symbolic 04: two minutes
There are a couple of musical pieces that I -- and the rest of the movie industry -- find extremely useful. "O Fortuna" from Carl Orff's Carmina Burana and Peter Gabriel's instrumental version of "The Rhythm of the Heat." You know them, even if you can't place them right now, you'd know them if you heard them. They crop up at least once a season attached to a movie trailer. And they're there because they work.
You've got about two minutes to seduce your audience with the trailer. Modern Hollywood theory seems to cater to the idea that a movie's plot must be completely divulged during these two minutes, and that isn't a seduction as much as it is just a poorly designed info dump. It should be a series of images and ideas which catch your interest. It's a come-on, a hint of what you will find on the screen.
As for the book in progress, we've barely started. You may have a bare bones idea of what you want to accomplish in your novel, maybe even a half page of scribbled notes. But you don't know what happens at every point.
Which is the perfect time to build the movie trailer.
"O Fortuna" and "The Rhythm of the Heat" work because they give you a variety of options with pacing. They start slow, quiet strains which allow you the opportunity to craft setting and establishing shots. They grow in intensity until they are thunderous, filling the theater with their noise. You finish with a montage of images, quick cuts of impressions, split seconds of ideas or thoughts which feel like they belong in your book.
They are best written quickly, listening to music like this if possible. You don't have to use everything that you find in the trailer, but you do have to get something exciting on the page. You do have to throw up an interesting two minutes because if it doesn't thrill the audience then what is going to bring them to your work?
Or, more importantly, how are you going to sustain any enthusiam for writing it?
writing
This is a reasonably comprehensive list of my published work, both virtual and physical.
THE MISFIT LIBRARY
I am Nine of Thirteen, one of the members of the Misfit Library, a writing collective which puts out a quarterly journal of our respective work. We are scattered across the globe and determined to change the face of the planet one story at a time. The link above will take you to Misfit Central where you can acquire copies of the journal as well as read exclusive online material.
SYMBOLIC
I wrote a column for OPi8.com's Transmit blogs: journals of the new dark underground. SYMBOLIC tracked the novel I was working on, referencing the process and the research materials which mad up the backbone of the work. In addition, SYMBOLIC busied itself with ruminations and considerations on the nature of language and communication. And a wee bit of mythology. The first 100 entries of SYMBOLIC can be found here on this site as well as at OPi8.com.
LITERARY REPRESENTATION
I am represented by Scribe Agency as my literary agents. Please contact these gentleman if you have any queries about my work.