So in the process of publishing all the books in the cyberpunk grydscaen series I make sure to get a book trailer for each book. This gives grydscaen a presence in youtube. So I wanted to talk about the trailer for grydscaen: alliance which is the most recent trailer that has been released. To view the book trailer for grydscaen: alliance go to the videos page on this website and scroll down to the grydscaen: alliance section.
The way I do book trailers is to ensure the book is published and just newly released to get the trailer done.
Figure 1: The cyber terrorist Set who takes over the Packrat hacker fighting force in grydscaen: alliance trailer
The first process in working with a production company on a book trailer is to distill the plot of the entire novel down into three paragraphs. Since the book trailer is only 1 minute long, you can’t touch on every topic in the book. You have to focus on the main themes. In grydscaen: alliance I decided to focus on the war between the Atlantea Federation and the Pacific Territories. The Packrat hackers starting in grydscaen: war which is the book before alliance start helping the government run military Psi Faction to defend the Pacific Territories putting away the Packrat’s civil war with the government for a time. There is also another scene in the book where Faid, the leader of the Packrat hackers goes on patrol with Dark the head of the mobile command center for the Packrats and Faid is hurt. Once Faid is hurt he is not able to lead the Packrats based on the rules in the Packrat Code. Set who is the leader of the militant Wastes the fighting force for the Packrats takes over control of the Packrats when Faid is recovering. Set does not want to give up control when Faid is healed. This sets up a situation where Faid and Set need to battle for leadership of the Packrats.
This is the plot of the book trailer which is just a few scenes from the overall story of the book. Once the distilled plot is available it is time to describe the lead characters in the story. Set and Faid were prominent and are seen in the trailer and then there are Naito and Dark which are mentioned in the voice over but not seen. One of the scenes in the trailer is a robotic avatar which is a violent game that is played between Naito and Shine for leadership of the Wastes once Set is banished. A description of these 4 characters were provided to the production company. As you can see in the still above of Set, he looks like a punk with spiky black hair and is situated in the slum level Echelons where the Packrats reside and in the Zone. The graphitti in the image invokes the feel of the Echelons.
Once the character description and plot is done you need to choose who will voice over the trailer. I decide to get trailers with voice over so that you can focus on the images and don’t need to read text off the screen. I do have some trailers with no voice over but I have decided on seeing both with voice and without that I like voice over better.
Once these pieces are provided to the production company, they start assembling images based on the input provided and work on the storyline. Since the trailer has to portray the book in 1 minute you can only focus on the main themes. This trailer for grydscaen: alliance focused on the overall war wrapped into the Packrat culture which is the focus of the book. Alliance is one of the few grydscaen books where we get a better hint of how the Packrat culture functions and some of the cultural norms of that group.
The production company also creates a script based on the inputs I provide. This script I review and change based on what I want for the video. There was substantial changes made to the voice over script for the alliance video, I basically rewrote the entire script to focus on the war. Once the script is done there is another touchpoint with the production company and the voice over actor is hired to record the script. I usually pick a male voice actor based on the content of the series. I have not worked with a female voice actor to date.
The video is put together with special effects possibly using Adobe After Effects or some other video program which I am familiar with. I took a video production class in art school so am aware of compositing and adding effects. Once the stills and videos are composited, there is music selected for the video. This music must synch with the overall feel you are trying to convey. Once the music is selected and it can be rights free or from the production company’s own database then the voice over is added as well as the purchase detail.
Once the video is compiled I work again from the production company and we work together to get the draft video to final stage. After the compile I review the video for consistency, audio levels, voice over accuracy, image accuracy, compositing and music. Since this is a collaborative process this includes a back and forth between myself, the production company and my publisher. Once I am satisfied with the product it goes through the approval step. Once approved, the video gets a name and is uploaded to youtube on my publisher’s channel and also an instance is added to the grydscaen website on the videos page for the specific book. After upload to youtube it proliferates out to Vimeo and other video channels.
So far grydscaen has 9 book trailers for its 6 volumes, plus a short anime for “A Storm’s Coming” and another book trailer for grydscaen: insurrection due out soon. The process for getting a book trailer from start to finish takes about 3 months with a two week approval process and collaboration with my publisher and the production company. In the alliance trailer we had to do a change to the voice over because the name of Naito was pronounced as “Neigh-to” which is incorrect and needed to be changed to “Nigh-to.” This change was done in post production and took about 2 days. The other change that had to happen post production was to rename the video from “grydscaen by Natsuya Uesugi” to “grydscaen alliance by Natsuya Uesugi” in youtube. This was the final step after it was published to youtube and added to the grydscaen website.
I like that the alliance video focuses on Set since he was a new character that had not been in any of the previous videos. Set has been mentioned before alliance in grydscaen: beginnings and in grydscaen: tribute but he did not play a major part. He is also in the grydscaen web comic and graphic novel volume 1. But it gives me a way to showcase him as a character.
One of the things that book trailers have done for grydscaen is to provide another channel for readers to learn more about the grydscaen universe and has allowed me to get seen by production companies in Hollywood who have viewed some of the trailers, along with getting me for some of the videos more than 2K views.
I like working with the production company on the grydscaen videos as the process is smooth and the videos are high quality. I have seen some pretty crappy book trailers out there which look like they are very amateur. I am also getting to show the grydscaen mini movie in movie theatres so that is an opportunity that I have which would not have been possible without the ability to create book trailers for grydscaen. That along with the “A Storm’s Coming” anime which will proliferate more anime videos in future gives me a visual medium for the series and potentially more exposure. I know that I am just at the beginning stages of this with 7 books published and one more video to go for this year, and I look forward to working on more videos in the future.
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