How to Like Paul Again – The Trailers

simpleEnvelopeThese days it’s common for books, especially fiction books, to have short video ‘trailers.’ I’m not usually very big on advertising, but it occurred to me that it there are several useful insights into Paul’s letters that could be squeezed into very short presentations so folks could maybe learn something that they didn’t know as well as get acquainted with the kind of thing that they could expect in the book.

I envision doing 6 or 7 of them, and will add them here as I finish them.

Trailer 1 Phone
This was such an obvious thing to put into a short presentation. In the years before I got an iPhone, though, I used to pretend to talk into whiteboard erasers!

Trailer 2 Goad
Although this is technically about Acts rather than about the letters, the whole business of Paul’s call/conversion is extremely significant to understanding him. Even this slightly humorous clarification shows how God was preparing Paul (then known as Saul of Tarsus) all along.

3 Leaders
Coming soon: the kind of leader that Paul was NOT.

Happily, it was very easy to create these trailers in Apple’s Keynote app for the Mac. I first created a template, trying to use typefaces and colours that are similar to the actual book cover, then worked on the concepts, scripts, and artwork for the individual trailers. Keynote allows you to then go through the slides at your own pace while recording your voice. It then exports to a variety of formats at a variety of qualities; there’s even a way to hack into the sound file and edit that or the slides after the recording. So I could have added an echo into the James Earl Jones voice in trailer 2, but I decided keeping it simple was more fun.

Hope you like these. Oh, and feel free to use them in churches or groups. Obviously, I’d like it if people saw that there’s a book they can get if they want to hear more, but if you feel you need to stop before that last screen, well, I’ll understand.
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