For this project, I wanted to create a trailer/promo for my book of eight short Sci-Fi/Fantasy stories, Short Tales. Previously, I had done a few promos for my other book, Thor’s Travels: The Adventures of an American Jack Russell Terrier in Europe, but they were mainly slideshows of photos with a music background. For Short Tales I decided to incorporate some B-roll video, outlandish images, and some composite creations. A lot of time was spent choosing what I thought would work in respect to video and images–always fun doing though. Being as how this would be a short trailer/promo, without interviews or actors, I worked the project like a real-time story board as I progressed along. Putting it all together in Premiere Pro was a fun challenge, I had to remember a lot of what I had forgotten about the program, but once I got in a groove it all started to come back. Then there is always the music, for something like this it had to be motivating and upbeat. I spent hours listening to differing tracks, then trying them in the video until I felt I had found the right choice. Creating titles and adding a bit of animation to them took some time as well, but I enjoyed spending the time doing this aspect of the project

In the end, I feel the whole thing has come together pretty well, though I probably could have spent a lot more time on refinements. I am never totally satisfied with my creations, I feel there is always room to make them better, but one has to move on to the next thing at some point and let their baby go. The book itself is available on Amazon, in both paperback and Kindle form. Sometime in the future, I may also do an audible version as well. I also have another book in the works that I hope to have done in the next year, we’ll see, but in the meantime Denali online will be showcasing one of the stories from the work in progress, Welcome Home, Daniel, in December. I hope you’ll check it out.