TRAILER TO INCLUDE ORIGINAL MUSIC BY GANG OF FOUR’S ANDY GILL
American Fever: A Tale of Romance & Pestilence
NEW YORK, NY, APRIL 4, 2012: Publisher Arterial Witness is excited to announce a contest to create the 73-second video that best captures the spirit of Peter Christian Hall’s revolutionary novel, AMERICAN FEVER: A TALE OF ROMANCE & PESTILENCE.
When it came time to issue a video trailer for American Fever, the publisher needed to create something as fresh and original as the source material: a harrowing, yet humorous and romantic thriller that depicts an East Village blogger’s view of an H5N1 avian flu pandemic.
Author Peter Christian Hall has been praised for his own filmmaking. His narrative feature Delinquent was hailed by the Los Angeles Times as “one of those great little near-no-budget movies that every now and then seem to come out of nowhere to give hope for a truly independent American cinema.” Hall also had access to compelling music: The U.K.’s legendary Gang of Four had scored Delinquent and the band’s guitarist-composer-producer, Andy Gill, was eager to write a short piece for American Fever. And the novel’s website contains a gallery of fantastic images contributed by artists from various countries.
Still, the novelist-filmmaker couldn’t imagine what to do. Says Hall: “Live action? Animation? Some sort of montage? I was stumped. I’m too close to the material.” He then realized he should seek fresh thinking via a crowdsourced book trailer. “There’s a world of enterprising talent out there in film schools and tiny production companies — scouring magazines, websites, and the great DSLR blogs — itching to make an fast impact with great images.”
Hall devised the contest, which has publisher Arterial Witness paying $1,000 for the 73-second video that best captures American Fever’s spirit. Contenders can read the novel at AmericanFeverBook.com, download the reviews, cover, and Andy Gill’s fierce soundtrack at ArterialWitness.com, and post their entries on YouTube. No purchase is necessary and people can submit as many videos as they like. The deadline is July 4, 2012 — America’s Independence Day.
“I can’t wait to see the things they come up with,” says Hall, who intends to issue non-cash honors for such standouts as funniest video, scariest entry, most P.K. Dick-like video, most-viewed entry, and so forth. “Surprise us!”
More about the Contest:
For further information, please visit ArterialWitness.com and AmericanFeverBook.com, or email aw (at) ArterialWitness (dot) com. Join American Fever‘s Facebook page.
More about American Fever:
Kirkus Reviews compared Hall’s novel to Daniel Defoe’s classic A Journal of the Plague Year, TeleRead’s Court Merrigan said the live-linked blog narrative struck him as “by far the best stab at the future of the novel I’ve seen,” and the Midwest Book Review concluded: “Suspenseful and terrifying, American Fever will keep the reader glued to the page until the very end.”
For press inquiries, please contact Patricia Gostyla at gostyla (at) gmail (dot) com.
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