A Tale of Two Trailers

Last week I created two book trailers, and the response to them has been incredible, so I thought I'd share them here with you.

Winds of Change – published by CSFG Publishing

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Five Historical Feasts – published by Eneit Press on behalf of Conflux Inc

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I've been THRILLED by the response – folks actually taking their time to email me and tell me how much they're liking (particularly Winds of Change).

So how did it all come about?

Well, I've been sick for the better part of two weeks now. As I started to get better I started to get bored, although I wasn't well enough to concentrate on writing. So I came up with a brilliant idea – these two books are being launched at Conflux in a few weeks time. I'm involved with both and I enjoy making trailers for my own books – why not do trailers for them?

Both editors said "Go for it", so I did. I did the Winds of Change one first – it was the easiest because I had everything I needed for it (the cookbook required some folks to send me some stuff).

I thought long and hard – coming up with the narrative and writing the script is always the first thing I do in creating a trailer. In this case, the blurb on the back of the anthology made a perfect script. So I found some sound effects, made some others myself and then recorded the soundtrack with myself narrating. I had to do some editing to make the narrating work, but in the end I was really happy with it.

I had a vision of a camera panning across a desolate desert and so mocked up something to give that effect. I decided to make the images all the one colour and went with sepia because of connotations it has for me of age. I sent the first draft to the editor Elizabeth Fitzgerald and she wanted to make the images a little less gloomy so I cut some and put others in their place. The moment I stumbled on the first dandelion image, I realised it was the perfect metaphor and when I found the blown one, I had the beginning and end.

I'm so pleased with this – all my other trailers have just used music as the soundtrack so making my own was a challenge and it came off really well.

Then I turned my attention to the cookbook. I'd recieved the illustrations and some photography that was used in the cookbook. My initial thought was to start with it looking like a typical cooking show and then breaking into it with the truth of really authentic and unique party ideas. I liked the challenge of working with moving pictures – all my trailers have been stills thus far. But I decided that was too light a tone, so went for something a little more serious.

Finding the music was the hard part of this clip – the banquets cover a range of time periods, so I wanted something that felt a bit timeless. I was really pleased with what I eventually found.

The big thing about the trailers is once you have the narrative and the soundtrack, to marry the two using the pictures. I like to follow the rise and fall of the melody and sync developments in the narrative to changes in the score. It takes a bit of fiddling to make it all fit, but it's worth it.

So there you are – the two trailers. I had such a great time doing them and I look forward to doing more.