Mar 12, 2012

Create a book trailer in 9 steps

For the release of My Zombie Dog, I wanted a cool book trailer, so I figured - how hard can it be? It wasn't too hard at all, now you can make one too!

book trailer...

I made my book trailer in Keynote and my daughter (now 14 - happy birthday Emily!) made hers in Powerpoint, so I'll show the steps to both programs along the way when they differ.
Your storyboard might look like this.
  1. Plan your trailer. There's lots of styles, you can use still images (that's what we did), you could just use text, or you can try reading an excerpt or having a fan post a review. We'll look at using still images for now. So make some notes or do up a storyboard on some paper. Think about imagery, symbols you might include (e.g. gun for crime novel, or just drops of blood) this is easier than finding several pictures of people, also consider the colour scheme to suite your genre (purple for fantasy, black for crime, green or silver for sic-fi, these are not rules but just think what might suite your book).
  2. Search for images. I use Shutterstock because they are so easy and have a great range of pictures. You might want to try free pictures (make sure you have a right to use them) or take your own. You can often find free images on Flickr. Don't jump in and pay for pictures until you are ready to finalise your book trailer, use the watermarked ones first. This will save you dollars if you change your mind.
  3. Set up your presentation file. You can use Powerpoint or Keynote. There are probably other programs you can use too (some people like to use movie making programs). For each image or message, you'll need to insert a slide. Don't go too busy with the borders or themes. I stick to plain black or white as my background. Make sure you save each step of the way so you don't lose your work.
  4. Layout your text and pictures. Make changes until you are happy with the design. Your end result will hopefully be one minute or less, so you don't need too many slides. Inserting pictures is easy, but a tip is to make sure you save the picture to your computer before inserting it into your presentation. Cut and paste from websites does not aways work well. You should have a picture of your book, or your book cover as well. This is the most important image and needs to be up the most often, or at least for the longest time.
  5. Check other trailers for inspiration, just search 'book trailers' on YouTube - there are gazillions. 
  6. Add audio. Soundless clips on YouTube get boring quick. You can get royalty free music from several sites, I use Incompetech. Download the soundtrack you like and it will appear in your iTunes or main music files. Now, with Keynote your presentation will last as long as the music plays. You can edit the music file, but because I'm lazy, I just picked a music file about one minute long. The music comes in themes, so pick something that suites the genre of your novel. To insert the file in Keynote you just click the media button at the top left and the inspector button next to it. In the inspector box, click audio, then in the media box, pick your song and just drag it to the empty box in inspector. If that sounds as confusing as I think it does, go here to see an image. For Powerpoint, click Insert - audio - audio browser, that opens your media box, choose your music from the list and click and drag it to your first slide. This will open a toolbar for music across the top of your slide, under Audio Options - Start, choose Play Across Slides. Powerpoint tends to leave a picture of a speaker on your slide, so to hide it send it to the back of a picture.
  7. Time your slide show. This is easiest in Keynote, when you export the file, choose Quicktime and here you can choose Playback Uses: Fixed Timing, you will be asked how long you want each slide. For images only, about 3 seconds is plenty, for text though, you might want 5-6 seconds. Unfortunately every slide will play the same length, so if I want some to play longer, I simply duplicate them and have the identical slide play twice, so if you set for 3 seconds, those will appear to play for 6 seconds. In Powerpoint you choose Slide Show - Record Slide Show, and you simply click to change the slides as you see fit while it records these times. You can redo until you like the result.
  8. Save as movie file. As I said, in Keynote this is export and choose Quicktime, in Powerpoint you Save as - movie. Make sure you save it where you can find it again.
  9. Go to YouTube and choose Upload, simply upload your file, this can take quite a while, don't panic, let it do its thing! Here is the book trailer Emily made for MY ZOMBIE DOG (Emily did also use Photoshop to edit the photos where you see the chomp, and to create the zombie dog):
If you've found this helpful then please share!

25 comments:

  1. This makes it look simple. I'll share it!

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  2. Thanks for posting a very informative, useful and interesting blog! It does indeed look simple! Good luck with your book!

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  3. Awesome! Thanks so much for the steps - doesn't look so tough when you lay it out like this! :)

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  4. Nice direct presentation of how to do it. I think a lot of people are intimidated by the process of making a movie or a trailer when it's not as difficult as one might think.
    I had thought we'd get more entries for the A to Z Video contest, but I guess the intimidation factor held a lot of people back.

    Lee
    An A to Z Co-Host
    Tossing It Out
    Twitter: @AprilA2Z
    #atozchallenge
    Blogging from A to Z

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  5. Thanks for the breakdown, Charmaine. Filing this away for future reference. :) Best wishes on the book!

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  6. This is great Charmaine. I've tweeted it. I'll return when I'm ready to make my own! D.

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  7. Loved your trailer... so cute. Thanks for the tips... very easy to follow:)

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  8. Ha! I love it. I hope to one day be able to have a reason to make a book trailer.

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  9. A great post. Saving it for if I ever get brave enough to make my own trailer. Thanks.

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  10. That's an awesome storyboard :)
    I used to do that kind of thing for a living. Unfortunately I no longer have access to the editing suites I used to use... and I no longer have a personal music man either who used to compose scores for my projects. Sigh... Thanks for the great info and helpful links.

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  11. You make even me believe even I could do this! Thanks Charmaine.

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  12. Great trailer. Very clever too. Thanks for the information. Good luck with the book.

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  13. I'm a wuss when it comes to all things techy. I will more than likely hire this out. Haha!

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  14. Thanks for the info, have copied it and saved it for future use. You make it look simple!

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  15. Charmaine,

    The book trailer blog was very simply laid out. That might make it easier for others to consider creating their own. I want to let you know that I am a composer of very affordable (almost free), royalty-free music for video trailers for books. I recently launched a new website and I am now in the process of getting the word out. I was unable to contact you via the "contact me" link. If you have a need for inexpensive royalty-free music for video, please visit my website at www.harrywoodummusic.com and listen to some samples.

    Thank you for your time and may you enjoy continued success.

    Harry Woodum

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  16. I just twittered and FaceBooked your trailer, Charmaine.

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  17. Thanks for all the awesome comments here. I'll be really happy if I save you some time when it comes to making your own trailers. And it's great to have another source for music.

    Also huge thanks, I've seen the MY ZOMBIE DOG trailer being circulated on twitter a few times. Much appreciated!

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  18. Great tips! I love this post. And I use stick men drawings to visualize what the heck I'm trying to write. And I will definitely Tweet this!

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  19. Thanks for the great tips. My son has a movie making software--not that he's uses it. But at least now I have something for making trailers with when it comes to that. Not that I know how to use it. :P

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  20. Love it! You are an awesome teacher and I'm your newest student. I'm going to try this for my novel. Just for fun, mind you, my agent's still gotta land that publisher :)

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  21. Extremely helpful! I'm definitely bookmarking this post. :-) Maybe one day I'll have to make a trailer and I'll need all the tips I can get.

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  22. Thanks for stopping by my blog. I will be back again.

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