Creating the Trailer

During the week of April 17th, 2023, Hannah Fichter and I created the trailer for Love Never Ends. I knew right from the beginning of planning stages for this Documentary that I wanted to hide the faces of the featured characters so that their words could have a strong impact on the message behind the documentary, while also teasing viewers to want to watch the full documentary to reveal their faces. I pitched this idea to Dr. Rada and he loved it.

From the initial idea, the next challenge posed was what b-roll to put over the characters talking that would not reveal their faces at all. We decided to find free, un-copyrighted videos online that conveyed the feeling behind our film, including a flower on a grave, rain on an eery day, clouds rolling in a constant cycle, etc.

After this, we decided to include some statistics behind the impact of losing a parent in college, which makes this project stand out over those who have lost a parent at any age, as losing a parent as a young adult has a large impact that is oftentimes unheard of. I was able to find statistics from Fairmont State University, College Parents of America, HealGrief.org, and Frontiers in Psychology. These statistics truly captured that although a grieving college student may not be common, it is an experience that happens to more than we may think it does.

At the very end, we wanted to include a clip from our interview with Laura Ward, a certified grief, bereavement and death counselor who inspired the title of this documentary. This clip of Laura saying "your love doesn't end just because the person died," truly brought the entire trailer together to show how impactful our film is going to be.

While choosing a song, I decided to use the closing song of the full version of the documentary and it encapsulates the feeling of grief and gives full body chills when reading hard-hitting statistics, leaving an even greater impact on viewers.