Creating a book trailer
Regardless of whether the trailer for Return of the Light garners any sales, I really enjoyed the process of creating it. When you live with a book and its characters for so long, it can sometimes be hard to let go once the book is finished. Even if the book is part of a series, where the characters will live on, that particular part of their life--which as a writer, you orchestrated--is over. Having the chance to bring a visual element to the story takes it one step closer to making your vision come to life.
Granted, like most indie writers, I don't have a big production or advertising budget. In fact, my budget hovers near zero. But I am the consummate DIYer and willing to learn new technologies when I can see a direct purpose for them in my life, so after viewing several (and I mean SEVERAL) book trailers on YouTube and writers' sites, I decided, hey, I can do that. And here's how I did it.
First, while I'm working on a book. I scour the internet for images that look similar to my characters and the locale of the book. Not being an actual artist, I sometimes have to combine images to get the right look for my characters (a face here, a body there). As a graphic and web designer, I know my way around Photoshop, so I can 'shop the crap out of existing images. I just can't draw them.
Anyway, I took several of the ones I had collected for ROTL and created several widescreen backdrops. I then started looking around the internet for video and audio clips. That's how I stumbled upon videoblocks. They have thousands of stock video and audio clips for general use. You have to sign up for a membership (and provide a credit card number) but the first week is free and you can cancel before you have to start paying. The website says after that it's $79.00 a month, but as soon as you cancel, they send you a message offering a one-year membership for $89.00. I got everything I needed in the week, so I just cancelled. You can download up to 20 files a day, and after the first 20, they give you a release form so you can legally use the clips.
So, figuring I might want to do trailers for all my books, I found as many audio and video clips that might apply and hit my download limit everyday for a week. Then I started arranging them and fitting music to the video. Even though I have Vegas Pro by Sony, it was just more complicated than I wanted to get, so I used Windows Movie Maker to create the video. You can use whatever program you have, but Movie Maker is easy, free, and offers most of the options you'll need for a simple trailer. If you want to layer images over video, edit the actual video clips, or combine audio tracks, you might need a more robust application, like say Vegas Pro or Adobe AfterEffects.
For my trailer, I combined both video and still shots, using Movie Maker's pan and zoom features to give a video effect to the stills. Once I had all the video footage arranged in the order I wanted, I had to play with the transitions to get it to sync with the music. This is a time-consuming process ( I spent a whole weekend on it), but it's well worth it for the final effect. I then wrote a script and dropped in the captions, playing with the transitions and fades until I got the final effect I was looking for.
Take your time with this, and if possible, work with another person. Four eyes are better than two. My son Anthony helped me on the final syncing of the captions. We played with different fonts, text colors, caption placement, transitions, etc. for hours until we go it just where we wanted it. Then we walked away for about an hour, had some lunch, and came back for the final editing. Like me, Anthony is a bit anal on details and he brings a different perspective to the process, so all these minor little tweaks of moving a caption a quarter inch or fading a split second sooner created a final product that I think captured the atmosphere of the book.
Now, I wasn't trying to give away the plot with this trailer, but rather offer a teaser about the series itself. I purposely selected music that added tension and drama to the visual effects. I collected a lot of music for this and while listening to it, I could see actual scenes unfolding in my mind. There's an epic battle at the end of the book, and while I don't have the budget to reproduce that on film, I tried to portray that with composite images and music.
A word of advice if you're going to attempt a trailer--do it in HD (1080p). The images and video won't look very good while you're working on it in Movie Maker. but once you render it in HD, they'll be clear enough to view on a big screen. Naturally, YouTube will optimize it for viewing, which will degrade the quality a little, but you'll still have a better quality video than something someone shot with a cell phone.
You took a long time to write your book, so don't rush through making a trailer for it. Remember, once you put it out there, it's there for everyone to see. Make it something you'll be proud of because people could very well judge your book by its quality.
Granted, like most indie writers, I don't have a big production or advertising budget. In fact, my budget hovers near zero. But I am the consummate DIYer and willing to learn new technologies when I can see a direct purpose for them in my life, so after viewing several (and I mean SEVERAL) book trailers on YouTube and writers' sites, I decided, hey, I can do that. And here's how I did it.
First, while I'm working on a book. I scour the internet for images that look similar to my characters and the locale of the book. Not being an actual artist, I sometimes have to combine images to get the right look for my characters (a face here, a body there). As a graphic and web designer, I know my way around Photoshop, so I can 'shop the crap out of existing images. I just can't draw them.
Anyway, I took several of the ones I had collected for ROTL and created several widescreen backdrops. I then started looking around the internet for video and audio clips. That's how I stumbled upon videoblocks. They have thousands of stock video and audio clips for general use. You have to sign up for a membership (and provide a credit card number) but the first week is free and you can cancel before you have to start paying. The website says after that it's $79.00 a month, but as soon as you cancel, they send you a message offering a one-year membership for $89.00. I got everything I needed in the week, so I just cancelled. You can download up to 20 files a day, and after the first 20, they give you a release form so you can legally use the clips.
So, figuring I might want to do trailers for all my books, I found as many audio and video clips that might apply and hit my download limit everyday for a week. Then I started arranging them and fitting music to the video. Even though I have Vegas Pro by Sony, it was just more complicated than I wanted to get, so I used Windows Movie Maker to create the video. You can use whatever program you have, but Movie Maker is easy, free, and offers most of the options you'll need for a simple trailer. If you want to layer images over video, edit the actual video clips, or combine audio tracks, you might need a more robust application, like say Vegas Pro or Adobe AfterEffects.
For my trailer, I combined both video and still shots, using Movie Maker's pan and zoom features to give a video effect to the stills. Once I had all the video footage arranged in the order I wanted, I had to play with the transitions to get it to sync with the music. This is a time-consuming process ( I spent a whole weekend on it), but it's well worth it for the final effect. I then wrote a script and dropped in the captions, playing with the transitions and fades until I got the final effect I was looking for.
Take your time with this, and if possible, work with another person. Four eyes are better than two. My son Anthony helped me on the final syncing of the captions. We played with different fonts, text colors, caption placement, transitions, etc. for hours until we go it just where we wanted it. Then we walked away for about an hour, had some lunch, and came back for the final editing. Like me, Anthony is a bit anal on details and he brings a different perspective to the process, so all these minor little tweaks of moving a caption a quarter inch or fading a split second sooner created a final product that I think captured the atmosphere of the book.
Now, I wasn't trying to give away the plot with this trailer, but rather offer a teaser about the series itself. I purposely selected music that added tension and drama to the visual effects. I collected a lot of music for this and while listening to it, I could see actual scenes unfolding in my mind. There's an epic battle at the end of the book, and while I don't have the budget to reproduce that on film, I tried to portray that with composite images and music.
A word of advice if you're going to attempt a trailer--do it in HD (1080p). The images and video won't look very good while you're working on it in Movie Maker. but once you render it in HD, they'll be clear enough to view on a big screen. Naturally, YouTube will optimize it for viewing, which will degrade the quality a little, but you'll still have a better quality video than something someone shot with a cell phone.
You took a long time to write your book, so don't rush through making a trailer for it. Remember, once you put it out there, it's there for everyone to see. Make it something you'll be proud of because people could very well judge your book by its quality.
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