Stories in Motion: a look inside book trailer creation by Alicia Kat Dillman (guest post)
Today as part of the Daemons in the Mist blog tour, author Alicia Kat Dillman discusses the process she goes through to make a book trailer.
Hi everyone, today I’m joining you here at the awesome Teen Librarian’s Toolbox to talk about book trailer creation.
The first thing I do is select what the trailer will be about, what message I’m trying to get across to the potential audience in under two minutes of running time. You want to catch the interest of your audience while not bombarding them with too much info.
Daemons in the Mist is told in first person so I figured the trailer should be as well. I decided the trailer would be Patrick’s story, told from his point of view, so I chose two scenes from Daemons in the Mist as the base of the trailer. Why those two scenes? Because really, the whole story pivots on the decisions he makes in those chapters.
Most of the lines in the trailer were lifted from actual passages in the book and then edited to fit the format of the trailer. It gives you a taste of what you’ll get in the story and a look into the way Patrick thinks; his voice. The few lines he says speak volumes to all the conflict he’s going through in the story without giving too much away and spoiling the story like our modern movie trailers do.
I take all the text from the passages and develop a script for the trailer which you can see here. Script in hand, I head on over to my favorite stock music site Jamendo and listen to some music. If you’re making your own trailer remember that you cannot just grab your favorite song. Doing so violates the rights of the song’s copyright-holder. Your best bet is to select a song from a stock music site or better yet, create one yourself.
After I’ve selected the song, I head over to Animoto, a browser-based video creation program, fellow author Merrie Destefano suggested to me, which I use to make my trailers. Animoto uses mathematical algorithms to time and mix visuals with the music you select. I start mocking up the trailer with placeholder imagery since Animoto won’t work without images. Once I decide exactly what artwork will be needed to create my vision for the trailer, I hop into Painter and get to work.
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Once the artwork is completed, I drop it into place within Animoto and hit the “Produce Video” button. Lastly I remix the completed video about 10-20 times to get the trailer that most closely fits my vision. And there you have it, the process I go through when creating book trailers.
About Alicia Kat Dillman
Indie author & illustrator Alicia Kat Dillman is a lifelong resident of the San Francisco Bay Area. Kat illustrates and designs book covers & computer game art by day and writes teen fiction by night. The owner of two very crazy studio cats and nine overfull bookcases, Kat can usually be found performing, watching anime or hanging out in twitter chats when not playing in the imaginary worlds within her head.
Indie author & illustrator Alicia Kat Dillman is a lifelong resident of the San Francisco Bay Area. Kat illustrates and designs book covers & computer game art by day and writes teen fiction by night. The owner of two very crazy studio cats and nine overfull bookcases, Kat can usually be found performing, watching anime or hanging out in twitter chats when not playing in the imaginary worlds within her head.
Daemons in the Mist
Seventeen year old Patrick Connolly has been hopelessly infatuated with Nualla for years but he is all but invisible to her. Until, that is, he rescues her from a confrontation with her ex. Little does Patrick know he’s just set off a dangerous chain reaction that will thrust him into a world of life altering secrets and things that shouldn’t exist, because the fog and mist of San Francisco is concealing more than just buildings.
Website Link: http://www.katgirlstudio.com/
Book Link: http://www.katgirlstudio.com/book/daemons-in-the-mist-book/
Seventeen year old Patrick Connolly has been hopelessly infatuated with Nualla for years but he is all but invisible to her. Until, that is, he rescues her from a confrontation with her ex. Little does Patrick know he’s just set off a dangerous chain reaction that will thrust him into a world of life altering secrets and things that shouldn’t exist, because the fog and mist of San Francisco is concealing more than just buildings.
Website Link: http://www.katgirlstudio.com/
Book Link: http://www.katgirlstudio.com/book/daemons-in-the-mist-book/
There is more information on making booktrailers in a previous TLT post.
Leave a comment and a way to get in touch with you and you will be entered to win an e-copy of Daemons in the Mist by Alicia Kat Dillman.
Filed under: Alicia Kat Dillman, Daemons in the Mist, Giveaway
About Karen Jensen, MLS
Karen Jensen has been a Teen Services Librarian for almost 30 years. She created TLT in 2011 and is the co-editor of The Whole Library Handbook: Teen Services with Heather Booth (ALA Editions, 2014).
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Karen- Thank you again for being such an awesome host.
=^.^=
Kat