When I read a book, a movie of the story plays in my head. Same for when I write – the characters arrive on set and act out scenes for me. And I always write with tunage – but it has to have the right mood for whatever I’m writing at the time. iTunes is my best friend. ;P I also love photography (though my pics are no way NEAR as wonderful as my brother’s – he’s a “real” photographer) and I am forever taking pictures of objects, people, buildings, DOORS, animals, trees….whatever I see that has mood, vibrant colours or will spark story ideas for me when I skim through them later.
So it’s only logical that I use a lot of video clips, audio and booktrailers during my author visits and other presentations. For me books, music, photographs and movies are one world. I’m a visual girl. And we are living in a visual world. If you’re an author, teacher, student, librarian or reader of fiction…you’ll have seen a few booktrailers out there. Great! You can also create them yourself. Fan made trailers are flooding YouTube and some of them ROCK! I especially enjoy the ones where school drama clubs or library clubs actually act out a scene. Authors are getting more tech savvy and can create GOREgeous trailers. Or they can hire someone with wicked trailer skills, as I did, with Madison from M2 Productions. Madison is working on a trailer for Second Skin – can’t WAIT to post it!
Teachers can meet technology outcomes and promote literacy at the same time by assigning booktrailers as group or individual projects. Students will have a blast creating their own mini movies based on a read aloud or novel. Trailers can then be forwarded to your school librarians, added to the book’s record in your collection or promoted on your class / library website. The possibilities are endless, people!
Age appropriate booktrailers can be challenging to find, especially at the elementary level. But here are a few sources:
Scholastic.com http://www.scholastic.com/bookfairs/books/videos_all.asp – great site for elementary / middle school booktrailers. Speaking as a library technician, when we have a Scholastic Book Fair, I let these videos play through on our library’s smartboard. Sometimes I crank the volume, sometimes I let them play on mute. But they always draw attention and it’s great when you can direct a child to the book on the shelf right after they oooh and awww over the trailer.
Digital Booktalk: http://digitalbooktalk.com/ – trailers for grades K-12
Movies for Literacy: http://www.homepages.dsu.edu/mgeary/booktrailers/default.htm Here’s a great resource for younger title booktrailers
For junior/senior high and adult lit, booktrailer hunting is a matter of surfing Youtube.
www.youtube.com – Make sure to search for your favourite or most popular titles first, for example use this format: “Shiver official trailer” or the author name and title to get quick results. For a broader search, try: “booktrailer” or “book trailer”, “young adult fiction”, “teen fiction”, etc.). Be prepared to wade through many fan-made versions and make note of spectacular samples to show to teachers, your teen book club members, etc as model examples.
I may be biased, as this is the production company I used to create the booktrailer for UMS (and she’s working on one for Second Skin!), but Madison at M2 Productions is one young lady who kicks booktrailer ass. Here’s her channel on Youtube, where you’ll be introduced to a whole host of young adult titles: http://www.youtube.com/user/signingupagain
www.teachertube.com – Like Youtube, except geared to educators, this site contains video lessons, lesson plans, etc. But also features booktrailers (official ones or ones made by students). Just like Youtube, you’ll have to spend some time searching to find them.
As mentioned before…Digital Booktalk: http://digitalbooktalk.com/ – trailers for grades K-12
Making Trailers:
http://classroom.ldisd.net/webs/rgoodale/download.htm Lake Dallas High School has some great info and offers links to various software programs used to create trailers.
http://www.techlearning.com/printablearticle/8160 A quick guide to creating trailers in Microsoft’s Photo Story program.
For MAC users, iMovie is a great program for creating trailers as you have access to audio, can pull in video and photos easily, etc.
Where to get cool images?
Freebies:
Stock.schng: http://www.sxc.hu/ – FREE photos arranged in easy to use categories or you can plug in a search term. These are public domain, copyright free images to use in your trailers.
Microsoft’s online clipart: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/??lc=en-us – most are free, but the site does link to pro / pay collections.
(Just a thought): If you’re doing a trailer for a graphic novel or a book with graphic elements, you could always scan a page or two and incorporate those images into the trailer.
With Moola:
Willing to spend a few bucks on a stellar trailer, or to create a vlog intro like the one I whipped up? (See my vlog page to check out my spooky graveyard opener – I purchased the clip and audio from iStockphoto) Here are stock photo, video, audio sites:
iStockphoto: www.istockphoto.com
Dreamstime: www.dreamstime.com
Fotosearch: http://www.fotosearch.com/photos-images/exchange-rate.html
I’m sure there are tons of other resources out there, but this will get you started. Have fun and please send me links to your work when you’re finished.