Techno Tuesday: Move Over, J.J. Abrams!

I learned a dangerous new skill this week: how to make a book trailer!  If you are not familiar with book trailers, think of them as movie trailers for books.  I am now already planning to make some trailers for Book and Cookie Club. I think this would be an amazing way to announce the next book!  

The process of creating my book trailers required some time, beginning with deciding which book to feature.  I was originally going to make one for I Text Dead People by Rose Cooper, which is the Book and Cookie Club book for October.  As I was putting together my trailer, though, I realized that I could not remember some of the plot points because I had read it over six months ago!  I decided to instead go with a book that was still fresh in my mind from the March meeting of Book and Cookie Club: What We Found in the Sofa and How it Saved the World by Henry Clark.

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I wrote down what I thought were the most exciting and engaging parts of What We Found: a rare zucchini colored crayon, a mysterious sofa, three friends, flash mobs, a devious plot, and saving the world.  Those plot points helped me decide what images I needed to find for my book trailer.

It is important to note that you should always follow copyright laws when you use images and video to create your high-quality book trailer.   I found the bulk of my images on Pixabay, many of which are under the Creative Commons license and are free to download -- as long as you are human.  Computers and robots do not get to download anything. The Captcha will stop them! I had a bit of trouble finding the right image for a trio of friends similar in age to the three main characters of What We Found: Freak, Fiona, and River.  I ultimately purchased a few credits on iStockphoto because I found two pictures that were perfect for my video.  I wish iStock had a student plan because $33 for three images is a bit expensive.

The assignment for this week stipulated that we had to create two book trailers using two different web-based applications.  One application, Animoto, was assigned to us and the other application could be one of our choosing.

Animoto

This is the first time that I have used Animoto.  I signed up under the trial membership to create an Animoto Memories video.  The video styles are organized by classroom, event, and holiday. Each video style has a unique layout and format which, unfortunately, are not customizable.  You are committed to using the font and background that comes with your chosen layout. I liked that Animoto has a stock music library of songs that are three minutes or shorter to help support the tone of your video.  The tracks range from lilting instrumental to creepy organ music. Videos made using the free trial of Animoto are limited to 30 seconds in length. One particular annoyance I encountered was that the preview playback on Animoto’s site was not working.  I had to produce (publish) my video to check my work in order to know what edits I needed to make. Overall, Animoto has some pretty slick features, but not enough for me to justify paying $96 per year to use it.

Animoto Book Trailer

Adobe Spark

I used Adobe Spark for my flyer last week and was curious to see how the video application would fare.  I must admit that I was pretty impressed! There is a tutorial that pops up when you click on “video” that walks you through how to make a video.  The user does not have much freedom to customize the text or color scheme because they are predetermined in each of the eight available themes. For each “slide” in the video, the user can select from one of four layout options: fullscreen, split screen, caption, and title with text.  The stock music library is not as extensive as Animoto’s, but users are able to upload their own audio. Viewing the video was very simple: there is a video reel located on the bottom of the screen that allows the user to play each “slide” and preview the video in its entirety. For a free service, I felt that Adobe Spark offers some great options for the first-time video creator.  I will definitely continue using Adobe Spark to create book trailers.

Adobe Spark Book Trailer