BROKEN TRAILER: The making of...

Fellow Strange Chemistry author Christian Schoon asked on Twitter about the production/process of the trailer above, so I figured I would give a "Making of" post a whirl.

From the start, I had a really strong idea of what I wanted the trailer for BROKEN to look like with the mix of video clips and stills. The one thing that fell by the wayside, or hit this director's cutting room floor, was the idea of recording narration. Once I saw the monochrome setting on our camera, I decided the pictures and the music could tell the story without narration. That lead to riffing on a black-and-white silent movie--and I love the end product.

It all started with the music, and I turned to Kenneth Zink, Michelle Zink's son for that. He does the music for Michelle's trailers, so I knew I had to contact him. Kenneth read Broken, and composed the piece anchoring the entire trailer. It's hanuting, lyrical, moody in the best manner possible, and above all, romantic and unique. (Can you tell I really love the music??)


The pictures from the first photoshoot ended up near the end of this trailer, mingled with a few pics from the last day of shooting, from 1:02 on. Brenda took the pictures. The first day was just Skyler in her white dress in the cemetery. Skyler played Emma, emmulating the separation between  Alex and Emma due to revelations.

 

The second day we managed to coordinate a shoot was the first day Troy was with us, but my photographer was sick. I admit it, I panicked. My friend Candice said to suck it up and take a crapton of photos, something was bound to be good. We used a rather unconventonal location for our "school" pictures. Let's just say no parent wants to get a call from this place, and no teen wants to end up locked in the backseat of a car and headed in this direction. Skyler and Troy were great sports and we totally took the place over! The pictures from 0:20 on to 1:01 were taken this day, by me.

 (this picture edited out for time)

All four of us were together for the third day of shooting, Skyler and Troy, me and Brenda. We made a stop at a church (but opted not to use those photos later), then went out to the cemetery. Brenda shot both video segments that day, and took some of the pictures that appear after 1:02.

Many of the pictures we took were pretty, some were blurry, or the lighting wasn't quite right. And some...some were just silly.

We went through and picked the best of the pictures, then I organized them in the order I wanted and  turned it all over to DarkAshe Graphics for the finish work. She put up with my nuerotic pestering about the filter, and last minute this and thats. I think she worked some real magick taking all my pieces and parts and making one beautiful, elegant trailer.

CAMERA: Canon PowerShot elph 500 hs, in the monochrome setting.
SOFTWARE: Final Cut Express and Adobe After Affects, and the 8mm filter to mimic an old black-and-white silent movie.