The Making of a Book Trailer…Twice : “Dai’s Dark Valentine” Reloaded

My “Dai’s Dark Valentine” trailer was actually made twice, so there are two videos for you to view. Briefly, I entitled the second product “Dai’s Dark Valentine Reloaded” because the videos were an afterthought. Since the story is action-oriented, I thought the trailer needed a bit more action, too. Here’s the process…

1. Gather photos (and videos if you’re going that route). I like 123RF and Shutterstock, but there are lots of others. The videos are more expensive, so budget for them. I purchased a package of 10 clips from Shutterstock to be used throughout the year, and they were pretty reasonable. The subscription ends after one year, so be sure to download everything you want during that time.

2. Write what you’re going to say in the picture/video captions. I tried to do a very quick summary of my story, just enough to whet someone’s appetite. You don’t want to inundate viewers with too many words – kind of defeats the purpose of doing a video – so keep captions relatively short, and you don’t need one for every clip.

3. I used Windows Movie Maker, but there are lots of programs to use for this, too, including IMovie for Mac users, and even PowerPoint if you’re more comfortable with one of those. Movie Maker is very user-friendly, though, and allows you to choose from various fonts, add animation, effects, and music.

4. Speaking of music, I always compose my own, and that actually takes me as long as creating the trailer! I named the music clip for this one “Dai’s Theme” because the hero is so focused on her, it seemed fitting to name the song after her. Also, my friend and fellow author, Muffy Wilson has “Deborah’s Theme” on her blog and it is so beautiful, I’m tempted to just hang out and listen to it over and over.

For royalty-free music, I’d suggest doing a Google search. Some sites allow you to choose based on genre, and that’s pretty cool. In fact, that’s what I plan to do when I don’t have time to compose something.

5. Upload your video to You-Tube or another site, but for ease-of-search purposes, I recommend Google/You-Tube. From there you can also share the link, embed it on your site, add it to your email signature, etc. to help get the word out about it. Now, I think you’ll agree that was short and sweet. Actually, the most time-consuming tasks are finding the right pics, videos, and music, and as always, editing.

Enjoy! Here are my two trailers for “Dai’s Dark Valentine” – Original, and “Reloaded.”

 Original

“Reloaded”