How do you make a Stephen King-worthy promo?  Drowning a little girl is a good way to start. "It's very challenging to put a seven-year-old girl underwater and capture the right behaviors on camera," says The Mill Director Rama Allen.  "The brief from [agency] BLT & Associates included making the town feel like it was underwater, so we had to make it look believable but also make it look like dry land post-composite."

Allen found the setting for Bag of Bones 'Hold Your Breath' while on a road trip to the Catskill Mountains.  "I pulled over to get gas and noticed this little abandoned town called Parksville. We took some test shots that night to make sure it had the right feel. It was then we knew we had found our world."

BLT wanted to create a spot that would tease the show but not use any of the actual footage, so all of the footage in the promo is unique. The Mill's production team built a tank to shoot leaves and other elements underwater.  Using a macro lens and flipping it around which gave a telescopic effect, Rama was able to get very close to the elements through the tank's glass: "It was experimental, and after about six hours of playing around we got what we needed," he explains. Through a bespoke combination of striking live-action production, nimble editing from The Mill's Ryan McKenna and seamless compositing by Flame Artist Danny Morris, the end result is literally breath taking.