Alice here. I hope you all enjoyed reading Lindsay's idyllic recounting of our video trailer experience because the followup tale is slightly more harrowing. Are you ready?
About two hours after class ended--so after about four hours of working on the trailer total--we were just about done: we just needed to fiddle with a couple of photos and export the trailer! Sarah and Lindsay headed out and left me in charge of the finishing touches. Little did they know what would ensue. . . .
First, half of our photos disappeared. I'm not quite sure why. They were displaying perfectly, and the next time I ran through the trailer they had been replaced by greenscreen. This was a source of great confusion to me, but, as a veteran Windows user, I simply deleted and reinserted them, and all seemed to be well.
Next I had to render the video. For those of you who aren't video editing whizzes, this just means--well, I'm not quite sure what the technical definition is. Sarah could probably tell you. Basically, before you've rendered anything, the video runs really choppily and skips and is generally unpleasant to watch; rendering fixes all that and makes the video ready for production. So it's something that really must be done. When I told Premiere Pro to render the video, though, it got about 5 percent in and stopped.
OK. I told it to render again. Three percent this time.
I moved the cursor right to the part that needed to be rendered, then asked the program to render again. It got through about ten seconds before stopping. So I proceeded to render the video in five- to ten-second chunks, all the way through.
With that finally finished, I told Premiere to export the file. This normally takes a bit of time--far longer than the actual length of the video--so when the progress bar disappeared after about thirty seconds, I was suspicious. Sure enough, when I opened the exported file, our video ran until just about "Girl dumps Boy" before cutting out. Not a very auspicious ending.
I'll spare you the details. Let's just say it was about 1:45 then, and by 2:30 I had at least six partial versions of the video exported. The computer lab assistant had no ideas, and nor did I, so I left to get some much-needed sustenance, intending to relocate my efforts to a computer in another lab.
Unfortunately, after I got to said other lab, I realized that I didn't have all the files that the video needed. I would, essentially, have to remake the entire trailer. No thanks.
The computer we had been working on, which had all the files we needed in the order we needed them, proved more than a little difficult to reclaim. During my time spent waiting, I came up with a list of possible problems and solutions to fix the trailer and make sure that exporting ran lickety-split. Thus armed, I loaded the file, hit "export," and prepared to do battle.
It ran through it all on the first shot. No problems. I will never understand Windows.
. . . which is essential for attaching the camera to the tripod and yet, it seems, doesn't come with the tripods. . . . Anyway, once we finally got started, things went great. Lindsay's book club was really excited to have Janna there, and Janna was excited to be there, and a great conversation ensued. And it's all on tape! (Unfortunately, still on actual tape right now--hopefully we'll get that converted to digital format soon to share it with you!)
While I'm on the topic of filming, though, I should talk a bit more about filming Janna's book club a couple of weeks ago. That was actually the first project we did, but then we got so caught up in the rest of this that we never had time to blog about it! Sarah, Katie, and I were all filming (Lindsay couldn't make it, unfortunately), so hopefully we can get their reactions to it in here soon. The main thing that struck me about these two different book clubs' discussions wasn't their reactions to the book--everybody loved it--but what they chose to focus on. Janna's friends focused a lot on all the relationship questions the book brings up and almost not at all on the actual sailing aspect. Lindsay's group, though, talked a whole lot about the sailing--they all loved the romantic adventure! It was really interesting to hear the different takes on it.
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! Garfield is also a fully functional, independent bookstore, which means we are mini Borders, so to speak. Our store's mission is to connect and engage with our community, so we offer events for children, author events, and a book club. This is where Janna will come in! Another manager and I run the book club at Garfield. We have a varied and eclectic group of members: the ages vary from twenty (me) to fifty- to sixty-year-old women. As of now, most of our members--well, actually all--are women, but we are looking for men to come make our group more diverse! Some of the books we have read this year are The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, The Art of Racing in the Rain, The Book Thief, and The Thirteenth Tale.
Now the title is interesting and visually appealing, and it helps get our message across. Now you can tell at a glance that we are not advertising something solely nautical and sea-related. No, this flyer is clearly about something deeper! We chose to keep all of the text in the flyer; this is, after all, about a book! Our finishing touches were to change the title font color and to add a side-line reading "an exciting new travel novel by Janna Cawrse Esarey."
r the flyer. We included a photo of Janna, a photo of the book cover, and a bio of Janna. For decoration, I made up some little waves, which we liked and later ended up using for the e-newsletter masthead, as well. However, we didn't like the poster on a white background, and we could not find a color that we were satisfied with. So we decided to take the photograph from the cover of the book and Photoshop it, allowing us to use the picture as our flyer background.
and I Photoshopped the image to add quite a bit more sky to it. Lindsay and Alice provided me with their keen eyes to ensure that no blemishes were in the Photoshop job. We re-did the flyer, eliminating the fun waves in this version. We rather like it, but it is not yet finished. When we presented the flyer to the rest of the class, the common complaint was that it did not look like it was advertising a book. We haven't quite determined what we want to change about this in order to complete our flyer, but the three of us will be meeting this evening to finish. I will post that as soon as I am able!
which I love the most. It is simple, clean, and very visually appealing. This version here is incomplete: it still needs information about the blog and a picture for the blog. However, you get the gist of it.
Time to meet the last member of the crew!
s that aspect of art. I am also the brilliant designer behind the blog header--which means I also get the blame for initially misspelling names. Oops!
Welcome to The Motion of the Ocean: Charting the Course Towards a Successful Book Launch! This is a blog centered all around one incredible book full of adventure, love, and some life lessons--all while sailing around the world. What is this book, you might ask?
