I put myself through these sorts of things?) and I emailed the librarian. She sent me the rules and Prima Donna's ideas fit well within the guidelines, they were just much harder. Well, you know I can't resist a challenge...

We first rounded up the actors and then found a film crew in an awesome guy named Shane, but I will let Prima Donna tell you the particulars when she does her final post on this one. He should get some credit somewhere, because he is not even charging us!

She found the perfect actor to play her love interest in Princess' friend, Jacob. The boy, Park, in the book is supposed to be half Korean and that is Jacob's ethnicity. He complements her perfectly and after convincing Princess she could play the evil bully, it was time to write the script.

The book takes place in 1981 and she had to have a Walkman and some vintage comic books. The Walkman was easy, Amazon for $17. We finally found the comic books after several phone calls at a local store. At $6 I thought they were pretty reasonable.

The last piece of the puzzle was finding a bus to film on. Yeah, a school bus.

I contacted transportation, but we were told that only someone working for the district can hire a bus. After several dead ends, Prima Donna's theater teacher finally agreed to help us. Our bus will be parked for 2 hours at the high school tomorrow where we will be directing and filming.

Princess Braids

Do I have to tell you that I am totally out of my comfort zone on this one? Remember when I told you Prima Donna dyed her hair red last weekend? That was for the trailer. We spent an hour braiding and rolling her hair tonight so that she would look like a natural frizzy redhead. Then I braided Princess' hair in small braids so she would have big hair like we did in the 80s.

Hopefully we have rounded up enough kids to fill our bus. Everything is in place. Here we go...

Lights, Camera, Action!!