Daughter of Liberty Video Trailer

At last! It's finished! Not that I really had time to play around, mind you, but all work and no play makes Joan a very dull girl. So I made time.

Unlike with the Wind of the Spirit trailer, this time I wasn't really happy with my attempts to create a script before constructing the video. So finally, in frustration, I tried adapting what I did have to the images I could find. That included the existing cover of DOL, which will be changed out as soon as we have the cover for the August release of the new edition.

Finding appropriate images for historical novels is a pain in the kiester, to say the least! But once I had the images, the script sorted itself out. The final result required a lot of tweaking, and I’m not completely satisfied with a couple of the images, but all in all I think it turned out not too badly. Here’s what I ended up with.

1. Eastertide 1775

2. British warships blockade Boston’s once-thriving port

3. while the Regulars occupy the city

4. As the conflict builds to a deadly confrontation

5. Elizabeth Howard plays a dangerous game

6. By day she flirts boldly with British officers

7. and by night, as the elusive courier Oriole

8. she smuggles intelligence and weapons to the patriots

9. Her most dangerous foe, British Major Jonathan Carleton

10. threatens to expose Oriole’s true identity

11. When the first blood is spilled at Lexington and Concord

12. and Elizabeth is drawn into the carnage of Bunker Hill

13. Carleton sacrifices his life to save hers

14. Can she rescue him from the hangman’s noose

15. and her heart from his keeping?

16. The nation’s epic war for independence begins . . .

17. Book cover

18. Credits

Finding the music was the real head-banging ordeal. I went back to my usual hangout for music, audiosparx, and filtered through beaucoup snippets of song without finding anything that really spoke to me. When I was just about ready to settle for one that I felt would really be better for Native Son, I decided to give it one more try.

This time I found a piece titled “Gathering Strength” that felt just right. And it lined up perfectly with the images with almost no tweaking. Wooo hoooo! Talk about serendipity. The only hang-up . . . $149. Yikes!!!!!! Even at the lowest level of rights it was the same, unlike the fabulous one I found for WOTS that started out at $172 and ended up something like $28. Oy veh!. Then I noticed that they allow you to bid on audio if you don’t want to pay the asking price. So I bid what I thought was reasonable for my use and the owner took it! I was in business. And here’s the result. Give me your feedback!

Creating a Video Trailer

Video book trailers have become so popular that it seems as if just about every recent release has come equipped with one. Authors and, in a few cases, publishers are racing to get one up on YouTube and other sites by the book’s pub date. There’s a lot of variation in quality, I’ve noticed, with some that look pretty amateurish and some that could qualify as professional movie trailer productions.

Even though I’ve been, as usual, so covered up it’s ridiculous, the temptation to get a trailer into the running finally ended up being too hard to resist. Admittedly I’m late jumping into the game since Wind of the Spirit released in March, but better late than never, right? And I’d done one for One Holy Night back in November, in the process learning a lot about using Windows Movie Maker, so I was up to the challenge. I don’t have PhotoShop, so I can’t create some of the nifty effects I’ve seen in other videos. But the OHN trailer got really good feedback, and I figured that, now that I had some experience under my belt, I could make this one even better. (To take a look at the result, click on the link at right, or scroll down to the bottom of the page where the video is posted.)

The most important thing I learned from my previous experience was that if you don’t start with a great script, you’re going to end up with a lackluster trailer. The script is a road map or bible for the production. It tells the story in as few words and images as possible (speed is of the essence in our attention-deficient culture) and also tells you what images you’re going to need. So I decided to resurrect some advertising copy I’d adapted from the book’s back cover copy and see what I could do. Here’s what I began with:

“Elizabeth Howard’s assignment to gain crucial intelligence for General Washington leads her into the very maw of war at the Battle of Brooklyn Heights, where disaster forebodes an end to the American rebellion. Yet all the while her heart is fixed on Jonathan Carleton, whose whereabouts remain unknown more than a year after he disappeared into the wilderness. Carleton, now the Shawnee war chief White Eagle, is caught in a bitter war of his own. As unseen forces gather to destroy him, he leads the fight against white settlers encroaching on Shawnee lands—while battling the longing for Elizabeth that will not give him peace. As the patriot cause falters, can her love bridge the miles that separate them—and the savage bonds that threaten to tear him forever from her arms?”

That was a promising start, but I knew a bit of tightening up was in order. Join me again tomorrow for a rundown on how I developed this into a focused, compelling script.