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The Golden Cord Book Trailer
This is a post-production image, after color correction, of the goodbye scene between Jaena and Drake, played by Chantel Flanders and Shea Potter.
The second day of shooting The Golden Cord Book Trailer was epic. Lots of scenes were shot on day 2, including: The Meeting House (where lots of extras were used to fill the room), various scenes involving Drake and his dogs in the forest, and the finale scene, which was a night shoot in the rain (we used a rain machine) and fog (of course a fog machine) when Drake, Bellor, and Thor (and the dogs) are attacked by wingataur demons. It was pretty awesome.Here are some pics posted on Facebook from the second day of shooting.
The first day of shooting The Golden Cord cinematic book trailer was amazing. When I saw Drake and Jaena filming the goodbye scene I got chills all over my body. It was a surreal experience, and so awesome. I've had this scene in my head since 1999 at least, and on paper for nearly that long. Seeing it was incredible.
The Golden Cord cinematic book trailer came about when I met Brandon Wade Ho and Spencer Scanlon at a writing convention called LTUE in 2013. They heard I was a fan of book trailers (I was writing an article about them and had done panels on them in the past). Spencer and Brandon found me in the hallway where they showed me the trailer they had made for the bestselling novel, The Mazerunner by James Dashner. This was long before the excellent Mazerunner movie and they made it to show that good trailers could be done. They showed me the trailer on an iPad and I was blown away. They had created a company, Cinematic Book Trailers, and were in the process of building up their film reel.
Months later they asked for a meeting and we got together. They offered to make a book trailer for The Golden Cord at no cost to me. I was honored and shocked. Such great opportunities don't come along very often. We met several times and I helped during the process as they lined up all the things they needed to make it happen. Spencer was going to be the producer, and Corey Roberson would do a lot of production design and effects work.
These guys were the real deal. Brandon had won the college Emmy award for a film he made and working with and his partners had already been great. This would help them and me. It had been so fun already and I wanted to see where it would all lead. The trailer could serve as a pitch to get a series of feature films made as well. I never thought it would go this far. This was when I decided I would contribute some funding and become a producer. It made perfect sense to help out. We worked together and wrote a shooting script. The storyboards were created and then came late May 2014. The film shoot spanned two long days and it was one of the most awesome experiences of my life. Seeing your book come to life with live actors a few dozen people working on set was mind-blowing. The book trailer came out great because of Cinema Book Trailers. Check out their website or find them on Facebook to see all their awesome work.
The Backstory of The Golden Cord Cinematic Book Trailer
The final scene where the companions are about to be attacked by the wingataur demons turned out to be visually stunning. Drake, Bellor, Thor and the dogs are surrounded as rain and fog make the situation even worse. It was a tough scene to pull off, but it turned out to be great.
The meeting house scene turned out to be awesome. Master Bellor (DL Walker) and Thor (Jacob Lau Smith Tice) are accompanied by Priestess Liana (Angela Dayton), Jaena's mother when the enter the room to speak to the gathered villagers. Angela Dayton was excellent. She had lines in the script, but they ended up getting cut from the shooting schedule. She looked great though, and her presence was exactly what it needed to be. Bellor has a few lines, where he "lies" to the villagers about the true nature of their reason to be in the area, and what they're doing.