Last Monday was a Very Epic Day. We spent 12 glorious hours filming the book trailer for Through the Door. Check out some of the stills below. In case you’ve never heard of book trailers, they’re just like movie trailers: short videos that give you an idea of what the movie/book is about and try to convince to you go see/read it. They are becoming more and more common, and some of them are great. You can see some of the best and worst book trailers of 2011 here.

Of course, some trailers, well, suck. There have been books I wanted to buy but didn’t because I was turned off by the trailer (which I know is unfair, because being able to write a good story and produce a good video are two very different things). But I wanted to make sure the trailer for Through the Door was nothing short of epic … so I brought in the big guns. I worked with the awesome guys at Transposition Films and, of course, my amazing designer Justin Sherwin of Firestain. I wrote the voice over, Justin created the storyboard and art direction (and took the photos below), then we met with Nick and Josh at Transposition and the ball started rolling. We put out a casting call and had a lot of talented actors come try out for the roles of Cedar, Finn, Nuala and Eden. It was a hard choice but we finally narrowed it down.

Then on Monday, the cast and crew descended on the 40-acre grounds of A Rocha Canada. A Rocha is a Christian environmental organization with which many of my friends are intimately involved, and they graciously allowed us to spend the day filming on their spectacular grounds. The site they now occupy in South Surrey used to be a hunting and equestrian estate for an “old money” West Vancouver family back in the 1920s. It’s a fabulous filming location — several beautiful old buildings, sunny fields, dark forests, and a rushing stream, all on the same grounds.

We started at 6:30 a.m. in the pouring rain. Fortunately, we were able to juggle our schedule and do our inside scenes during the morning downpour. As soon as the rain let up we grabbed the gear and headed outside, just in case the dry spell wasn’t going to last. But it did, and by the end of the day we had perfect sunlight streaming through the trees. It was fabulous getting to know our actors – Russell Thomas (Finn), Alison Ward (Cedar), and Natasha Quirke (Nuala). It was also incredibly surreal watching real flesh-and-blood actors getting inside the heads of the characters that I thought just lived inside my head. I had a tiny taste of what it must feel like for a writer to see his or her work come to life on the stage or big screen. Surreal is the only word to describe it.

My 6-year-old daughter played the part of Eden, and I’m not just being a proud parent when I say she did AMAZING. She was on set for 12 hours, working almost the whole time (don’t tell the union), and didn’t whine or complain ONCE. She loved it, and she was a natural. I’ve heard too many stories about child actors gone wrong (can you name one that hasn’t?) to seriously consider encouraging her in this path, but I for one was blown away by how well she did, in both acting ability and patience. Maybe it’s because I wish she would show that much patience with her little sister.

A couple of days later we were back at the Transposition studios with actor Samantha James, recording the voiceover. Sam has an incredible voice and totally nailed how the voiceover sounds inside my head. While I was there, I saw some of the raw footage.  It is chilling – in a very, very good way. Once the video is put together (I’m sure there’s a technical term for that) they’ll send it to the composer and he’ll score it, then it will be ready for the final treatment (they tell me that’s when they make it look pretty/eerie/mythical). And then …

The world premiere of this work of art will be here on this website sometime during the first week of May. The plan is that fine people like you will retweet, repost and share it with your friends. We’re getting close to the Kindle release in mid-May, so let’s start building some buzz!

























Jodi McIsaac is the author of Through the Door, the first book in a new urban fantasy series inspired by Celtic mythology. Buy it now on Amazon.