Lately, I've been hearing a lot about making your own book trailer. Everyone has a book trailer these days and quite a few author's are even making their own.
Doing it yourself isn't that difficult. There's a couple of free programs you can use to make a trailer. My computer came with Windows Movie Maker pre-installed, which is what a lot of people use. But, if you'd rather have a professionally made video, there are companies that specialize in making book trailers and teasers. I've seen their finished products, as I'm sure you have, and they're all really nice.
Don't get me wrong. I think it would be worth it to hire a professional-if you can afford it. But, if you're a pre-published author like me, or maybe even a new author, it would be better on your pocketbook to make one yourself. Doing it yourself saves money, and everyone likes to save money.
I say, if you can make one yourself, why not do it? As a creative person, someone who likes to learn new things, and a hope-to-be published some day author, I felt it was in my best interest to learn to make my own book trailer.
Heck, so what if my book's not finished? I have an outline, a blurb (25 words or less) and a halfway decent synopsis to go by. And when my book is completed, at least I'll know how to make my own book trailer. So why not give it a shot?
So I did. I made my own book trailer. Or, at least, I attempted to make my own book trailer.
I opened my Windows Movie Maker for the first time and played around with it a little. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. After tinkering with it for a little while I got the general gist of it, but there were a couple of things I didn't get, so I decided I could use a little help.
I did a little blog surfing and found a few nice posts by authors who'd already been down this road and who were nice enough to post tips and instructions for all of of us Windows Movie Maker/book trailer illiterates :)
One of the first things a couple of the blogs suggested was to make sure you had some good graphics. One article said you should plan to set aside a whole day just to search for the right ones. And after doing a little looking around, I found that that was darn good advice. It did take a whole day, plus some to find the right ones. And I'm not even satisfied with the graphics I found!
I did find some that I felt were decent enough to get by with. So, needless to say, I've made my own book trailer. Now, just for the record, my novel isn't complete, so I'm not trying to advertise or promote, or anything. I just wanted to see if I could make a book trailer and if I did learn to make one, how it would turn out.
This is defiantly a rush job, as it only took me about a half a day to make it. As I said before, I love to learn new things, but, I'm very impatient (one of my worst qualities). I couldn't wait to see how it would turn out, so, this isn't my best attempt, but, at least now I know I can make a book trailer. And the next time, I'll know to take my time.
If you'd like to see how my "do it yourself" book trailer turned out just take a look below.
Enjoy!
Amateurish, I know. But, what do you expect? I am an amateur.
I had a heck of a time with the formatting, which, I'm sure you can see if you played the video. Some of the fonts on the first lines are bigger than the fonts on the second lines. That's definitely not what I intended. When I formatted this, everything looked fine, but, well, you can see for yourself how it turned out.
The formatting thing absolutely drove me nuts (a first born, perfectionist trait. See my previous post about birth order to see what I'm talking about) and just like I do half the time with this blog, I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out what the problem was. Needless to say, I still don't have a clue.
Seriously though. If you're interested in learning how to make your own book trailer, below are a few links to some awesome "Make Your Own Book Trailer" articles.
I'd really like to hear your opinion on this fiasco, so if you have a minute, please leave me a comment and let me know what you think.
Happy video making!
How to Make Book Videos: The Basics by Michelle M. Pillow
Publishers Weekly Article: Trailers for Sale or Rent by Barbara Vey
No comments:
Post a Comment