American Gods

This week, our challenge was to create a 30-second video.

The Premiere Pro assignment

Creative Challenge – 30-second book trailer: Create a short video sequence or trailer promoting your favourite book from the entire world of literature. Create a sequence that creatively highlights the key characteristics of the book in video format.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite books of all time. It’s not an easy book to describe in 30 seconds or even 30 minutes (here’s Wikipedia’s attempt as background for those who have not read it).

I didn’t do any formal storyboarding for this project. I picked a few favorite quotes from the book to use for the voiceover and then picked some visuals that matched up with the quotes.

I found Premiere Pro somewhat overwhelming to use, but I was determined to learn at least a few basics and not run back to my iMovie comfort zone.

I opted not to add credits/notes to the video in order to use all 30 seconds for content. Here are the free resources I used to create my trailer.

Free royalty-free background loops from http://movietools.info (“Flight through the Clouds” and “Digital Rain”)
Free royalty-free images from stock.xchng (linder6580: 1279418 “Shadow” for the opening, cabrantes: 1121637 “Single Tree” for the closing)
Public domain images of the “old gods” from Wikimedia Commons
Background music is a free Apple GarageBand royalty-free loop, “Dogma”
Voiceover recorded with Recordium on iPad

I used Photoshop to resize and clone additional background for the opening and closing images, and convert the public domain images of the “old gods” to transparent images that could be superimposed over the clouds background loop.

I enjoyed creating the trailer even though I struggled with the time constraint. Perhaps I should have picked another favorite book with simpler themes! I’ve thought about professional and hobbyist applications for video, and there are many instances when video would be most appropriate for instructional materials. However, I still find it frustrating when a video is not accompanied by supporting text or static graphic resources. There are times when sitting through an entire video isn’t the best way to learn something.

“You’re heading for I-90,” said Wednesday. “Follow the signs west for Madison.”*

That’s a route I’ve driven many, many times. And there are quite a few other familiar places in Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, one of my favorite books. What’s not to like about a story that takes you all around the vast Midwestern wasteland, to places where the old gods have been living for all these years, and to an inevitable clash between the old and the new?

I’ve mentioned before that I am nobody’s fangirl, and that I really don’t have much emotional investment in anything that I’m not personally involved with. I don’t rabidly adore any sports team or celebrities. My only slight departure from this was going to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show fifty-plus times (heh, you didn’t know that about me, did you), but that was more about hanging out with my ~~psycho~~ emotionally-invested friends than being truly involved myself. I helped a couple of people sew some pretty authentic-looking costumes (you didn’t know I could sew, and actually very well, either, did you) and that was really my biggest fun. Oh, and time warping, but only people with no soul would think that time warping is not fun.

But back to American Gods and the fact that there is going to be an American Gods weekend. On Halloween weekend. OMG! At The House on the Rock. OMG!!

Like many who have lived in this sector of the vast Midwestern wasteland for any length of time, I’ve visited the House on the Rock. It was sort of unintentional as the destination on that trip was supposed to be Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin. I did end up at the intended destination, but was definitely glad to have taken the detour to see the strangeness and the wonder of the House on the Rock.

Wasn’t it worth it, worth anything, to say that you had ridden on the World’s Largest Carousel?*

The World’s Largest Carousel is one of the attractions at the House on the Rock, and plays an important role in American Gods. Normally, no one is allowed to ride the carousel, but reportedly a few lucky attendees of the American Gods weekend will be able to do just that.

Like I said, I am nobody’s fangirl. But if I could ride the World’s Largest Carousel, that might even change.

(NaBloPoMo | April ’10: 6 of 30)