[youtube url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmWDwbWHe2U]
After I decided to publish a daily haiku poem on Tumblr, I started writing haiku poems for submission. My first acceptance and publication was “Changing Winter” for Poetry Haiku (Winter Issue 2013). My second acceptance was five haiku poems for “Words Fly Away: Poems for Fukushima” (Spring 2014), a poetry anthology about the March 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan. The editor posted YouTube videos of poets reading their Fukushima poems. Last week I put together a video trailer.
Unlike the other poets who read aloud their poems in front of a video camera, I wasn’t going to do that. If I read all five haiku poems that I submitted, the video would be very short and very uninteresting. A 30-second video trailer to introduce my haiku and the anthology was a better approach to promoting both.
“Fukushima Seeps” was the easiest of the five haiku to adapt into a video with the last line being about Godzilla, our favorite kaiju who routinely stomps Tokyo whenever mankind does something incredibly stupid, say, building a nuclear reactor in the path of a tsunami. With the new Godzilla movie coming out in May 2014, this became a fun little video to put together.
On a piece of paper, I broke down the video into a script.
BEGINNING TITLE ONE
“Fukushima Seeps”
White text on black background.
Fade in Godzilla theme soundtrack.
BEGINNING TITLE TWO
A Haiku Poem by C.D. Reimer
White text on black background.
HAIKU LINE ONE
Fukushima Seeps
White text over still picture of blown nuclear reactor.
HAIKU LINE TWO
Poisons Pacific Ocean
White text over still picture of Pacific Ocean radiation exposure.
HAIKU LINE THREE
Here Comes GODZILLA!
White text over black background.
MONEY SHOT
Godzilla coming out of ocean still picture.
Fade in and out Godzilla roar soundtrack above theme soundtrack.
FINAL TITLE ONE
Read “Fukushima Seeps”
& Other Haiku Poems by C.D. Reimer
White text over black background.
FINAL TITLE TWO
“Words Fly Away: Poems for Fukushima”
http://fukushimapoetry.wordpress.com/
White text over black background.
FINAL TITLE THREE
Spring 2014
White text over black background.
FINAL TITLE FOUR
“Godzilla” © 1954 Toho Co. Ltd
All Other Copyrights Belong To Their Respective Owners.
White text over black background.
FINAL TITLE FIVE
“Fukushima Seeps” Haiku & Video
Copyright © 2014 C.D. Reimer
Fade out Godzilla theme soundtrack.
After I scoured the Internet for still pictures and Godzilla soundtracks for an hour, I put the video together in two hours with my MacBook and iMovie. This was my first time using iMovie, so I spent an hour learning how to use the program and one hour completing the video. Satisfied with the results, I uploaded the video to Tumblr and YouTube.