Best-selling author and award winning author Rachel Hauck lives in central Florida with her husband and loving pets. She earned a B.A. degree in Journalism from Ohio State University and spent seventeen years in the corporate software world before leaving to write full time. Rachel loves to teach and mentor writers.

She is a Book Therapist at www.MyBookTherapy.com, a daily craft blog and community for writers. In the past, Rachel is the president of American Christian Fiction Writers and now servers on the Advisor Board. Visit her blog and web site at www.rachelhauck.com.

Love Starts With Elle

The Origin

Sitting in my office one night, I mused over ideas on how to promote my new Thomas Nelson release, Love Starts with Elle.

I had a few things already in place, like blog tours and more bookmarks than I could ever possibly use, but I wanted to do something else to spread the word.

Book Trailers intrigue me. I consider them to be a visual and oral way to capture the imagination of a potential reader. But most Book Trailers are the same: graphics fading in and out with teasers and music, and perhaps a voice over.

What could I do that would be different? What would attract a reader to my book? How could I make it more personal? I’d already done a few Flip videos of me talking about my previous books and uploaded them to YouTube, but the quality wasn’t top drawer.

What if I talked about the book, but this time with the book’s heroine, Elle? What if she was animated?

Dialogue popped into my head. I started laughing. Now that would be a cool Book Trailer. What if Elle were “real”?

Making It Happen

I am horrible with video. If it requires more than uploading from my Flip to YouTube, forget it. I haven’t figured out QuickTime, and I don’t have the time or patience to learn it.

A friend, Jeremy Vickory, had recently moved back to town from his California job with, um, Pixar. Yeah, that Pixar, so I called him.

“Can you make an animated character for me?” I detailed my vision for the Book Trailer and he jumped on board. His specialty was lighting; working on Pixar films such as Cars and Ratatouille (he made the soup look yummy), he had enough tools to create Elle.

We agreed on a price after I reminded him of how very instrumental I’d been during his young days as a teen and maturing believer (cough, ahem).

Then, I spent a day or so tweaking the script, arm-twisted a friend to be Elle’s voice, and went to Jeremy’s to film.

Filming

We laughed a lot. We realized the need for visual correctionslike looking at the same point during the dialogue with “Elle” so when Jeremy brought her to life on the little screen, it would appear as if I were actually talking to her.

We couldn’t just read the lines, then quit talking to wait for the other to speak. Elle had to interrupt me. The first read was a bit halted and bumpy.

Next, we decided what to do with the book I held. Could Jeremy animate Elle to pick up the book and flip through it? Sure. So we scripted my putting the book down, Elle reaches for it, picks it up, and opens it.

An hour later, we’d filmed my part. Now for Jeremy to add an animated Elle. He handed me a complete video two days later.

Bad hair

Yeah, it was a bad hair day for me, but I think it make me look, well, real. Elle’s hair looks amazing.

Distribution

I gave a copy to my publisher and uploaded the video on my Web site as well as YouTube. My blog tour organizer sent it to the bloggers.

I’ve had some great response.

It was fun.