From The Backlist: "Making A Book Trailer" by Dakota Banks

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We all love a great book trailer -- and Dakota Banks' "how to" is an equally great read. 

This is an excerpt from the original post, but fear not, there's  a link at the end so you can click through to read it all! 

Also, Dakota currently has a giveaway for all four of her Immortal Path series' e-books, so you may like to check that out as well. :-)

Enjoy!

Making A Book Trailer 

by Dakota Banks

...

One of the first things a professional trailer production company wants from the author is a working script. Another reason I hesitated to go to the pros was that I didn't have a script and couldn't seem to come up with one. I seemed to be writing one almost as dialogue between two characters - focused and limited in its representation of the Big Picture. I finally threw out all my drafts of that script and wrote a new one in five minutes. It dealt with concepts rather than details. Shazam! Pictures began forming in my head for the visuals to go with the words. To see how high-level this script is, here is the one that freed me:

Sumerian demons survive to this day
causing chaos, destruction, and death
with the help of Immortal human assassins.
Maliha was an Immortal assassin
until she defied her demon
and became a rogue with a new agenda ...
balancing lives she’s taken with lives saved.
Immortal Jake is Maliha’s true love
or is he?
Maliha’s mortal friend and partner
is kidnapped.
Maliha must watch him die
or accept a sinister new master.
She’s damned if she does ...
and damned if she doesn’t.
Is there a way out for her?

Notice that it's broken into short lines that are easy to read and dramatic when presented one per "page" of the trailer. This is the first step in making a quality trailer yourself. Each of these lines suggested an image to me (except lines 2 & 3, which go together with the same image). I looked for places to purchase still images, video clips, and music, and ended up using istockphoto.com, which in my opinion has the best selection. (Others are bigstockphoto.com and shutterstock.com, plus many more.) These are media that you purchase a Standard license to use, and don't have to pay any royalties per use.

I used Windows Live Movie Maker, a program that came with Windows 7 and is available as Windows Movie Maker in earlier versions of Windows. You might want to play around with it by using some family photos and text overlays just to get the hang of it. You'll end up with a nice movie you can share, too.

When you select images or video clips that go with your script, you can initially download a "comp" - complimentary - version with a watermark that can be put into place in your trailer to see how you like it before you pay for it. This is very useful! I ended up building my entire trailer, including the music, from comps so I could see how it flowed before buying any of the media. There finally comes a time when you have to lay down your bucks, though, because the watermarks are a dead giveaway that you're using unlicensed media. Before distribution, then, pay for everything and substitute the real stuff in your movie.

In my case, I used Photoshop to crop some of the images, but there are a lot of image processors for simple editing, like Picasa, that will do the job for free. You may end up buying a video clip that runs for a minute and only want to use 20 seconds of it. You can do that kind of editing right in Windows Movie Maker, which allows you to specify how long each image or clip stays visible on the screen.

...

To read the full post, including selecting music and watching the finished trailer (worth it!), click here.

To check in on Dakota and check out her Mortal Path giveaway, click here.

Thoughts on Book Trailers

The Blood in the beginning - An Ava Sykes Novel #booktrailer

 Hi Everyone,

What's your take on book trailers?

I'm still unsure ...

Book trailers have been around since 2006, and present an interesting paradox: They use audio/visual media to promote the textual. The question is, can it work.

Book trailers evolve for multiple reasons, not the least because information is now transmitted in speedy, cinematic and downloadable bites. It's almost like going back to the picture book mentality, that stage of reading where we relied on the visual to trigger understanding of the textual. Only this is so much more controversial.

Shirin Najafi puts it like this:

A trailer, in a way, violates a book’s very construction.

But does it?

For readers who don't have time to "spend leisurely afternoons in bookstores or reading extensive book reviews,' as Najafi puts it, a two minute book trailer can give them a feel for the author and their newest release. Maybe. Running on low budgets and using cheap stock footage and sound tracks can create a result that could do the novel a disservice. Going first class and spending thousands on the clip can result in a trailer that gives away too much story or worse, amps the reader for something the book is not going to deliver. Cathy Yardley's crit on book trailers include:

• They don't get a lot of views
• Low return on investment
• They can't up your SEO

Hmmm. Not too inspiring, but there are some trailers that really rock it. I don't know if they sell books, but as a medium on their own, they are rich in value. And it's value that will encourage people to view and share. Catherine Ryan Howard says:

People aren’t using social media because they love being sold stuff. They’re using it ... to find entertainment, information and connection.

If you want your book trailer to promo your book, or bring attention to a new series/author, it might pay to keep this in mind. Is it entertaining? Informative? Creating connections?

Book trailers that work for me:

The Blood in the Beginning - An Ava Sykes Novel

I am fortunate to have Shawn Wilder at MonkeyMe Films as my beautiful Pisces sister AND a fan of Ava Sykes. She's read multiple early copies and knows the story inside out. When it came time to play with trailer ideas, she had them, buy the truck load.

The Miriam Black Novels by Chuck Wendig

 The combination of voice and text in the Miriam Black trailer is utterly engaging, and dark, but more like an audio book than a trailer, perhaps?

Harry Potter Book Trailer

With Harry Potter trailers, Scholatic's budget probably wouldn't have been an issue. And there were the films to pull from. It has a Disney feel. Probably why my inner child likes it so much.

There are many great book trailers out there, but in an article that pulls no punches: Aliza Weinberger explains why book trailers often make readers cringe:

Because most are terrible.

Ouch!

I'm not going to show any examples of trailers in that category, mainly because I have so much respect for authors who are out there writing books and promoting them in every way they can. And, trailers, for better or worse, are art forms. What sparks me might get the brush from another, and vise versa. So . . . do no harm. :)

I won't encourage a rotten tomato contest here, but if you think we can LEARN something from one that doesn't work (for you) please feel free to link to it in the comments. I also want to see what you do love, and of course, what you think of Ava Sykes.

So what's it to be? Book trailer or non?

Share your thoughts. There are emerging writers and published authors out there that want to hear them!

xxxKimmy

Kim Falconer is a Supernatural Underground author writing urban fantasy, paranormal romance, YA and epic science fantasy novels.

You can find out more about Kim at AvaSykes.com, the 11th House Blog, and on FaceBook and Twitter.

She posts here at the Supernatural Underground on the 16th of every month and runs Save the Day Writer's Community on Facebook and GoodVibeAstrology.com.