The Making of a Book Trailer Video

I got so wrapped up in ideas of what I wanted to do to bring "Destined Love Immortal" to life as a book video trailer yesterday that I completely forgot to blog.  Yes, I get tunnel vision.

For months now I've been trying to figure out what I can do with a whopping budget of $0 while living in Missouri which doesn't exactly resemble Belgium.  I got lucky.  Someone who read my book generously took a photo of a castle in Europe for me, so I have that to add to my musical photo montage.  Other than that though, I was still stuck.  Then, thanks to some questions asked by another author (thanks Dragon) the light in my brain came back on.  I think I just needed a little nudge.

Yesterday I was so busy out at the castle ruins here (yes, there are some in Missouri--I was surprised too) that I forgot about all else.  Do my models look like my book characters?  Not particularly, so it's a good thing I'm creative.  Are my swords all relevant to the geography and era of the book?  No, only one is.  The others just look cool, but it takes at least two swords to stage a fight, so I used what I have, and I'm pleased with the results.

I really believe that saying, "Necessity is the mother of invention."  At least for me, it holds true.  I am at my most creative when I need to get something accomplished and have no money to do it with. 

With some inventive staging and camera angles, I think I've captured some sword fight elements that are in my book quite well, and the pictures haven't even been through Photoshop yet.  In other words, they'll only get better.

I've also found that I have to look at my surroundings differently than I normally would. At least, in my mind, it's kind of like this home decorating episode that I saw a couple of years back where they decorated a dorm room with only items from a one-dollar store.  To do this, they had to look at small stuff and imagine a lot of the items put together and used in a manner for which they weren't intended to give a "decorative feel" to the room.  What I'm doing in my book video is essentially the reverse.  I can look at a whole building and recognize that in its entirety it looks nothing like what you'd see in Europe, but if I take a close-up of a small portion of the building, some detail may very much look like it's in another country.  I've found this technique to be extremely helpful.

I still have a lot of work to do before I release a book video trailer, but at this point, I'm clearly making progress, exciting progress.  I'll be sure to let the world know when it's released!