Writer, Journalist, Book Producer & Publisher
On August 2, 2021 a March for the Children, organized by the Penelakut Tribe, made its way from the BC Ferry terminal in Chemainus, through the town up to Water Wheel Park. An estimated 1,500 people joined in the commemoration.
Penelakut Island is the historical site of the Kuper Island Industrial School, a site of the Canadian genocide of Indigenous people. The march was for the children, healing, and reconciliation.
Surely there’s enough room in the universe for everyone who has died.
That’s a relief, I suppose. It means there might… just might… be a heaven out there, even a god, who only need occupy a tiny corner of the 13 billion light year breadth of measured space and time… and who knows what lies beyond the known, how far we’d have to travel in our transcendental spaceships to reach the ever expanding membrane of infinity.
Language can say things it’s impossible to comprehend. Thirteen billion light years, for example. Uncle Franklin tried to describe the speed of light for me once. “If I flicked on a light switch, here in Chemainus, say at the tip of Bare Point, you’d see the beam – it’s a wave, actually, but for the sake of argument, let’s say you’d see that beam in just over a second, if you were standing on the moon, say in the Sea of Tranquility… one-point-two-five-five seconds to be exact, that’s how long it would take.”
Uncky Frank couldn’t have understood that most nine year olds wouldn’t have a clue what the heck he was talking about, of course. Or what the speed of light had to do with my father’s coffin, making its slow progress down the centre aisle of our church, borne on the shoulders of six strong friends and relatives. He was just trying to describe, after the fact, the theoretical speed a soul could fly according to his own theory of special relativity.
Mum and Dad used to laugh at Uncky Frank and his ‘weirdo theories’. “He should leave the science to Einstein, and stick to building houses,” Dad said. “He’s good at that.”
“His inquiring mind takes him to strange places,” Mum agreed, as if Uncky Frank’s brain was a poorly trained Pitt bull yanking him around on its leash.
They loved him, though. He was everybody’s favourite uncle.
“Your dad isn’t very far away, once you know ‘C’,” he said, sitting beside me at the wake. “That’s the constant that stands for the speed of light in a vacuum,” he added, when I gave him a puzzled, pleading look. “Three hundred thousand kilometres per second.” He smiled benignly.
“How far is it from your head to your heart?” he persisted. “Show me.” I put my left hand over my heart; my right on top of my head. “That’s how far away your dad is from you, always,” Uncle Franklin said. “He’ll never leave, and – at the speed of light – he’ll be with you in an instant, whenever you need him.”
Uncky Frank had a complete set of the Encyclopedia Britannica, on a special shelf next to his favourite armchair. He’d read it every evening, as if it was the world’s longest novel, from A to Z with occasional side-steps to look up an incomprehensible word in another article, then another word in the explanatory article, and another, and another, and so on.
“Unless someone’s reading it, these are just lumps of masticated wood, glue and fake leather, gathering dust,” he told me once. “Knowledge doesn’t reside in books. Squiggles on a page don’t mean anything until someone reads them.”
To his dying day Uncky Frank claimed to be an atheist. I visited him near the end. Gaunt, pallid, and weak as he was, he still smiled and gazed at me with his pale blue eyes. He could tell what I was thinking, and put his left hand over his heart; his right on top of his head. “That’s how far away from you I’ll be, if you ever need me,” he said.
I tried not to show it, but he laughed. “Just cause I’m what you call an atheist, doesn’t mean I don’t believe something. A few more days, and I’ll be gone, but I’ll live on in your memory,” he smiled benignly.
“And when I die?”
“You’ll live on in the memories of your friends, your colleagues, your family. And I’ll be a smidgen of that, which is enough for me.”
Uncky Frank bequeathed me his set Encyclopedia Britannica. I browse them from time to time, but there’s no reference to any history of mine in there, just antecedents. The speed of light hasn’t changed, though, and the time it takes a beam to get from Bare Point to the Sea of Tranquility on the moon.
End Note:
Writing is rarely a linear process. For example, this video has a typical pedigree. Yesterday I was working on Episode 43 of The Mural Gazer. In this scene Buddy paddles out onto Cowichan Lake, teetering on the brink of suicide. There, he encounters the spirit of Hong Hing, the Chinese merchant, bootlegger and gambling den operator, depicted in Chemainus Mural #4, who is tying to dissuade him. Although he’s alive and talking, Hong Hing is decked out as a deceased, oriental patriarch, and he’s floating to the forever-after on the mirror-calm surface of the moonlit lake.
I’m on aqua incognito for this description, so I started researching Chinese funerary traditions online, a fascinating glimpse into the rites of an ancient culture.
At the same time, I have been trying to get my head around Immanuel Kant’s metaphysical theory of Transcendental Ideals. Although that’s not the kind of subject matter you can throw undiluted into a novel, as a thematic undercurrent, I believe speculative philosophy enriches stories. And the rites I was learning about the Chinese belief in an afterlife, particularly the burning of Joss Paper and representations of things the deceased need to be happy in their new world, evoked by association Kantian proofs of god, heaven and immortality.
There’s no logic to the sequence that lead to The Speed of Light, but its origins do trace back to The Mural Gazer.
I’m not going to be able to pack everything we need to know about setting up to produce video readings and trailers into a single blog post, so if there are topics within this topic you’d like me to explore and expand on, get in touch and let me know.
And if you’re really interested in the subject, don’t take my word for it, go online and get other perspectives. My take on what makes an effective video reading or trailer for websites and social media is unique; there are plenty of other variations on the theme you’ll be able to find, conferring with Dr. Google.
That said, let’s get underway. Before you actually do anything in the physical realm, play and replay an imaginary version of your video in your head, and view each showing from a different seat in your mind’s-eye theatre.
Take one: an artist’s POV. Ask what you want people to take away from your video? And what you want them to do? Buy your book? Attend a reading? Absorb a philosophical perspective and share it? Change their attitude about something? Know who your viewer is, and what you want to say to him before you set out producing your video.
Take two: put yourself in the ‘average viewer’s’ seat. What’s going keep her there? What is it about your story you want to emphasize? Do you want to make her laugh? Arouse her sense of curiosity? Send chills up and down her spine? Disgust her? Get her to like you? Wax philosophical? Wonder what comes next?
Take three: now you’re sitting in the producer/director’s chair. You have to figure out what’s possible and how to make what’s possible happen in the final cut. As you play through the video, ask yourself what kind of equipment you’ll need to make each scene happen? What skills you might have to acquire? How long it’s going to take to produce your masterpiece? Who you’ll need to involve in the production?
Take four: You’re the Production Manager. Your job is to figure out who and what you will need to bring together, when and where in order to get the video trailer or reading done. Once your assessment is finished, you should have a pretty detailed, step-by-step chart of how to get from scene-one to your finished video.
Now you know what you want to do, it’s time to set your ‘system’ up so you can keep track of how you’re doing. Even a simple video project can generate dozens of files, sticky notes, emails, and so on. Having all that data stored in accessible, navigable locations is absolutely essential.
I use three Adobe programs to generate elements of a video production: Photoshop (composite photos and slides), Premier Pro (assembling the video), and Audition (sound production). I also use stock sound and image services to get material I can’t photograph or record myself. Most productions require dozens of photos, videos and sound clips. All those elements have to be organized and coordinated, if you don’t to lose your way.
Typically, I open a folder for the entire project in File Manager on my Mac. It will contain sub-folders, the Premier Pro project file; and the final MP4 video. The sub-folders will be labelled: Photos-Images, Video, Audio, Slides, Elements, Correspondence, Text, and so on. You get the idea.
Once I start assembling and editing the video in Premier Pro, I will create a similar set of folders for Photos-Images, Video, Slides, Elements and Audio. As I need materials, I import them into the mirrored Premier Pro project folders, and when they are placed in the video, I colour code them, so I’ll know what’s been used and what’s on deck.
Although Premier Pro lets you import whole folders from File Manager into a project, I don’t do that. I prefer to transfer them one at a time. If it’s a larger production, I will also colour code imported files in my Mac’s File Manager, so I can ignore them when I’m looking for materials later.
All this may sound bureaucratic and tedious, and if you’re among those who can keep a dozen balls in the air at the same time and grab them on the fly, you may be able to do without the bother. I’m not. I find a structured process for gathering, storing and retrieving materials during a video production allows me to focus on the aspects of a project I really enjoy, the creative activity of transcribing a vision from my imagination into the mind-space of an audience.
Why might you, as a writer, want to consider posting online readings and book trailers? The obvious answer: the Internet is where more and more people are going these days to browse and buy. One need only mention Amazon.com to appreciate how book sales and distribution have been affected by the global transition to eCommerce.
Still, many are reluctant to give up the Underwood typewriter and weighty, leather-bound volumes as iconic symbols of true literature; and many more are prepared to blame technology – and especially the Internet – for the serious declines in writers’ incomes over the last couple of decades.
Are they right?
Yes and no, I think. But as a writer I can’t afford to overlook online options for getting my stories into the hands and minds of readers. So online readings and book trailers, as part of a self and direct-to-web publishing strategy, are approaches whose time has come. The conventional route of finding a publisher, who will get my book printed, then distributed to to bookstores, is still appealing, but exploring other possibilities makes sense.
And even if I do get my manuscript accepted by a publishing house, I still have to promote it on my own, and sell as many copies as I can, if I hope to supplement my income in any meaningful way. So ipso facto, I need to feature my books on my own web site or Facebook page. An online presence is essential for writers – especially little known writers – and it has to be done-up in genres a tech-savvy population demands: which translates into easy, quick, graphic, and catchy, which narrows down to video readings and book trailers.
The secret to producing a good online reading or book trailer is inspiration. You have to see it as a creative work in its own right – as art.
What equipment and skills do you need to do video promo of your books? A mobile phone and Rick Mercer demeanour are all you really need. But since most of us don’t have Mercer’s gift for gabbing; and jiggly, poorly lit, echoey recordings of halting speakers aren’t likely to impress audiences; an investment in equipment and training might pay off.
I do almost all my production on Adobe’s integrated photo, video and audio suite (costs about $50 per month). I use my iPhone quite a bit – and its video quality is more than adequate for most web and social media productions – but I also use a Cannon T7i, digital camera, and have an inexpensive studio set up that includes diffused lighting, green screen, tripods and so on. I’d say the whole kit and caboodle cost me under $3,000.
That’s a significant expense in my case, but the ability to create readings and trailers that are a cut above jiggly, poorly lit and echoey makes the investment worthwhile.
Training is another matter. Some younger, tech-savvy authors will also have the skills and equipment needed to do catchy video trailers and readings. Most will not. I’ve acquired my skills haphazardly, during a 30 year career as a journalist and communications manager. I’m not saying it’s an impossible undertaking, but the learning curve for most writers would be awfully steep, and would only be surmountable if they were energized by a passion for the process.
So for most the only realistic option would be to hire someone to produce their readings and book trailers, these days in a manner that observes all the COVID-19 protocols required. Professional video production can be prohibitively expensive, but quality video for authors’ web sites and social media channels can be reasonably priced, especially if some aspects of the production can be done by the authors themselves. A price of $100 per minute is possible, and three to four minutes is usually plenty of time to capture and deliver the essence of your message.
Another option could be a recorded reading workshop or circle – conducted totally online in the COVID-19 era. As well as ending up with a video reading or trailer that could be used to promote your books, you would get the support and encouragement of a group of like minded participants, who want to improve their story-reading skills and delivery. A three session workshop, with five participants, might cost $200 per person.
Thanks for joining me in this blog post. Next up: Online Readings & Trailers – Creative Steps
