Rebecca York/Ruth Glick: Book Trailer Shoot in Phoenix

I’m back from an exciting trip to Phoenix where I watched director Joe Gruberman from Circle of Seven and his crew shoot a book trailer for my March Berkley release, NEW MOON.

The whole book trailer experience has been wild. Often when I get the cover of my book, the people look nothing like my hero and heroine. But for the trailer, I got to look at Web sites of various actors and pick the ones I wanted. I selected a husband and wife team, Jimmy and Kalin, and they’re perfect for my characters. My hero is Logan Marshall, one of my guys from the Marshall werewolf clan. And my heroine is Rinna, a woman from an alternate universe. I introduced readers to her in SHADOW OF THE MOON, when she helped the Marshall werewolves and their lifemates defeat a mind vampire from another universe. Now she and Logan have their own story.

Rinna’s hiding out from a powerful man who wants to enslave her mind and body. She meets Logan when he steps into a trap for shapeshifters–a trap that’s meant for her. Logan’s astonished to meet a female shapeshifter, since the only ones he knows are the men from his family.

We shot about sixteen scenes from the book, and I don’t know how many of them will end up in the finished product. Book trailers have a couple of versions. One will be 30 seconds. That will go to sites around the Web and be shown in bookstores. The longer version will be on my site.

It was really cool watching the scenes in my book come alive with actors who looked so much like my hero and heroine. Of course we couldn’t use all the locations from the book, since they include a cave and an underground river. So those will be done with "green screen" techniques, where the background is added later. Another scene I’m waiting to see is where my heroine uses psychic energy to blow up a convenience store.

There were other restrictions, as well. We couldn’t use a ton of actors, so most of the scenes are between the hero and heroine. But we did use a few other people who volunteered–or were roped into helping out.

The director is also going to use morphing techniques. Because my h/h are both werewolves, he’ll be turning the actors into wolves. Or rather, turning the wolves into people. This should be interesting, since, of course, when you change from wolf to man or woman, you’re naked. We had a closed set for that part of the shoot, so I didn’t get to see how they did it. Naturally, the actors weren’t entirely naked. And the camera angles are designed to hide any of the sensitive bits.

Now I’m waiting for the editing to be done and anxious to see how it all comes out.

Here are some pictures we took at the shoot.