Sometimes you have to eat your dinner first, and sometimes you get to head straight for the sundae bar. This post is of the vegetables-first variety. Once you do your homework, you’ll get a fun surprise at the end.

This is our friend David. In addition to being a Broadway actor, award-winning composer, and commercial pilot, David is a filmmaker. And so we were very pleased when he agreed to bring all of his cameras, tripods, lighting units, and other movie making equipment down for a visit.

Why did we require a sudden influx of video equipment, you ask? Because Ten Thousand Stories goes on sale tomorrow. And so we are desperately in need of a trailer. Enter David like a white knight with a saddlebag full of SD cards.

It probably will not surprise you to learn that David’s single favorite part of the shoot was attaching Robbi’s microphone.

Getting my own mic attached was not my favorite part, partly on account of my having (just slightly) more chest hair than Robbi.

After David set up his equipment, there were frantic preparations to be made, namely unwrapping 40 rolls of pennies…

…into two mason jars. Perhaps you are wondering why we needed all these pennies to be in those jars. That’s good. That’s called dramatic tension. To prolong the tension, and with it your enjoyment, we are not going to tell you at this point in the post.

Eventually it was time to start shooting. We had a plan, which is to say, we had a script and a loose idea of what we wanted the movie to look like. We drew inspiration from the Dollar Shave Club video, which, if you haven’t seen it already, is pretty wonderful.

We had a series of jokes and gags planned, but as we practiced and filmed, the piece evolved (or devolved, you might argue) from a campy, scripted series of one-liners to an off-the cuff presentation by two people truly excited about sharing their book with the world.

David sat behind the camera, giving feedback and advice. He has an expert sense of how things should look, what will read, and what minor adjustments might make a huge difference in the final product.

We did take after take until, finally exhausted and tired of hearing ourselves talk, we called it quits.

The next morning, Alden and I drove David to a tiny airport on Kent Island.

Had some hugs on the runway.

And wished him well as he took to the skies.

David got home, loaded the files into his computer, did some editing and some more editing, and sent us a final cut for review. We couldn’t have been more delighted. It is so nice to have talented, generous friends.

Here, without further ado is the dessert we promised you at the start: the trailer for Ten Thousand Stories. We hope you think it worth the fuss.

Here is a photo I couldn’t show you before without ruining the surprise of what we had in mind for all those pennies. Fortunately, we only had to do the dumping penny take once. Unfortunately, the pennies were all wet (because the jars were all wet because the jars had been very dusty and so I washed them) and so this copy of the book got all wet and wrinkly. The sacrifices we must sometimes make in the name of art and commerce.

The penny cascade was the only gag that remained once the others were banished to the cutting room floor.

If you like our trailer, please share it with your friends, put it on your Facebook wall, Tweet it, Tumblr it, or shout it from the mountaintop.

Or whisper it in the library, as the case may be.