Book Trailer Leading Me Somewhere

I spent all yesterday working on a book trailer.  I expect to spend all today on it.  And maybe tomorrow.

No.  I've done these before.  I test drove all the video programs a couple years back and decided on Corel.  Then I switched to Windows Media whatever because I just wanted to streamline the whole process.  The program that comes in Vista is pretty good.  But recently I upgraded to the new version of Corel's Video Studio and it's really good--well beyond whatever skills I have.  It offers more precision than the Windows tinker-something-together Maker, which is important if you're actually timing the images to coincide with the music.

Speaking of music, youtube has just gone cuckoo pulling vids off if they don't think...if some huge multinational conglomerate is putting the screws to them regarding rights.  (The whole rights thing I don't really get.  You put something up on the net and it's gone, it's not yours anymore, you have no control, give up illusions that you can.)

I spent the morning looking for Paul Whiteman's version of Deep Purple and finally found it only to find that it really stunk.  It was his big band version instead of what I assumed would be an earlier version.  So I went with the Artie Shaw/Helen Forrest version.  I cut it using Audacity, an audio program I can recommend and is free and available at sourceforge.com

I have the music track and I have the images.  What's taking so long is instead of creating text over the images is I'm building title cards.  You'll see.

I'm not going to put anything from the book trailer up but instead introduce you to Michal Towber.  She was born in Israel and at some point moved to NYC, got into music (and is very good at it) then went to Yale, then got a law degree and she's going to be an entertainment lawyer.  While singing.  I suppose.  I was introduced to her because I was sitting here at the computer one day a couple years ago and heard singing on the TV in the other room.  I was compelled to get up and find out who it was.  It was some young woman on a soap opera I had once written for.  I discovered her name and bought her first album.  Her song, Flash, is still one of my favorites of any modern song.  I wrote to her, she wrote back.  She's a doll, intelligent, and I think she was recently married.  To a nice Jewish boy.  Mazel Tov!

"Straight lines are godless things."

Michal Towber www.michalmusic.com