After all, other authors have managed to make good trailers, and I'm not a complete moron--not quite. At least I didn't think I was, until I started on this project.
So what did I need? Some royalty-free photos, preferably free ones. I found them after a few hours' diligent searching, only to discover they needed a trip through Photoshop to get them to the correct sizes for the video. Add another hour or so...and some major cropping of a Jimmy Thomas (Romance Novels Covers) shot I bought to use on a self-pubbed short story a while back. You see, Jimmy has dark hair, his female model's a blonde...but Bye and Karen, my hero and heroine, have pretty much the opposite coloring.
Next, I played with putting photos into frames in the software. That went pretty easily until I got to one crucial photo which took up only a fraction of the center of a frame. Oh well. I could live with that. Too bad it had to go into two frames to make the text make sense.
The text was easy, thanks to my wonderful editor who pretty much wrote the blurb that I shamelessly copied onto the trailer. (It wouldn't have been half as easy if I'd had to create the text from scratch, because I suck at writing blurbs and anything else shorter than a scene in a novel, LOL.)
I took a deep breath and saved the trailer. Then I played it, only to discover it was way, way longer than a single-book trailer ought to be, so I went back to the drawing board and cut the length of each frame until the whole thing played in a little over a minute. That was better.
The silence was deafening, though, so I searched out some free music. The piece I found seemed to work with the pictures and the tone of the text, and it fortunately only required a credit for its use.
The trailer was done, ready to hawk LOVERS' FEUD on Facebook, YouTube and hopefully my website. Unfortunately my website requires a different format than the one Windows Live Movie Maker produces, so the trailer is still waiting for me to find a way to convert it to whatever format my Joomla website requires. That's a project for later, after I finish edits for MOUNTAIN HEAT and turn in the next book in the Caden Kink series, SHOTGUN RELATIONS.
What do you think? Should I keep on making trailers or bite the bullet and pay somebody else to do it? Best comment, whether it's a bashing or a compliment, gets a free copy of LOVERS' FEUD on its release date!
Ann Jacobs
http://annjacobs.net
https://www.facebook.com/AnnJacobsAuthor
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/authrannjacobs
LOVERS' FEUD, book 1, Caden Kink series, coming July 18 from Ellora's Cave
5 comments:
I think you did an amazing job, Ann - the pictures/music/copy - all of it worked beautifully.
Hard to believe this is your first try at this. No, I wouldn't hire anyone to do these for you. Girl, you have the talent to do as many as you want. :)
I think it's a balance only you can solve. Is it worth taking all that time away from your writing? Although the sense of achievement must be great, I'm too time stressed to try it. But good for you, girl.
I've always wondered how to make a trailer. Great info, Ann.
It looks great, Ann! It's a nice length too. Making trailers does take time, but personally I enjoy doing them. Looking for the perfect images and music is fun. If you like making them, I'd stay with it.
I do enjoy putting trailers together. Windows Live Movie Maker simplifies the job to the point that I think I'll make more of them. I used to pay anywhere from $50 to $200 to get them done for some of my series, so I don't consider it a poor use of time. I may even start doing trailers before I tackle blurbs, which I suck at. The process seems to lend itself to blurbing!
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