Sometimes I wonder if I am totally crazy.
So make a trailer? Words spiral dizzingly in one’s head, words such as -what, how, why and so forth. I researched, I began, it takes time. Doesn’t everything? First of all what does one want to say? How best to say it? This is a visual, I write, I am not artistic. I searched for trailers on YouTube and watched dozens, some were amazing, some dire. Leaving me with the nervous sweats. I had first thought about making this trailer during 2011 and I had signed up for a workshop on savvy authors, this workshop used Microsoft’s own moviemaker software to show us how to make a book trailer.
Keep the writing sparse – minimal, do not write complete blurbs, we were advised. Find the relevant pictures for the style of your book, music to set mood and pace. I already knew where to find royalty free pictures from my blogging. We were given links for royalty free music and I listened to hours of clips. I began to learn another language but didn’t actually find any I was passionate about.
One of my fellow students left a link to Magix Music Maker, which I investigated immediately. A wonderful piece of software which delivers little loops of music in many various styles, and in a myriad of instrumental sounds from guitars to wind. The combinations that can be made are endless. So is the time spent listening to each little loop, testing it against /with another. With this process of testing & retesting you can invent a tune. Magic.
Another student put up a link for a piece of software called Pro Show, which I couldn’t afford at the time.
So I was assembling a collection of pictures that I could use to depict the end of the world as we know it. I had decided to do the first trailer about the background to the Sefuty Chronicles and then smaller trailers for each of the books in the series. So this first one was all about doom and gloom!
I built the music loop by loop while I simultaneously collected the photographs necessary. It took hours and months to put together as I struggled with transitions, timing, special effects and the storyboard. I am not known for my minimalistic tendencies, so cutting words to barest was the hardest.
This first trailer was finished by the end of 2011 but I didn’t load it up onto YouTube until 2012 ‘Jack’s Tale’, the third in the series, just managed to obtain the 2011 publication date by a whisker. So I began 2012 with the goal of creating another three trailers, and uploading them all! As well, of course, aswriting and publishing the fourth in the series.
Yeah, well, good intentions – road to hell - make the connections. Ellen’s Tale trailer wasn’t in fact too bad to put together. I had Pro Gold software by then the story was about sweet love and danger, much easier than the end of the world:) The Storyteller’s Tale now, that was a difficult one, how to portray mad and bad in just two minutes? That last one seemed to take over my lifefor a couple of months but I was more confident over the two previous trailers.I had learnt how to use effects to manipulate pictures, but each trailer was still learning work in progress and each one taught me more about the software I possessed.
All was going well; I would achieve my goals. Hur!.
It was then my 2012 disaster struck. Felled by heart failure, with a pulse dipping frequently to 40 and blood pressure following it down, fluids accumulating in tissues and lungs, energy crashed, within a couple of weeks, from full steam ahead to minimal. Now one discovers how much time and work being an Indie entails. All came to a shuddering halt.
No writing the fourth in the series, that one languished half written.
Jack’s Tale trailer not even started.
I could manage something in the weeks that followed – so where best to spend energy. I had four book published now, could I leave the writing of more?
I managed as best I could to keep up with the social networking friends and contacts I had made although the efforts were fairly pathetic and at times barely visible. However, the world moves too fast in cyberspace to be missing for long and I had spent too long building this author platform to let it go downhill. I abandoned the new book, I abandoned the new trailer. What little energy I could muster during all the tests and scans, during all the weeks when they gradually increased the dosage of drugs that were going to put me back on my feet, I put whatever energy I had into the blogs and the social networking. I also got the trailers already made up onto YouTube and Goodreads, I wasn’t about to waste all that energy.
There were times when I wondered whether it would be easier if I just accepted my body was just getting too old for this. But hey I’m an Indie author and we don’t give up that easily. I managed during the latter part of my treatment to bring together a collection of reworked fairy stories that I had managed to write before I collapsed and, so that the year of 2012 was not a complete write off, I spent some time getting them published and making a quick lively trailer, no doom, no gloom, right at the end of the year in December.
There was no physical energy for a book tour and so I sent out a little plea to my friends for book spot places which I would send out excerpts and links. It worked although that little effort left me feeling washed out. The Fiddling Felines, the Flea and the Frog at al was welcomed into the world at the end of the year.
My goals for 2012 smashed into smithereens back in May had to be carried forward, as all good accountancy practices dictate, to 2013. You can’t keep an Indie down at even if she is an old one, not when she’s enjoying it all so much.
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My book trailer was a simple design. I had never made one before and worried about where to find pictures and music, so I put a shoutout on facebook looking for someone to pose for Dr. Grant (Because I couldn't find a picture on morgue files or dreamscape that I wanted) And another author agreed to send me pictures of himself and then I asked a friend who is an independent musician if he would write the music for me and here is the result http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9b2TeEIYyY&fe…
I have to admit, I had a blast making it! :-)