Tips for creating a great book trailer:
- Don’t go overboard with the effects and transitions.
- Choosing the images and music that you want will probably take the most time. Make sure you put them in one folder on your H drive, a flash drive or in OneDrive
- If you’re not sure what you’d like to write about the book, consider using quotes from the book.
- Capture the viewer by using rhetorical questions near the end of the trailer (e.g. “Will Man Jack ever be able to find Bod?”).
- NEVER reveal the ending of the book.
- Be careful to limit the number of text slides in a trailer. A lot of trailers actually look better when the whole story is told through images and do not use text.
- Sometimes one word can describe a scene better than a whole sentence.
- Typical trailers run one to three minutes in length. Too little and the trailer doesn’t capture the book. Too much and you lose your audience.
- On the last slide of your trailer, be sure to give credit for all of the content that you used (quotes, images, music).
Adapted from:
Bates, Naomi. "Weaving a Virtual Story - Creating Book Trailers 101." Knowledge Quest Jan. - Feb. 2012: 72-76. Print.
