Who's made a trailer for their book? How did you make it? Did you have any help? Why did you make it? Do you think a trailer has helped you promote your book?

I'm considering making a book trailer for my sci-fi novella prior to self-publishing, so I'm interested in all your ideas, tips, and thoughts. Post anything and everything about book trailers here! (And feel free to share the links to your trailers if you made one.)

Our family has made two book trailers:

(1) for Curse of the Spider King for Wayne Thomas Batson, and
(2) for To Darkness Fled by Jill Williamson

We are getting prepared to film the book trailer for From Darkness Won (Jill's third and final book in the Blood of Kings trilogy) this September.

We did the green-screen and special effects using Blender (free software, but hard to learn). We used a mix of live action with animations with custom composed background music.

They are a LOT of work, especially if you have anything fantastic to include. We filmed the #2 with a Sony Bloggie, so you don't need a high end camera.

-Robert

Wow! Sounds like a complex trailer. Thanks so much for sharing your experience, Robert!

They were pretty good trailers.

Do you have links to them, either of you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfMBqEkB ... re=related

I think that's the one. I haven't seen the one for CotSK yet.

I'm playing "Sir Gavin" in the "From Darkness Won" trailer. My daughter, Adele, is playing Vrell Sparrow. My younger daughter, Ness, (whom I'm encouraging to join this forum) plays a servant holding grapes. My son, Leighton, plays the dark guy in the cloak that you can't recognize.

Here's the link to the Curse Of The Spider King book trailer. None of us acted in it, but Leighton did the special effects and animations, including the huge warspider crawling over the garage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6h-RfnSRbE

Leighton and Ness are in the credits, but not under the pen name of Treskillard, but rather our family's hard to pronounce and spell Czech name. Adele uses Treskillard, like me, because she is writing a Christian fantasy novel ... in fact we started writing together back in 2006.

-Robert

Thank you so much for the links! (And for the background information, Robert.) The large warspider was amazing... in a creepy sort of way.

I put both trailers on a playlist so I can study them again later, compare with other examples, etc...

If you don't mind my asking, Robert, did you have a budget for either trailer, or did you primarily work with what resources you had?

Tell Ness we would love to have her here!

Are you finding the graphics one to be easier than one that involves filming? What kind of graphics are you using? Just layered images? Animation? Kinetic typography?

Be sure to share your trailers with us when you're done!

Well, since it's come up, the Ninja Crew will be releasing their top secret project soon. Lady E's trailer is a demo for it. *hopes that's sufficiently confusing*

Would that happen to be The Carseld Chronicles?

*rubs hands gleefully* I'm going to be in more suspense!

Good to know. I thought it was something like that, but I was being lazy, and well... *re-rails thread before peanut butter and electrical tape are brought out*

I've thought of making a book trailer, but I never have done it... It might help if I'm closer to finishing the book, for starters.

I've been wanting to make a book trailer for the series I'm working on now, but it's sort of hard figuring out how to film something with only one person. It would be really cool if I could make a graphic or animated one, but I'm kind of clueless when it comes to stuff like that.

Both trailers were done free for the authors.

The first was part of the "Curse of The Spider King" tribe contest, which our tribe won. The strange thing, though, is that because this book was about a "fantasy world" breaking into the modern world, we didn't have to film anything medieval looking, which helped keep costs down tremendously.

For the second, though, we had some real expenses because it was a true "fantasy" with complicated scenes and costumes. The author was going to pay us $300 to cover the costs, but someone who was part of the production didn't want her to pay that (authors don't make much money), and sacrificed by mowing lawns to raise it himself. Our budget went over that, however, and our family covered the difference. Our expenses were something like this:

Make-up = $76 (this helped us to not look so pasty)
Costumes = $150 (material only ... Adele did all the sewing)
Fake Snow = $18 (how to film a winter scene in September?)
Green Screen Paint = $55 (we made a green screen room)
Tiki Oil for torches = $6
Lights = $75 (we were filming a lot at night, so we needed lights)
Power Generator Rental = $41 (for the lights at our remote "castle")

Total Costs = $421

Thankfully some friends lent us the chainmail and swords or the above costs would have soared.

If you count in labor costs, who knows? We probably volunteered multiple hundreds of hours to put this together. (It's a great book series, btw!)

Note that many items (a) can be re-used, such as the lights, costumes, green screen room, or (b) didn't get used all the way up, such as the Tiki Oil and make-up.

We re-dubbed the entire book trailer. Thankfully we already have a semi-professional sound room, hardware, microphone, and software that we put together for recording our family band's first CD. That made that part easy-peasy.

We used a Sony Bloggie HD camera, which worked well, but blurred a bit during moving scenes. We have since purchased a better camera for our family and will use that for any future book trailers.

Right now we are planning on filming book 3 "From Darkness Won" this September just before the ACFW conference. The author herself will be flying out for the conference (here in St. Louis), and will play one of her own characters.

(I will be reprising my role as Sir Gavin Whitewolf, but I will only be in one scene.) Leighton, Ness, and Adele will also take parts.

-Robert

I think book trailers are a fascinating development of our culture. I'd love to make one for my book. (Of course, I have to write it, first.)

I've never actually seen a book trailer before.... guess I'll have to watch these! <smile>

I've always wondered if book trailers are effective marketing or if they're more of a fan thing? Anybody have any numbers on this, maybe?

Are the SFX blender work or AfterEffects or something else? And are you on www.christianfilmmakers.org? I remember some talk of book trailers a long time ago; can't remember whatever came of it.

Just being a nosy curious filmmaker. XD

We used Blender exclusively, but AfterEffects is awesome, and probably easier to learn. Mucho more $$$, though.

Ditto to Mel's first question. My understanding has always been that the purpose of book trailers is for marketing, but I've always seen them as more of a fan thing. (You know how you have two parts of understanding? Logical and intuitive?) It might be a bit of both.

Well, yes, book trailers are definitely a fan sort of thing ... however, a book's fans are the best people to help promote it, and giving them a book trailer to share with their friends could help it take off. My opinion.

*excited about all the new posts*

Robert, thank you so much for taking the time to break down your costs and detail your procedure. That was extremely helpful. It is because of the potential cost that I wonder if a live-action trailer might be too much of an expense, at least for me at this stage. However, it depends on what kind of book I'm doing (whether I need complicated fantasy settings or not), and who I'm working with. I have a group of filmmakers (the Clemons!) who were potentially interested in working with me. As they are established filmmakers and costume designers, they may already have a lot of the necessary materials on-hand, making the cost lower.

I don't know where I would find someone to do a full-on animated trailer, but there are other options. There is the "slideshow" approach with graphics, and kinetic typography is something I'm interested in.

Kinetic typography is a video where text displays across the screen in animated form. Sometimes the text is read with voice over, but not always. Done properly, it gives a lot of life to plain words. Here's a really epic one scored by a friend. Even if you don't want to read the words, the score is amazing! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orUyZaVWcP4

If I did kinetic typography without VO, I imagine the trailer would be very inexpensive to produce. VO would require voice actors, of course.

*knows about the Ninja crew and is excited for the reveal*

You might be able to get free voice actors by posting on CF or asking Shaunie if she's got any friends at college looking for a portfolio gig....

Just make sure your kinetic typography is awesome cool. Because either it's awesome cool or it's lame. (I saw a V alliteration one with a quote from the film I haven't seen and won't be seeing V for Vendetta.... it was quite awesome) (On the other hand, I've seen some random lame ones I've forgotten that just weren't suited well to the kinetic typography form.)

Good idea, Mel.

I'm talking to the group that made & scored the trailer I linked to above to see if they'd be interested, for future reference. I've also seen a few other lovely kinetics from other CFers.

Here's one of the best book trailers I have ever seen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFuS1DXF-is

It's for Ted Dekker's "Immanuel's Veins".

What is so interesting about it is that it is a mix of still pictures, kinetic text, animation, and live action ... but almost everything is silhouette, which made blending them all together easier, I think.

The "water-color" effects add a *lot*, and the focus / blurring helps, too.

Those trailers are pretty cool.

I'm playing with making a trailer for The Price of Freedom, but I need a train that can be shot up and crashed, a mini-gun, lots of weapons and equipment, and a way to get to Ireland. I suppose airsoft guns could be used for most of the guns, but I only have one XM8.

That is a very effective trailer. I love the unusual style and combination of image-types. One thing that's interesting about that trailer is that it says very little about the actual plot, but you get a very strong feel for the style/tone. Epic (though not necessarily something I'd want to read). Thanks for sharing, Robert!

Varon, do all of those elements need to be in the trailer? As a screenwriter, I'd suggest carefully writing your script to include elements that you can stage within your budget. For example, why do you need to shoot in Ireland? Do you need to have a specific landmark in the background? If so, you might consider just using a flat image of the landmark instead of counting on filmming there. If not, you can probably get away with filmming somewhere else. Filmmakers are excellent at staging reality, and with some creative writing you can get a good effect without a huge expense. With some creativity and a unique approach, you could write your script such that you could film in your backyard if you wanted. Just a thought.

It's true ... you can even take a film in one location and there is technology that will allow you to over lay the film with another image to make it look somewhere else

For instance, even in the old days, movies used this. Did you know that ALL of Mary Poppins was filmed in Los Angelos? Not even one shot was in London. Weird! And that was before computers!

The neat thing is that once you learn technologies like that, you can apply the skills to many many future projects.

Blender can do this for free (with a LOT of learning, but there are tutorials) ... but I really recommend After Effects ... with that you can easily take a film of a train and "shoot it up" digitally, etc., even make it crash.

For instance, in the "To Darkness Fled" book trailer we filmed, my son made the stained glass window of our church EXPLODE!! The pastor was quite surprised when he saw the video! (It represented God's coming)

He took a flat image of the window and from that made a 3D model. He laid the flat image on the 3D model as a texture, and then exploded the window with a light behind it.

We still tease that we're collecting band-aids and paperclips to put the window back together! ;-) Anyone have some extra scotch-tape?

-Robert

Well, I suppose I don't need Ireland exactly. I'll have to look those up.

I could also probably find a way to make it look like they were in Venice, which is where the book starts.

I'll have to work on it some more and think harder.

Sorry, I don't have any tape for you.

That trailer was really cool. Another thing I liked about it is that it didn't try to show what the characters look like, which is nice. I loved the silhouette.

I agree. That leaves the characters open to the reader's imagination.

For some of my books, however, I have character concept art in pencil. I'd like to find a way to incorporate that into my trailers, perhaps.

I found this thread and realized you had never updated it regarding your Red Rain trailer.

Goodness, old thread!

Well, the official Red Rain trailer ended up being narrated kinetic typography layered over the book cover. Which, since my book cover is celestial painting, looks very lovely. It was simple, relatively inexpensive, and easy to animate/cast. I had someone with Adobe Pro Effects or something like that do all the animation, someone else do the music, and someone narrate. Not too complicated and it didn't require any live-action filmming.

And now that my book's been around awhile, I have a fan doing an animated trailer. That one focuses on scenery, since people are hard to animate.

I didn't go anywhere with using the illustrations in the trailer...

I really liked your trailer, Aubrey. It was cool.

Thankee kindly.

It was neat how it all turned out.


That will be fun to see.

Oh yes, I loved Philie's trailer. I liked how it has words and voice over, because whenever I there are only words, I always feel like I have to read really fast or it's going to be gone. So then I can't enjoy it and end up reading fast.

Thanks! I am very glad I'm not the only one that loved it.