So now that you have your music, you have your pictures, and you’ve kinda laid them out, how do you get the actual message across to your readers? Last week, Kris Tualla made a very important comment on one of the lecture posts.
Specifics. You have to use specifics
That’s what makes a book or movie trailer interesting. You can’t just show a picture of a man and woman and say they have conflict. You have to either tell or show that conflict. You can’t say “There’s danger” and not be specific, unless the imagery is specific. So now is when you start really working things out. How many of your pictures say what you want? If not, do you need to add words?
A decent example (and I’m sure it’s not 100% the best), is Tigress by the Tail.
A man with something to prove. He does have somethng to prove. He wants to prove to his brothers he’s a powerful wizard. I don’t go into that detail, but it can be inferred based off the discussion of his talents – the lightning and power. What else could he have to prove? It draws our reader/watcher in.
A woman with something to hide. What is she hiding? In this case, I show the reader – by having the heroine morph into a tigress.
Now if that’s not conflict, what else is there? A couple – one a wizard – one a were-tigress. Right away you FEEL the conflict, and the sounds and music shown, also helps enhance the conflict. But if I just put a picture of a man, and the picture of a woman morphing into the tigress, would you FEEL that conflict? Would you KNOW they had opposite Goals and Motivations, which causes conflict? Ahh Ha…. you say. You’ve heard of GMC before, if you’re an author.
So immediately in the first few slides, with the first little bit of text, I show internal conflict between the couple. I tell you a little bit about the couple. Right away you see the goals, if not the motivation behind the H/h. Next is the external conflict.
Surrounded by danger – That doesn’t seem very specific, yet the imagery takes the lead by showing a man with a gun, and the next slide shows our heroine in tiger form, snarling and growling.
Then back to our gun, and a shot is fired.
Wow, if that isn’t external conflict, what is? So the idea behind the words and the images is to show the GMC of your characters. Scary, isn’t it? All the same things you have to write into your book, you have to put into your video.
So once you have your slides laid out in the order you wish to display, which ones of them need a few words to explain your GMC? Which ones of them speak for themselves? My growling tigress speaks for herself toward the end. My gunshot exploding and then darkness, it speaks for itself. Someone is in danger. Serious danger.
And what is the hook? Every paragraph ending needs a hook. The same goes for your trailer. Leave them wanting more.
So today’s assignment: Lay out your slides, and then add text using the “add text” link at the top left. You can slide the text left or right. I’ve found that it rarely is necessary to have text on a plain background, but sometimes it can put just the right emphasis, so you’ll have to use your own judgement. Remember that your slides will each display between 7-10 seconds. You want people to be able to read your text without taking away from the image behind it, so keep it short. If the text is long, you’ll probably have to add an additional “text only” slide before or after the image you have selected. You want to minimize that. People are very visually stimulated, but if they have to read alot, they’re just going to click away.
I’m going to share tigress with you again – not because I want you to memorize it or anything. LOL I want you to see it now, thinking of the GMC. How could I Have done it better? I know I could have, so please share!