The first one I chose was a natural because of my love of Montana, ranch living, and relationships-- both what we think they are like and their reality. Illusions are so much a part of human life. It is not as though it's new to our era.
Mythologies encouraged humans to build cities, temples, to dream of romantic love, and on the negative side to fear authorities and do what they were told.
From Here to There is about two great mythologies-- the perfect love and the Old West. Incidentally mythology doesn't mean false. It simply is a story that teaches a lesson. The mythology of the Old West was of the independent settler, the heroic gunman, noble or vicious (depending on where the mythology was from) Native Americans, brave soldiers (or land thieves again depending from where the myth came), mighty cattle herds, wars and bringing civilization to the country (again depending on from which angle you saw that one). That mythology inspires many people yet today-- some to want whatever they can find left of that life and others to read books or paint paintings.
Looking for photos to bring this mythology to life was both fun and challenging. I wanted my first trailer to be around one minute. I didn't want to spend any more money than needful in creating it.
I interspersed searching through photos of people on reasonably priced stock sites with looking through my own photos of Montana. I have way too many great photos of the West to make that easy. People were the only ones I had to buy.
One thing I decided was to go for the painterly look even on the photos I purchased to give this trailer a more mythic feel. I did that both through my own digital work and something new I recently learned to use called Oilify (on GIMP 2 and on the newest version of Picasa--both free). With it you can turn a photo into a total abstract or just tease a bit.
For those where it didn't work at all, I used Corel Photo-Paint7 which has been my favorite tool for digital painting. (For someone who has never tried painting with light, which is what I consider digital painting, I did this awhile back to describe my own process-- Creating a digital painting. There are many others with using collages or painting over the image changing the colors to look like a painting and eliminating whatever doesn't fit.)
While I was searching through my own photos as well as looking at stock sites, I began to think about words which in a trailer do matter but should never overshadow the images.
When I had the words and pictures, as I wanted them, I knew I already had the music which I had bought from Jewelbeat. For several days I fooled with how many images I could use to make the music work and still let a reader read the words. It ended up 16 and 4 signs. Cutting down to the minimum is not easy as I love all the photos, love words, and yet knew a person looking through trailers would never stick with it if I made it too long. I've seen some trailers which bored me before I got to the three minutes which is about the longest trailers usually are.
So, if you are interested in trailers for your own future books or just curious how I ended up doing this one, check out-- Trailer for From Here to There and on YouTube at From Here to There -- book trailer
For me, this book and trailer are love stories not just to the couple falling in love but also to a land and way of life. If the book looks interesting to you, it's at Amazon-- From Here to There for $2.99. It can be downloaded onto a computer as well as a Kindle device with a free app on their site.
At the top is one of the many photos which I loved but that didn't make the grade. Maybe some future book, it'll find itself in a trailer.
