The Dragon Shield Book Trailer

    It has been far too long since I gave all of you an update, I apologize. Hear is a 30 second commercial of what happened since my last post. Rolled my car, concussion for a few weeks, during finals, which was terrible. Finished my Associates of Arts & Science, and now I'm at ASU pursuing a Bachelors of Science; Management Entrepreneurship. Created the book trailer below professionally for an adult writer and artist friend. Now I am starting to do contracted work for Eggroll Creative & PR, my position is Film & Media Specialist. And on top of that I'm starting to do small jobs for people. What?? How did this happen? Partial dream starting to come true, well that's how it seems anyway.

    The author, Dianne Lynn Gardner, wrote The Dragon Shield which is the second book in the series of The Ian's Realm Saga. The first book, Deception Peak, came out in 2012, this one will be released in February.
     In the first book trailer, for the first book, I did the voice acting. I've posted the video underneath this. Pretty much, I was completely shocked what they did to my voice. Until I saw it again about a month ago and I understood and appreciated what they had done. If you can't tell they have taken my voice and made it sound like a young teenager; which was shocking, until I really considered who I was voice acting for, and how much sense that made.

    This video was not edited or filmed by me, the gal who worked on this did a pretty good job in terms of what I have learned about the programs she was using and her experience.
    The big difference seen in the process of creating these two visuals is in their nature. Deception Peak's trailer was based on vocals and what was seen. While The Dragon Shield's trailer was based on flowing with the song, and using the words to portray ideas of the film; hence the needed subtitles.
    This difference made the making of The Dragon Shield Book Trailer a lot of fun, it was slightly abstract, and portrayed ideas to grab your interest and wonder while knowing that you needed more knowledge to fully understand exactly what was going on, but if you had read the first book it would make much more sense.

    There were some mistakes I made, one that couldn't be helped once I realized it, and the other I thought had been fixed already. The one mistake I can't believe happened was that the video quality was tiny in comparison to the full HD footage it was shot in. What had happened was that I had started with some pictures and clips from Dianne that I was messing around with before the filming, and so I had started to create a framework for the footage. I subsequently imported the footage, made plenty of major adjustments (like bringing the footage down to size, which I should have picked up on). I only realized the mistake when I was going to export and I noticed the quality of the clips was not high definition. Super disappointing!
    Two editing mistakes occurred that I thought were fixed when I exported, the first being the clip of the boy in white running off, it was supposed to be in 80% speed to cover up the ending of the previous clip and match the pace of the song. And the other was with the Dragon Shield flashing in the cave. It was more of a short flicker than whatever you might call it as it appeared. I think some mistake between AE and PP with Adobe Bridge occurred as I had seen a few issues like that earlier in the work day.
    But in the end I am very proud of the job, fairly well done, those small mistakes have yet to be pointed out to me by fellow mates, so until this trailer gets a TV slot it will be as is.
 
    One might ask, how did you get the job for filming and editing the trailer Alex? If such a question was asked I would say something like this. One day in November Dianne contacted me asking if I had a singer friend who could sing in a almost Celtic sounding voice. I said, I think so, let me ask around. I contacted an old acquaintance I knew to have a wonderful talent in singing, her name is Lexa Rose. I asked if she wanted the job, and she got it. With Dianne's poem they were able to create that wonderful 'Ballad of The Dragon Shield.' Which became the centerpiece of the video trailer.
    Then I was asked by Dianne to film and edit the trailer and I happily took on the project.

    If you would prefer to visit The Ian's Realm Saga on Facebook, click that link.


    Personally I'm still working on an old project that I hope I will release this year as it was filmed about two years ago, but it will be pretty good when it comes out, not worth the wait though, but still good. Anyway, hope everyone has a great week!

Thanks for reading,

Alex D Chandler