Ketchup

Whew. It's been psychotic, and I'm behind as usual. More questions on the book trailer. I’m paraphrasing from several emails:

Q1) What is that freaky “Blair Witch” voice whispering over the opening chase sequence?

A1) Heck if I know. I think Adad ran a brief audio clip backwards in and out of the music track, which is why it’s unintelligible. The ominous voice at the end of the trailer, with the line about the Plague books being in stores now, was one of Adad’s roommates. Two of them took a stab at it, and we went with Boris Karloff. My guess is that the other guy then found his way into the trailer by doing the “Blair Witch” voice, no doubt saying something *really* scary like “Re-elect Bush again. Re-elect Bush again.”

Q2) Where was the trailer shot?

A2) We did the majority of it in Bear Valley, California, where I’ve been skiing since I was a kid. The ragged peak in the background is Iron Mountain, across the Mokolumne Valley from B.V., and we knew we could access those slopes and cliff-areas easily as well as having that spectacular backdrop.

The weather was a crap-shoot, though. Twice after getting everyone on the same page, watches synchronized, we delayed because of snow or overcast.

(Bear Valley serves as the basis for the fictional “Bear Summit” in Plague Year, btw, although I reworked the geography, the local highways, and the also fictional town of Woodbridge to better the action sequences in the book.)

At various points in the trailer, you can also see local landmarks such as Mt. Reba and, much farther eastward, Roundtop, which sits above some great backpacking country. If at any point the camera had turned west, however, you would have seen that we were just above the parking lots of the ski resort, not lost in some desolate wilderness.

The opening sequence of the running man trying to get to safe elevation was shot in the forest outside of Dorrington, further down the mountain. Again, it looks desolate, but we had to scrap one good shot because it turned out that my car was visible in the background, sitting on the edge of the highway. Ooops! ;)

Labels: book trailer questions and answers, mailbag