JCPL Teens

You’ve seen a trailer for a movie. You get excited and watch it over and over, jonsing for the day the movie is released. You know to be annoyed when they show all the best scenes in the trailer and then the movie is a disappointment. But what if telling the best parts was a good thing? That’s how a book trailer works – it’s about a book instead of a movie and it tells you the best part in hopes that you will be interested in reading the book.

 

We librarians adore a good book trailer and watch them all the time! Here are some resources to help you get started in making trailers about your favorite books.

 

Watch book trailers to get ideas for how they work. Search YouTube for the name of a book you enjoyed to find samples. Or just search for “book trailers” to see what’s out there.

 

Read the book! You can’t make a good trailer from a book you haven’t read. Find that pivotal scene that makes the book fabulous for you and figure out a simple way to express it, using motion video or still photos. Write a script to go over the visuals and choose some appropriate (and copyright free) music.

 

There are free movie programs available. If you have Microsoft Windows on your computer, you probably have Windows Movie Maker; Mac users likely have iMovie. If you need an online movie maker, try Animoto, Digital Storyteller, or Prezi.

 

Keep your trailer short! Most commercials are only 30 seconds. Good videos can go up to about 4 minutes but they better be interesting to be longer than a minute or two!

 

Once it’s done, post your trailer on YouTube and send us the address! You can leave it in the comments section below. We would love to see it and may even feature it on our blog.

 

PS – these details will help you enter our Teen Tech Week SRC video contest too! The deadline is February 28^th so don’t delay!