Crow's Rest Book Trailer, and the Making Of

Today's the day that I get to share my book trailer for Crow's Rest! Since I made this video myself, I wanted to give a little behind-the-scenes info on the images.

But first--the book trailer! And make sure you have the volume on; you won't want to miss the soundtrack.




Hope the trailer entertained and intrigued you! You can find pre-order and Goodreads info on Crow's Rest here.

These are all my images, by the way, which saved me a tremendous amount of licensing fees. I did end up buying a program to give the whistling of my original song a little reverb, and then bought some stock audio of the crows, so the entire trailer cost me $3.89!

First off, once I had the script finalized, I knew I wanted to set the mood and place the story into its setting. To open the trailer, I used a few photos set in the Sierra foothills town that inspired Crow's Rest--and its haunted Castle. Here's another look in case they went by too quickly:

This is taken from the town cemetery, looking towards the Castle

This is an interior shot of the haunted Castle--which was abandoned for years after it did its duty as a boys' reformatory--and the perfect shot to accompany "Rumors that strange happenings are on the rise"

The exterior of the Castle, with one of the turrets that helped earn it its nickname (it was more properly called the Preston School of Industry when it opened in the 19th century)

With the setting established, I moved on to the characters: Avery, Daniel, and the corbin. The shots with the (human) models were actually taken as test photos for a possible custom cover shoot, and I didn't want them to go to waste--and I think they work really well here.

Uncle Tam is the caretaker for an historic cemetery, so Avery and Daniel spend a lot of time hanging around tombstones

The corbin picture is actually of a rook in Ireland--we definitely don't get these birds around here! But the crows that flock around my garden won't hold still for pictures, and I loved this ones's soulful expression.

For the trailer, I added a little violet to his eye color and cropped in tight on his face

 For a photo to depict the passage to Faerie, it was no contest--this lovely view is of the Stourhead Estate gardens, taken from inside the grotto

And the next one is the ruins of Kilcatherine church, which date back to the 7th century

That cheeky raven pic is from a trip to Bryce Canyon, but this post is already rather long so I'll skip adding that one! I just wanted to give you all an idea of what you can do with images that might already be in your photo collections, and that you don't need to spend a lot. For the links on the Power Point tutorials that helped me create this book trailer, see my post from November 24 here on Operation Awesome.