Lately I've been fascinated by the idea of book trailers, and their varying degrees of effectiveness. I've been roaming Youtube finding examples of dreadful trailers to snicker at, and gorgeous trailers to be envious of.
Here's the most snickerworthy trailer I've found so far--for Dark Curse, by Christine Feehan, author of the Carpathian series (loved by many, but for me best read out loud with friends and drinks). The company that created it is Circle of Seven, who copyrighted (trademarked?) the name 'book trailer'.
The most envy-inducing trailers are those by Maggie Stiefvater, who not only designs and animates them, she composes and plays the music. What impresses me even more is how she manages to distill her own story down to a few wordless images and still make it compelling. Damn.
Which inspired me to storyboard a trailer for Willow Knot, using silhouettes and (hopefully) animation. If I can ever sit down and animate it, it will be so very very cool. It might only take about a week, once the artwork is done....
While I daydreamed, Zoe Marriott, fellow Furtive Scribbler and published YA author, actually accomplished things. Once she dropped Movie Maker and went on to Photo Story, she turned out three fine trailers, and zoomed on to one for her unreleased Shadows on the Moon.
Well, then, I thought, what about The Cost of Silver? I've already gathered woodcuts and engravings as part of the research & inspiration. They're copyright-free, being from the 1600s or earlier. Couldn't I just string them together and--
So. Yeah. I made a book trailer for a book I haven't finished writing, certainly haven't finished editing. It's, um, an exercise. Yeah! In distilling the essence of the story. Yeah!
The music is La Confrerie d'Ailes, from the album Les Brumes du Passé renaîtront hors du Temps by Anamnese, which I found on Jamendo. I'm kind of torn between it and the second cut, but the cawing crows won out.
4 comments:
:)
I was playing with book trailer stuff too. In the end, I will probably convince one of my kids to do it for me.
Isn't it fun? I bet you could do one yourself.
I seriously need to redo the last still and fix the lettering, but otherwise I'm pretty happy with my first attempt.
Oh, I probably could. I monkeyed with it and had some fun, but I imagine the kids, specifically my youngest daughter, would do a WAY better job.
You have more reliable kids than I do. Chris promised to design me a website, but I hate nagging, so it ended up being easier to do my own from a template.
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