My husband asked me why Caius isn't on the original trailer, and the honest answer is that I just don't like the character art I did for Caius, but he persuaded me to redo the trailer and I think it turned out well. I'm sharing the trailer, some still shots because I am proud of it and want to show off, and some information about the way I made it.
The Trailer
Assets, Storyboard & Stills
This is aimed at both readers and authors, it's pretty much my weird autistic outlook when doing these things, which I only have about 2 weeks experience with at this point.
Trailers like this are essentially fancy slideshows, and choosing the right assets so they don't just come across as being fancy slideshows is really important.
The trailer needs to give people a good idea of what the book will be like, and entice them to actually read it, so the simple way of thinking of that is using clips of a smoky forest is going to be out of place in a video for a rom-com in New York.
I was happy with the assets in my original trailer. I am using the character art I did for Nemesis, plus some backdrops I made because I used one from that collection on the book cover and it will help it tie in with that. I'm also using a white wolf I made (readers of my stuff: it's a wolf I made for Morrigan, because Saga and Morrigan look alike) because it needs to have a wolf on it somewhere and I like that one, and artwork of Nemesis and a large wolf that I added during the storyboarding process.
Here's the character line up:
L-R: Aurelia, Robin, Saga, Caius, Talia. I'll use their names in this rather than 'female 1' or something else stupid like that.
The original trailer was broken into 9 'scenes' 1. Book cover
2. Saga 'let them hate'
3. Saga as a wolf 'so long as they fear'
4. Talia 'what would you give'
5. Talia & Aurelia 'for loyalty'
6. Aurelia & Robin 'for love'
7. The Colosseum 'for Nemesis'
8. Book cover
9. 'Coming to Resurgence Novels January 2023' It has the tagline (let them hate so long as they fear) and some hints as to what might be in the book, but as my husband said it was missing a major character I sat down and came up with a proper storyboard before I remade the longer version.
It's difficult to explain this without being convoluted and boring, but a couple of things that I focused on for the trailer: Talia is a 2000 year old werewolf. At the end of the original book in this series / start of Nemesis, she is asked 'what would you give to bring him back?' in reference to her former lover.
The question has pretty huge consequences - Nemesis is about the fact a former Roman Emperor is reincarnated in the modern day.
I did also want to include the tagline, but I decided to expand on the idea I had in the original and move the tagline to the end. I also took 'coming January 2023' out because then I can share this after this month.
My next storyboard was like this:
Resurgence Presents
Talia 'what would you give'
Talia & Aurelia 'for loyalty'
Aurelia & Robin 'for love'
The Colosseum 'for Nemesis'
Talia & Caius 'to bring him back?'
Saga 'let them hate'
Saga as a wolf 'so long as they fear'
Book cover
I was happy with that - it's asking "what would you give...to bring him back?' - a question with some other previews showing the themes of the book arising from that.
It actually presents the reader with several questions, and hints to people familiar with my work who are familiar with the characters.
What would you give for loyalty? With a picture of a mother and daughter. What would you give for Nemesis? For people who read the first book it's a throw back, and for people who haven't it's a question that shows them what kind of world the book is in.
Adding that final part asked something else - what would you give to bring him back? What would you give for Nemesis to bring him back? A pretty clear indication of what the book is going to be about and, I hope, something that will entice people to give the book a chance.
But there was something missing, and I realized that having Saga at the end was just weird and didn't really show where she fits in the story. Every other character now has a question that reveals something about what their place is in the narrative, but she's there on her own with no real purpose. She's just sort of an afterthought - 'oh, OK, it's a werewolf book I guess'.
So, my final storyboard is different. I thought carefully, and asked a question about her that doesn't give away the plot, but makes it clear what her personal struggles and motivations are. Everything ended up fitting in perfectly in a way that I am super proud of.
Final storyboard:
Resurgence Presents (they know who it's with)
Book cover (and what to look for on the app)
Talia 'what would you give' (asking the viewer a question)
Talia & Aurelia 'for loyalty' (alright, betrayal or testing loyalty is going to be a theme)
Aurelia & Robin 'for love' (there is at least one romantic subplot, with one of the characters whose loyalty is going to be put to the test)
Saga 'for control' (because she is power hungry, or because she has no control and needs to gain it to grow as a person? Kind of intriguing, I think)
The Colosseum 'for Nemesis' (it's supernatural, it's got Roman gods, it's got a goddess of vengeance in a book where loyalty is a theme)
Talia & Caius 'to bring him back?' (it's about Talia and Caius if you know them, or an open question if you don't)
White wolf & tagline in Latin (there are wolves, more evidence of it having a link to Rome)
Entire cast picture 'let them hate' (who? the characters, or the people they will be facing?)
Nemesis and a large wolf 'so long as they fear' (what did they give up? What are the consequences? This character doesn't look modern, and she has a huge wolf with her. Is it Nemesis? Or someone/something else?)
Book cover (cool, I know which book to look for, thanks for the reminder)
Entire cast picture with Nemesis and large wolf behind them (just kind of looked cool, I guess)
Artwork (I'm vain and like my own work)
Artwork ( ^^^^ )
Resurgence Novels logo (this is where you find it)
This version makes more sense, it gives some clues about the plot without spoiling anything, and I think it is more dramatic as well.
People can hopefully tell it's in the modern day, that there are elements relating to Ancient Rome, and that there are wolves in it. I don't think it needs anything else to make it clear there will be mature content, and 'for a blow job' wouldn't exactly have been in line with the rest of the trailer.
These are screengrabs so the text is blurry/obscured in a couple of them but it gives an overview of the storyboard:
How long did it take?
I'm not including the time it took to make the cover art.
The character art I used took roughly 20 hours with all the edits I made to it, the backdrops are from a collection I did taking approximately 10 hours, and the storyboard/making the actual video on Premiere Pro took me around 8 hours in total for the original and then this version, plus the time to render them (11 hours for the high res versions). Some of these things take less time, others take more. I ended up spending an extra couple of hours on it because I needed to make art for the character implied to be Nemesis.
Finding the right music and adding that so the right parts happen at the right time took about 2 hours and I actually have 4 different versions which I ended up asking for help with (the result was sticking with the longer version of the track I used in the original one, go figure...)
At one point I was in tears over this, which is ridiculous, but I really needed to know it was working as well as I thought and not just incredibly lame, and I felt stupid asking for feedback.
I'm glad I did, because that was what took it from 'cool slideshow' to 'epic trailer', and being able to find the perfect music and have it all timed perfectly really brought it to life.
So including the rendering it took about 51 hours, give or take, for: *Custom art of 5 main characters, one side character, and 2 wolves
*Basic edits to assets for use in trailer (e.g removing backdrop of Colosseum picture)
*Custom collection of backdrops for use in book cover and marketing materials
*One 30 second trailer with music
*One 60 second trailer with music
Was it worth it?
For my own self-confidence? Absolutely.
Would anybody else pay me the £400 it would be at minimum wage (yeah, it would be £290 or so without rendering, but I can't do anything else on the computer while it's doing that for high res files, so realistically I have to count it) for this particular trailer? Probably not - maybe if the customer got all the transparent backdrop files with the custom character art and the backdrops so they could make things in the future. It doesn't always take that long, and the more elaborate trailers I have done WITHOUT custom art would be about £70 to buy. An example of that is this one I did for Death Defiant by Charlotte Chaos (Facebook: Charlotte ChaosAuthor, Charlotte’s Chaos Corner Instagram: charlottechaoscorner Tiktok @charlottechaosauthor)
Looking on fiverr that's about the going rate for things of this nature, so I guess I am not doing too badly with it :)
Final image of the cast with the Nemesis/wolf art in the back: Is it tacky? Yes Is it well done? No
Did I have time to mask the hair properly for the sake of a silly picture for a blog less than 5 people regularly read? You tell me
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