The Backstory of The Golden Cord Cinematic Book Trailer (draft from 1/11/14) The film shoot for The Golden Cord cinematic book trailer was one of the most incredible experiences I’ve ever had. Watching the scenes come to life that I’d had in my head for fifteen years was mind-blowing. On the first day of shooting, I remember standing in a darkened forest with thick fog covering the ground and watching the goodbye scene between Jaena and Drake. During the first take, chills covered my entire body. The same thing happened again and again as I watched the brilliant actors perform. It was a surreal experience. Chantel Flanders as Jaena, and Shea Potter as Drake, completely nailed the scene. I picture them both now when I’m writing or thinking about the characters. They have become Drake and Jaena for me. The world and the characters I created were alive and standing in front of me. The biggest challenge was just getting it all done in two long days of shooting with two different units shooting simultaneously. This was a super ambitious project, and I learned firsthand that filmmaking is a huge collaborative challenge, especially without cell service up in the mountains. The first day of shooting was incredible, and second was truly epic. Lots of scenes were shot on the second day, including: The Meeting House (where many extras were used to fill the room—thank you all!), various scenes involving Drake and his dogs in the forest, and the finale scene, which was a night shoot in the rain. We used a rain and a fog machine in the darkness where Drake, Bellor (played powerfully by DL Walker), Thor (played expertly by Jakob Lau Tice) and the dogs are attacked by wingataur demons. It was so ambitious, and the final product is visually stunning. It was a tough scene to pull off, but it turned out to be great. The hoof-print appearing in the mud and the sound effects are so spooky. A lot of people have asked if it was difficult seeing someone interpret my work. It wasn’t at all. I was gratified, and felt it was such a great honor. It for sure helped that I was asked to be part of the process, which was extremely fun and rewarding. I never thought I’d see a live action film, or book trailer, about my Iron Dragon series. Many of my readers have said it would be a great movie, but I always responded that it would probably never happen. The book trailer will now be used as a pitch for a feature film. Who knows if it will ever happen, but I’ve learned anything is possible. I’m still kind of surprised at the way the whole project came about. I was approached at a writing convention where I was a guest, called LTUE in February 2013. I met the director, Brandon Wade Ho and the producer, Spencer Scanlon. They heard I was a fan of book trailers because I was writing an article about them for a science fiction magazine. I had also done panels on book trailers and book promotion in the past. Spencer and Brandon found me in the hallway where they showed me the unofficial book trailer they had made for the bestselling novel, The Mazerunner by James Dashner. This was long before the excellent Mazerunner movie. They showed me their video on an iPad and I was blown away. The trailer, which is full of special effects and excellent performances, looks extremely similar to the actual Hollywood movie. It’s been viewed nearly 180,000 times on YouTube at this time, and they proved great book trailers can be made. Brandon and Spencer had done all of this to showcase their company, Cinema Book Trailers, and were in the process of building up their film reel. Their belief was that book trailers should be more than a slideshow of still images and blocks of text. Brandon wrote: “Books today compete with movies, video games, and a thousand other diversions for the audience’s time and money. If publishers and authors want to reach out beyond their core audience, they need to accept this and rise to the competition’s level.” I couldn’t agree more. Months later they asked for a meeting and we got together. They offered to make a book trailer for The Golden Cord at no cost to me. I was honored and shocked. Such great opportunities don’t come along very often. We met several times and I helped during the process as they lined up all the things they needed to make it happen. Spencer was going to be the producer, Bandon would direct, and Corey Roberson would do a lot of production design and effects work. Pre-production was key, and post-production was critical. These guys were the real deal. Brandon had won the college Emmy award for a film he made and working with him and his partners had already been great. This would help them and me. It had been so fun already and I wanted to see where it would all lead. This was when I decided I would contribute some funding and become a producer. It made perfect sense to help out and eventually I made a small contribution to help with the costumes and the CGI dragon, which we got at a discounted rate from an excellent local effects company, BluFire Studios. I want to give credit to the team who made the costumes, led by the amazing Nancy Cannon. Her costumes are the foundation of the production, and made it look so good. I am forever grateful to Nancy, her team, and their wonderful costumes. Brandon and I worked together and wrote a shooting script. The storyboards were created and then in late May 2014, we shot the trailer. A dozen scenes were filmed over two days. Special effects and CGI were added in post-production. Two more scenes were created, the dragon scene, and the scene with something flying over the Void toward the plateau world. I’m very pleased with the final product. It captures the flavor and the look of the world. The book trailer came out great because of the tireless work done by the cast and crew. Cinema Book Trailers was wonderful to work with and I’ll be forever grateful for what they created. https://youtube/watch?v=pn8cFAAJ_yQ
Posted on: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 04:06:10 +0000
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