Behind the Scenes: Satan's Garden Book Trailers

Note: If you haven't checked out the videos yet, you can watch Dani and Keely's Book Trailers here. 

    
    "I don't know how to tell you this, but we're going to have to buy wood and build a tree house."
    "Kit, you're being ridiculous."
    "I know it's going to be terrible and a lot of work, but it's the only way. Dani and Keely had a tree house, and if we want to make this realistic, it's just what we have to do."
    "You and I both know that we aren't building anything."
    "Maybe we could build a little model tree house and zoom in on it then. You have a hot glue gun around here, don't you?"
    "I'm going to shoot everything right here," she said, ignoring my question. My sister and I stood in her backyard, a fenced-in plot of land filled with scattered bushes and an old, dilapidated playset. 
    "But how? Are we going to hold the stuffed animals up against the fence?"
    "Nope."
    "We're going to shoot them sitting on the patio?"
    "No, I'm putting them right up there," she said, pointing to the rickety playset. 
    "Laura, people are going to see right through the posts and know that we're in a backyard."
    "No they aren't. They're going to see exactly what I want them to see. You just watch."

And that I did. She made me realize that Dani and Keely's story was all around me. It lived in a red leaf and a half-eaten pomegranate. Their heartache could exist inside a single drop of concocted blood. I learned that we didn't need to recreate an entire scene to make it complete. My dramatic imagination may have taken some time to accept this, but my sister showed me the beauty of simplicity. 

Even though I was adamant that we had to film someone lying in a cramped dog cage in the trunk of my CR-V to get the right shot, I was proven wrong by a small slab of the crisscrossed metal. 

Luckily, Laura didn't allow me to go to the lengths I would have gone to create the bloody effect. Who would have thought that barbecue sauce was the secret weapon of fake blood? 

We may have been a little excessive with our blood supply, so it was for the best that I didn't end up being the source. Let's just say that things started to look like we were filming a cross between The Blair Witch Project and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre by the time we were done.

As for Dani's trailer, we knew that our backyard wasn't going to cut it. We scouted out the local parks and found our gold mine right up the road. McAllister Park may not have resembled the forests of northern Massachusetts, but we eventually found a spot somewhat off the beaten path that would work. 

So, we suited up our man in black, packed our smallest production assistant into his stroller, and made our way through the woods one gloomy day in February. I was the unfortunate Dani dressed in green, and I soon learned that being carried like a potato sack on someone's shoulder is a small form of torture. 

For both trailers, all the videos were shot with a Canon 7D, along with the support of a GorillaPod. Once all of the footage was taken, my audio engineer, Tony Sidari, went to work on the soundtracks. Both songs were created and mixed in Logic Pro X, with the help of some bootleg tactics for the sound effects and voice recording. 

With it being my initiation into voice-over work, I sure had a humble beginning. After being locked in a 5x3 closet with a depleting oxygen supply, I can now consider myself an accomplished voice actor. 

We ended up doing a retake and invaded little Leon's room, which upgraded me to a 5x4 space. That time, I was equipped with an actual microphone stand and an extra foot to move. I felt like a true celebrity by that point.

Putting it all together in Final Cut Pro X was the easy part because I had so much to work with. The entire experience was rather fortuitous, from the fact that Texas still had leaves left on its trees in February down to how my grandfather's boxes embodied the ones Keely had in the story. I'm incredibly fortunate to have Laura and Tony as my sister and brother-in-law, two people who will always be such a huge part of my own story. They have given me so much in the last year, and I wouldn't trade our small, bootleg but crafty family production company for anything. I'll never forget our late treks through the woods, our sarcophagus-esque recording booths, the forever red-stained mixing bowls, our nights of "inspiration," and the endless support I receive from the two of you. 

As a writer, I've learned a whole new creative perspective. Story is all around us. It can exist in the simplest of things. It's just up to us to see it.