The Author Video, Or Me Trying Not to Be Awkward For Almost a Minute

Hey, I made an author video! If you'd like to skip right to it, you can view the video here.

Or, read on if you want to find out more about how and why I made it.

You might know I've had a book trailer for a long time, but my editor for the Indian version of Chained wanted something in addition to that to show her co-workers--something that gave more of a hint about the adventure in the story. Making a new trailer in a short time wouldn't be feasible, but an author video can be pretty quickly, and at no cost. Plus, I'd just had a great suggestion from a school librarian about having a "book talk" on my website that teachers and librarians can use to introduce the novel to readers. (Those librarians, they always know what's up). As I was making the video I realized that what I was saying seemed book-blurbish, so I've added the video to my website as a video book talk.

I'd already had a writing retreat planned at The Writing Barn, so I decided to record the video while I was there because the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves offered an awesomer background than anything in my house. (One book you'll see in the background is the upcoming Grandfather Gandhi, a gorgeous picture book biography by friend and Writing Barn owner Bethany Hegedus).

Like with the book trailer, I put the video together using iMovie, which is similar to Windows MovieMaker. Nothing fancy, just the software that comes with the computer. (If you'd like to read more about how I made the trailer, I go into more depth here).

I started off (after hair, makeup, and putting on actual clothes) by recording myself on the webcam reading the script I'd come up with. And since it didn't want the whole thing to be just me on camera, I incorporated some images from the book trailer. During those parts of the video, I recorded a voice-over to continue the narration of the script. The most challenging part of the whole process was getting the audio to transition smoothly from one clip to another, like when it switches from me to a picture. I set the fade in/fade out to zero for each clip, but it's still doing a smidge of fading here and there. (If you know some trick to fix that, I'd love to hear about it!)

Here's the version I sent to my agent first:



Joanna had advised me to keep it at under a minute, but I couldn't think of anything to cut. As always, she had some great editing advice, and after some rearranging, cutting, and adding a bit at the end, here's the final product:



I'll probably do more author videos in the future, like some less formal ones about how I write or some fun behind-the scenes stuff about my books. Blog posts take me a long time to write, but I could do an author video or vlog pretty quickly (after hair, makeup, actual clothes, etc.). Most won't have the fabulous background though. I really should've taken pictures of those bookshelves to make into posters so I could pretend they're in my own house.

Have you made your own author videos, or do you know someone who does them well? Share 'em in the comments!

The Trailer-Makin' Post

Last week the nice people at Project Mayhem posted the CHAINED trailer release, and I wanted to write a longer post today about how I made the trailer, for those who are interested, and there's also a version of the trailer here that's a bit longer. Like a director's cut.
Here's the trailer on YouTube if you haven't seen it yet, or if you want to see those adorable frolicking elephants again:



I love book trailers and knew all along I'd want one for CHAINED, but since the book is about an elephant keeper in India, a live-action trailer wasn't really feasible. You can hire someone to do your trailer for you, but after finding out what that costs I slinked back to stock photo sites. (And I don't mean that the professionals are overcharging; it just was out of my price range).

So here's how I made my book trailer, and how you can make your own. It was a bit time-consuming but not as difficult as I thought it'd be, and certainly cost-effective.

Images and video gathering:
Even before I knew what I was doing or what the trailer would look like, I saved some photos and videos on sites like istockphoto, Bigstock, and Dreamstime. There are many stock photo sites, where you pay a small fee for the rights to use the image or video, so if you don't find what you want on one, search on another. A Google search for "stock photos" plus your topic will bring up a lot of options. If you're not ready to buy images yet but want to save them for later, you can save them into a personal "lightbox" on the site so they'll be there when you go back. Many sites allow you to download a comp so you can try it out before deciding you want to purchase the image for real. (Or just take a screenshot of the photo you want to use; it'll have the website's logo on it, but it's a good way to try it out to see if it works with your trailer). You'll notice different sizes of photos when you're ready to purchase; select 400x600 pixels or larger so it'll look clear on the screen.

You can also find photos on Flickr and Google Images, but to make sure they're okay to use, select "Advanced Search," then "Creative Commons" on Flickr, and "Free to use or share" on Google.

Video clips cost more than still photos, of course, but they add a nice touch to a trailer and make them more movie-ish, so it was worth it for me. The clips of the elephants playing and of the elephant trying to pull away from its chain seemed perfect for my trailer, so I bought those and used a few seconds of each one.

Photo editing
I left most of the photos as-is, but for the very first image, I needed the child to pass for a girl, and the clothes looked too boyish.

If you have Photoshop skills you can modify an image after buying it, but if you have no such skills, ask a smarter friend to help, or send out a plea on Twitter and hope someone answers. In my case it was Jeff Sampson to the rescue, strategically throwing a blanket over the boy clothes:

There, that's better

The music
Much like searching for images and video clips, you can browse through stock music sites and click on samples of royalty-free music. I found mine on Shockwave Sound, but there are many other similar sites, and it's worth the time to look around till you find the right song. Before purchasing, download a trial clip to make sure you the music is a good fit for your trailer.

The script
Here's the part I had the most trouble with. I could picture in my head how I wanted the trailer to look, but what in the world do I say? The elephants are so adorable, maybe I could get by with just stringing together some clips of baby elephants playing in the water, but I figured I should probably make it follow the book a little more and then add some text. To get some help, I signed up for this great online course about making book trailers. Working from our book blurbs, we came up with 20-25 phrases to use as a script.

In writing your own script, mention something about your book's setting, including the time period if it's historical fiction. Trailers are short, so make sure every phrase is strong enough to let viewers know who your characters are, what they want, and what's standing in their way. The last frame should have the information about your book and direct people to your website or blog.

Once I had the script written, I looked through the photos I'd saved and found a good image or video clip to go with each one. It helped to write down on paper a frame-by-frame plan for how the text and images would come together.

Putting it all together
After I had the music, the pictures and video clips, and wrote the script, I was ready to make the trailer. You'll need some kind of software for this part, but there are a few options that are free or inexpensive. I used iMovie, which comes on Mac computers and is similar to Windows MovieMaker. After opening the new project, I just dragged the saved photos and videos into the window, then added a text box to each frame to type in the text from the script. Lastly, I dragged the music file to the window. After previewing the trailer, I decided I wanted the music to start a few seconds into the song instead of at the beginning, so I used iMovie's Clip Trimmer to adjust.

Another option is to create your trailer as a PowerPoint presentation, then download Powerpoint to video conversion software to turn it into a trailer. An online user-friendly program for creating videos is One True Media; sign up for free to try it out, then upgrade to a premium membership for about $40 if you like it.

The final product, sort of
Since most of us have the attention span of a crackhouse gnat, it's best if book trailers are about one minute long or less. So the new challenge was making the trailer short enough while leaving the text up long enough to be read. After many tweaks and previews, getting some feedback and tweaking a little more, here's how the trailer looked:



The painful cutting and the final product for real
So I was pretty happy with how it turned out. Before releasing it, I wanted to show my agent and editor, so I sent it to them for feedback. Joanna and Kathleen from Nancy Coffey killed the crying elephant helped me find places to cut the video to get the length closer to a minute. Other than cutting out a couple of the pictures, there were a few frames where I could display two phrases on the screen at the same time, instead of delaying them by a couple of seconds, so it wasn't necessary to keep the pictures up as long. After making those edits, I ended up with the trailer you see at the top of the post.

Sharing with the world
When the trailer was ready to share, I uploaded the saved file from my computer onto YouTube, then passed along the link to the trailer release on Twitter, Facebook, listservs, and wherever else I'm running around the Internet so the friends who live in my computer could share the trailer with others. I've also uploaded it to TeacherTube, since YouTube is blocked in many schools.

Another resource I found to be super-helpful is Darcy Pattison's The Book Trailer Manual, which goes much more into depth than is feasible to go into in a blog post.

Have you made your own book trailer, or is it something you'd like to do? Share your helpful hints or questions in the comments!

I Have a Book Trailer!

...and here it is:



Hop on over to Project Mayhem today to read more!

And check back here on Tuesday if you're interested in seeing a longer version and reading about how I made the trailer.

Thanks for watching!

That's What (S)he said: Weekly Round-Up

Hi everyone! Here are a few sharable things I found around the interwebs this week:

This looks like something fun for writers on an agent search: Deana Barnhart is hosting a month-long Get An Agent Blogfest. See the weekly plan and more details here.

I love book trailers, and I'm sure I'll want to make my own when my publication date gets closer. Author Lena Coakely did a helpful two-part post about making a trailer for her novel, WITCHLANDERS. Here's part 1 and part 2.

Speaking of book trailers, author A.C. Gaughen launched her new website this week when she released the trailer for her debut novel SCARLET. It's gorgeous!

Another of my Apocalypsie-sisters, Lenore Appelhans, has donated a 10,000-word critique for a young adult novel to TLC auctions. There's still time to bid till tomorrow evening!

I'm not sure why I've just recently discovered Blake Snyder's Save the Cat!. It's not a new book, but for some reason I keep hearing about it lately. I think it was Nikki Loftin who told me that it's one of those books that makes you say, "Damn, I wish I had this three books ago." It offers do-able plotting for those of us who don't like to plot. I plan to use it to back up and plot out the YA novel I'm revising now, and will use it to plot the next book before I start writing it. I was going to fill in the "Beat Sheet" from the book (showing the different turns in a story) while watching E.T. to help me become more familiar with it, and I thought, "This is hard. I wonder if someone else has done it." Yes, someone has. I was thrilled to find these videos on the Mediajuice Saves the Cat! Blog. They put together video clips from several popular movies, indicating each beat along the way. Here's a post from another fan who doesn't like to plot--Charissa Weaks' Favorite Post Friday about Save the Cat!.

I just got onto Google+, but like most people on it, I'm still kind of flailing around not knowing what to do with it yet. Here's a post with some great tips by Debbie Ridpath Ohi (who somehow has it figured out already) about why she's loving Google+.

This week's book recommendation: THE REVENANT by Sonia Gensler, a young adult historical fiction with a ghost story that will keep you turning the pages.

And these friends are adorable, but I can't decide whether this bird is really brave or really dumb.



Have a great week!