There seems to be a growing trend towards advertising books using a short movie trailer. Most of the large publishing houses produce one for new books they release; either that or the authors have deep pockets!

Not wishing to be left out I decided I had to have a trailer for my books. My publisher being small and my pockets being empty I had to produce one myself.

So armed with little knowledge, Photoshop, Poser and iMovie I set to work.  I did have a vague idea as to what I wanted so I started with the characters in Poser. Once the characters were produced I added some simple animation.  I made up a couple of backgrounds with text in Photoshop then imported the lot into iMovie.

I used iMovie to add transitions and flying text over the characters. I moved things around and adjusted the timings until I had what I considered to be a passable book trailer.

The one missing element was a sound track. I searched the web for royalty free sound tracks. I needed something dramatic like an action movie theme. I eventually found one I really liked but unfortunately it cost $99 L

So back to the drawing board, further searching turned up a site that sold short royalty free sound tracks that were designed to be looped. I obtained 7.5 seconds for $9, rather more realistic! The only draw back being the resultant looped track was a bit repetitive but hey, beggars can’t be choosers.

So here is Version 1 of my Book Trailer please let me know what you think.

I learnt a lot producing this version so now I have decided to produce something a bit more sophisticated. I might even save up for the $99 sound track. Watch this space!

About Clive

A couple of weeks after introducing the new queen to my second hive I went back to check all was OK. The bees seemed happy and pollen was coming in. There was some capped and open brood so she had obviously been accepted (Phew!) I did not find her but the evidence was at least there.

One thing I did notice was the stores seemed to be low with many of the combs empty. I checked the first hive and found it to be in the same condition.  Being the last week in September I thought it best to start feeding.  Over the following week I fed them 1.5 litres of syrup each. I then left them to it, as I had to go away.

This week on my return I checked both hives. Again I found there were a few empty combs. This year seems to be a rubbish one for bees either that or the hives were started too late for them to build up their stores. I was surprised because my first hive is quite vigorous. The second hive that was a captured swarm and having the re-queening issues I would expect to be a bit weak but not both. (Honey-less toast this year   )

I have started feeding 2:1 sugar syrup again I think I will have to be watchful and ensure they always have a supply of syrup to get them through this coming winter, fingers crossed!

Check out my new ebook  Natural Beekeeping Using Top Bar Hives

About Clive