~Making the Under the Skin Book Trailer ~

I am excited to announce that the  Under the Skin Book Trailer is now viewable here on my website and on YouTube.  I hope that you enjoy watching it.

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How I made the Under the Skin Book Trailer

Using a New Video Editor – CyberLink Power Director

This now my fourth book trailer, and I have learned a lot since making my first one for Beneath the Skin. For one thing, I have had to find a new video editor, since my old computer died, and Microsoft no longer provides Live Movie Maker in its bundle. After trying out several video editors, I settled on Cyberlink PowerDirector 16. This one was the closest to Live Movie Maker in feel. The only thing I really disliked about Power Director is that you have to constantly switch back and forth between two different views during the editing process. In Live Movie Maker everything was on one screen.

Nevertheless, there are some features that I did appreciate. For example, you have complete freedom in designing the captions and titles and placing them with the images. Also you can paste photos on top of videos. I did that at the end of the trailer where you see the four books over my bridge video. It was also a breeze to convert the rough format to the finished video. It helped that my new computer has a ton of RAM and storage- essential when making videos.

Creating the Content

In many ways creating a book trailer script is much like writing a blub. You introduce the characters, state their problem, and end with a cliff hanger or hook. Since Under the Skin has a complex plot with several problems, I was forced to simplify it in order to fit it into a minute video. I chose to emphasize the romantic relationship over the thriller elements in the script, but chose thriller type visuals and a tense music line to give it that dark threatening feel.

Working with Media

Finding just the right videos and photos is always a challenge and is the most time consuming part of making a video. I was able to find some free images from Unsplash, Pixabay, and Pexels. Several I purchased from Deposit Photos and 123rf.  All the images came with commercial licenses which is important in a promo video.

I found the music for this video several months ago. I subscribe to the HungryJPEG, and every month they have freebies, as well as every Friday they have discounted media of all types. The minute I heard Epic by audiojungle, I knew that was just the right background for Under the Skin. The music builds in a way that matches my page-turning story. But it is not as scary as the music I used in the Close to the Skin trailer, which reflects the softer nature of my Under the Skin hero, Mic Vargas..

Tying It All Together

One thing I did to make the photographs fit together was I used Photoshop to add a blue-gray tint to many of them. This unifies them in a subtle way, even though they come from different sources and lighting situations. PowerDirector also has ways to do this too, but I am more experienced with Photoshop. I also used Photoshop to make sure all the photos were in the 9 by 16 ratio, which I hadn’t done in my earlier videos. All in all I think this is the best of my trailers so far.  But there is still much I need to learn. Now I have to publish my next book, so I can make another trailer. (I have already started collecting the photos!)

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Have you watched all my Book Trailers?

I have a YouTube Channel, or you can visit each of the Book Pages here on my site.

Let me know which one is your favorite.