How To Film a Book Trailer & BEHIND THE SCENES VIDEOS!

Oh hello all you poor followers and writers and artists and readers who follow me! I'm sure you're wondering: where the hell have you been these last two months!?! 

That's an excellent question to which I respond with:

I've been busy single handedly organizing the filming of a very VERY epic book trailer for my book Brenna Morgan and the Iron Key!

Am I plugging my own book? Why yes, yes I am! Because it's my blog, and from time to time I'm allowed to do that! But really guys....this book trailer thing? It's mind blowing. Let me give you a transcript of how this all came about, word for word. Ready? Got your drinks? Good!

Me: *posting on FB* hahahah, wouldn't it be just great if I could make an epic book trailer that looks like a movie trailer for my book!?

FB Friends: We'll do it!

Me: ............What? *has forgotten that nearly all of her friends either work as artists, actors, costume designers for movies, or in general, do Hollywood like things*

FB Friends: We'll do it!

Me: But....I like.....but I have no monies to make this big movie-esque trailer.

FB Friends: No, see, we'll do it because we love you and we love art. Just give us food.

And so, after a few false starts, the loss of a few actors and the gaining of some and mad scrambling and not a little money spent: I have a book trailer! And I'm telling you guys, this shoot? This film? IT'S GOING TO BE LORD OF THE RINGS EPIC.

Was it stressful? It sure as hell was! Was it worth it? Absolutely! Will I do it again? In a flipping heart beat!

Now, I don't know how making a book trailer usually works but I'll let you know what created mine: It's friends and luck. That's the only way this got done. Luck, and talented friends willing to believe and die for my cause and my book. How I pulled this off on was only for the fact that I happen to have surrounded myself over the years with artsy, talented, creative people who not only create miracles, but support the making of miracles. I'm still in shock honestly.

 I was also lucky enough to have met a wonderful man named Philip Gadrow who's a brilliant director and who happened to love the script I wrote for the trailer (that's right, I even wrote the script! Not alone of course. I'm a novelist, not a screenplay writer. A wonderful screenplay writer friend named Andrew Gaughen fixed the format up for me. I'm so flipping lucky!) and offered to film it for me even though he's super super busy with other projects.

I've never written a screen play, and I've certainly never shot anything remotely resembling actual film (BookTube and Youtube vlogs do NOT count guys!), let alone organizing it. So I probably did things wrong. I probably did things backwards. I wouldn't know. But since I'm sure you're all just dying to know what it looked like, let me give you SUPER COOL BEHIND THE SCENES VIDEOS AND PICS!

If you follow my instagram account (katie_masters) you've seen one of my actresses had grabbed my phone and ran around taking pics and videos, but I didn't put ALL of them up there, so you'll only find some pics and videos HERE exclusively! ENJOY this journey!

DAY 1: 

The night before filming several of the actors came to my house since they were coming from Hollywood or San Diego and nothing is funner than having a giant sleep over right!? So we pampered ourselves--even the male actor John Hirsch got to be prettified! We even had time to drink fancy tea!

(Face masks for everyone! Gotta have that dewy skin for cameras right?!)

(John is EXTRA fancy!)

The next morning more actors showed up! Tea was consumed, costumes readied, and more than that, it was MAKEUP TIME! We had goblins to dress, hair to fix, and make up to don for the Irish Tuath De Dannan and for Brenna Morgan, our heroine whose life is turned upside when she has a run in the with them!

(The two most amazingly talented make up artists ever!)

(Why doesn't he trust hot roll curlers huh!?!)

 

(Right: Abby Crowell who plays our heroine, Brenna Morgan

  Left: Audrey Otis, playing Brenna's best friend Deirdre!)

After makeup it was time to go out into the woods and film! Let me tell you fellow writers, if you ever need a beautifully done book trailer made, genuinely hire Philip and David, because honest to god they worked SO hard and have such a beautiful eye. They climbed through bushes and branches, braved poison oak, and withstood hoards of mosquitoes just to 'get that shot'. They also made sure to include lil' ol' me to make sure I liked what they were filming and even asked for my input about shots despite the fact that I have no idea what I'm doing! I never not once felt left out or trampled on. In fact most of the time I was just trying to stay out of THEIR way--they were the professionals after all!

AND AS PROMISED HERE IS A VIDEO YOU CAN'T FIND ON MY INSTAGRAM OR TWITTER! ENJOY YOU LUCKY PEOPLE!

(I swear these woods have pixies in them if you look carefully enough! Or have a Hag Stone!)

After that dusk fell and we managed to wrap up the first day just as the night came and the bigger game like mountain lions awoke to hunt prey: Which thankfully wasn't us this time! After feeding the crew and watching hilarious cake challenges on TV we slept and awoke the next morning to prepare for:

DAY 2

Awoke early for MORE make up and costumes! I made the remaining cast and crew home made butter milk pancakes, bacon, and all the tea they could ask for! Then it was off to a 100+ year old historic cottage in my old neighborhood of Modjeska Canyon that was kindly donated by the owner and her lovely family! They let us set up lights and cameras and re-arrange her living room. She even donated the logs to use and burn. Did I mention that this is Southern California and it was like...98 degrees outside? No? Oh well it was. SO FUN.

I have to say my favorite part of this day (other than the fact that I was a. seeing my characters become real on the screen saying my words and b. I was with a bunch of freakishly talented people) was when we did one take that was so electrically charged with tension that when we called cut everyone just sat there not saying anything until the director rubbed his arm and said "That really gave me goosebumps. That was amazing work." And it turns out everyone had remained silent because we'd all gotten goosebumps too!

And then we were done! Now I'm getting the first cuts of the video and I'm super excited! So that's why I've been radio silent on the blog. Well, that and life. Because you know what? Two days before the week leading up to this I quit my job. And so on top of looking for a new job and the stress of this, I was just about the most stressed out person you could meet.

But things are better. THIS perfection got made. I was surrounded by loving friends, and I EVEN got a new job yesterday! So life is good! And I'll be updating more frequently! So lucky all of us huh!!?