Make a Movie for Promoting

In the last couple posts, we went on an adventure in creating illustrations. We then discussed about how to use illustrations in blogs and websites to promote your novel or product.  Another way to use your illustrations is to create a video. I am in the process of creating a movie of me narrating a section of my novel, "Legend of the Mystic Knights"; so we will be doing this process together.

Creating a video is a very similar process in creating your illustrations; we begin both with choosing the proper software. I use Microsoft Widows Movie Maker; this is the simplest and most available product out on the market. The skill level using this product is low, so anyone can start using it almost immediately.


There are other movie maker programs out there, and some offer more accessories and features than the Microsoft version. Using any software always depends on your level of skill with the software, and the amount of money you want to spend. The major features that you are looking for is that it allows you to add a minimum of two audio tracks to your video (allows you to narrate and add music), and also allow for different transitional effects between scenes.

When you do decide which product you want, make sure you take the time to learn how to use it properly. Create some simple test movies; learn the different functions of that program to determine which you will use on your finished product.

After you have chosen your software to make your movie, decide how long the movie will be. Is your movie going to be 30 seconds, a minute, 5 minutes long? The length of your movie will determine what kind of movie you are making. A movie used as an advertisement, should be short (30 seconds to 1 minute), this allows you to stay within your audience attention span. If you are providing information, or giving a sample writing of a novel, then a longer movie is necessary.

Now create a script, write down what you want to say in your movie. Since, you know how much time you have to deal with, adjust what you want to say around this time frame. Those of us, who took public speaking classes in school, will have an advantage in this.

After you have created a script, read it out loud and time yourself, you then can add, cut words, or adjust the pace of your reading to fit it into the time allotted. You can break down your script into small parts, using changing of subject, or natural breaks to determine where to stop, or even a place where you need a break in speaking.

The nest step, and most important, is to produce a storyboard. A storyboard is a visual organization of what your movie will look like. It is a series of drawing or pictures, which will show the flow and design of your movie.

The best way to design your storyboard is to picture your movie in your mind, and draw it out as you would if it was a comic book. Each frame of the storyboard, called a frame, is a section of the movie you are displaying. At this point, you can add your illustrations to the storyboard that you want to display in your movie.

With the pictures, now add your script to each frame to your storyboard. It is at this point you will determine how long each frame will be displayed, taking into account how long the script is for each. Write underneath the frame, how long in seconds the frame will appear. Remember where we broke down the script into separate sections, now you can adjust them and the visual frames to see where you want them to correspond. You may decide to end the section of the script to end of a specific frame, or expand it over several frames.

After you have created your storyboard, the next step will be creating your movie. This is the topic of our next blog.

Thank you for visiting, and as always if you want please leave a comment.