How I Made My Book Trailer

It sure didn't feel like it at times while I was makng it, but it really wasn't that hard! The comments I have gotten on it seem to indicate that in spite of this, I pulled it off well. You can watch it here.

I started out by thinking about what would make people watch, watch again and send my trailer to their friends. My novel, An Involuntary King: A Tale of Anglo Saxon England, has appeal for different people, but what images and sounds would appeal to a large number of them. I can tell you now that the trailer I made first will not be the only one. But the first one is for those people who might find the action adventure side of my book interesting. I knew then that I would want to find video of battle, specifically of shield wall battle from the Dark Ages. This was the hardest part of this whole project. I finally located a group in France called La Compagnie du Frankland, which reenacts life in Charlemagne's Frankia. I negotiated a price for one minute of the video. I put together a licensing agreement and their representative agreed to the terms.

Next came sound. I was able to find sounds of a sword battle and a lovely clip of a sword being drawn from a scabbard on AudioSparx. The same site had some lovely Gregorian chant which, while not exactly correct for my period, evokes the feeling I wanted to impart. Then I needed a spoken teaser for the book. I discovered that poet and teacher Liam Guilar, though living in Australia, has one of those British voices that are hard not to swoon over. I asked him to record a couple sentences I wrote. He has gotten as many lovely compliments from the trailer as I have!

The next problem I ran into was that I could not figure out how to make a short video clip from the long one. I don't know if my software won't do that or whether I just couldn't figure it out. I suspect it is the former, since I think the software is for making videos out a home productions. I decided to save stills from the video, choosing ones without "civilians" in modern clothing or other less effective shots. I mixed in a couple of photos from iStockPhotos.com.

Then it was time to throw all of this into a hopper, shake it up and see what hopped back out. I had never used Windows Movie maker(R)before, but it was fun to learn. I had quite a hard time at first making the audio and video stick together. Either I had the audio file or the video file, never the completed video. That is when I had a bright idea.. I had made a video of cat pictures just for fun. I used their "auto-movie" tool and that worked just fine. So I took the video items I wanted in the final trailer and the completed audio track with sword sound, Liam's narration, and the sword battle sounds and did an auto-movie. It turned out terrific! I was able then to add titles, rearrange the images, add some effects and transitions to the video that actually make the stills look like video if you don't look too hard.

I clipped and modified and adjusted and watche the video to my heart's content until I thought it was good. My husband advised, "Remeber that you don't have just one go-round. You can make as many of these as you want." That allowed me to hit "Publish Movie" and start uploading the final result to YouTube, Facebook, my own blog, and to tell everyone and her brother about it. I plan to turn the audio track into a promo on my radio station, Radio Dé Danaan.

This was so fun and satisfying that I fully intend to make more movies!

OK, I know.. you want to know how much I spent. I could give you an exact figure given some time, but let's guesstimate. I paid $100 for the licensing of the video, no more than $40 for the other photos and sounds. Liam made me a gift of his vocal honey. MovieMaker came with my new computer. So other than an incidental or two, which I can't even recall, I spent less that $150. I can foresee spending a lot less for future trailers. This means that there will be no barrier to my wonted dabbling.