EXCLUSIVE interview with CLOCKWORK PRINCESS trailer director Charles Haine
Who decided to work with the actress/model from the Clockwork Princess cover?
It was a decision made between us and the marketing department at the publisher, specifically the wonderful Chrissy Noh who is amazing and we’ve been working with for awhile now.We frequently try and work with the cover model but they aren’t always available, and with this book especially we really wanted to use the book cover as a visual reference guide to creating our look, so getting to work with the cover model was totally fantastic.
Can you tell the fans a bit more about the casting progress of ‘Will’ and ‘Jem’ and your decision in choosing those actors? And perhaps reveal the actors’s first names?
While I can’t reveal their names at the moment, it was a long involved process for casting both of those roles involving a lot of back and forth with both Chrissy and Cassandra herself. Jem especially was a real challenge and we moved on from actors to specifically looking for models with the exact look who also had acting experience and we felt very lucky when we came across the right fit.
Did the actors read Clockwork Princess? How much did they know about the series and their characters?
None of the actors had previously read the books, and they were cast so close to the shoot that we didn’t end up having time for them to read the full books but we went into detail with each one on their characters and personality in the hope of crafting moments that really revealed the essence of the character.
If you know the ending of Clockwork Princess do you think that the fans will like it, why or why not? How do you think the fans will react and how much do you know about Cassandra Clare’s fanbase?
I have received and read a copy of Princess, but that’s all I can say. I do know how passionate the fanbase for these books is, and I was excited to make something for them. From the response so far (and it’s only the first day) it seems like our trailer, and the hints it includes about the book, are going over well!
The trailer is very different to the Clockwork Prince trailer because this one showed a lot of scenes from the book, what were the challenges to shoot this one without giving anything away, but still peak interest?
We deliberately set out to make a trailer this time more insync with the other graphic elements (the book cover and marketing materials) and it was a tremendous challenge. Making the book cover move and come to life is a tremendous amount of work, especially since the book cover is printed with reflective inks that we aren’t always going to be able to match with video. Luckily Andrew Schwartz our VFX guru was able to craft a look inspired by the cover and the world of the books that we feel is tremendously immersive for the audience.Hopefully we still give enough hints to the coming story that the fans will enjoy rewatching the trailer after reading the book.
What made you decide not to lighten Jem’s hair? Was it just a preference or does it perhaps refer to Clockwork Princess?
Our goal with this trailer was more of a “grey” hair than shock white for Jem.
Who came up with the dreamlike quality of the book trailer? How closely did you work together with Cassandra Clare and Simon and Schuster?
The original concept came from our creative director Martin Roe, who also directed City of Lost Souls, coming from conversations we had had about integrating more closely with the other marketing materials on the books we did trailers for. We together are just excited about making sure our work fits in the overall world that Cassandra creates.
The music in the trailer is very modern, why did you decide on such a stark contrast between Victorian times and the 21st century?
The music took more work than it normally does for us on this trailer; we did the rough cut of the trailer to a very very wide variety of temp scores before we even started working with our composer, Hitoshi Yoshihara who ended up doing an amazing job. What we discovered with the temp was that the dream imagery started to feel too distant and cold against more victorian music, but the immediacy of modern music fused against the imagery really packed a punch. From there we worked with Toshi to compose the really stunning score we ended up with.
The Clockwork Prince trailer was narrated by Ed Westwick and his lines were written by Cassandra Clare. Who wrote Tessa Gray’s lines for this trailer?
The copy is, as always, Cassandra’s; there’s nothing you can do to get better works than that!
Have you seen some of the fan made gifs/graphics? How does it make you feel when fans make graphics or gif sets from your trailers, is there perhaps a tiny sense of pride?
There’s a tremendous sense of pride! We love all the gifs from COLS and we’re really hopeful that we’ve created imagery with Clockwork Princess that will inspire that kind of devotion.
Thank you again for the interview, Mr Haine!
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You can also check out TMI Examiner’s interview.
CLOCKWORK PRINCESS will be released in 25 days!
TMI Source 
Oh lord, when I saw the trailer, I TOTALLY had a fangirl moment! I can’t believe that CP2 comes out in less than a month! 😀