Creating Book Trailers With Animoto
Book trailers are hooking teen readers through media that speaks very personally to them and are connecting teens to books in an entirely new way. These trailers are finding a very comfortable home on websites like TeacherTube, YouTube, and most recently on library webpages. Book trailers are similar to movie trailers in that they rely on visual and audio media to leave viewers anticipating and eager to know more, but book trailers can’t draw upon visual images and tangible characters from the actual movie itself.
The trick to creating successful book trailers is to capture the essence of the plot and characters through carefully selected visuals in a way that doesn’t spoil the mental images that make a book personal and unique to its readers. Ambiguous images and videos of objects that strike emotional chords and convey the theme in a book work well to pique interest without ruining the reading experience. A free, user-friendly, downloadable application called Animoto produces TV-quality videos using photos and video clips in just minutes. Animoto is perfect for making or, even better, assisting patrons and students in making their own book trailers.
Book trailers are hooking teen readers through media that speaks very personally to them and are connecting teens to books in an entirely new way. These trailers are finding a very comfortable home on websites like TeacherTube, YouTube, and most recently on library webpages. Book trailers are similar to movie trailers in that they rely on visual and audio media to leave viewers anticipating and eager to know more, but book trailers can’t draw upon visual images and tangible characters from the actual movie itself.
The trick to creating successful book trailers is to capture the essence of the plot and characters through carefully selected visuals in a way that doesn’t spoil the mental images that make a book personal and unique to its readers. Ambiguous images and videos of objects that strike emotional chords and convey the theme in a book work well to pique interest without ruining the reading experience. A free, user-friendly, downloadable application called Animoto produces TV-quality videos using photos and video clips in just minutes. Animoto is perfect for making or, even better, assisting patrons and students in making their own book trailers.
It's so simple to do. Choose a song to capture the tone of the book as the soundtrack to your video and Animoto will analyze every nuance of it. Producing a totally unique video each time with intriguing transitions, no two videos are ever the same. Animoto has hundreds of quality, copyright-free songs to choose from or utilize one of the many websites containing copyright-free music. Then simply choose your photos (or select from Animoto’s quality images) or video clips, add optional text, and Animoto generates the video for you using music recognition tools to change slides at just the right moment in the song.
Sharing the book trailers is a cinch as well. Once the video is created, it will give you the choice for what you want to do with it next. Add them to your website, post them on your blog, e-mail them to friends, put them up on YouTube, TeacherTube, Facebook, or other applications, or download them onto your computer. Animoto book trailers will have your readers diving headfirst into books. Visit http://animoto.com/education to sign up for your free educator account. (Heads-up – don’t get discouraged when it takes several days before they respond with your educator code. It’s well worth the wait.) In addition to scanning the thousands of book trailers on YouTube and TeacherTube, visit the Pettus Library blog to see how one librarian uses Animoto to capture teen’s interest in books through online trailers. http://pettushs.blogspot.com/
Once you set off to use Animoto for the first time, PLEASE contact me if you have any questions at all, no matter how basic, or just need a little guidance along the way. I am by no means an expert and if I can't answer your question, hopefully together, with our shared resources and colleagues, we can figure it out.
Anna Bley
Library Media Specialist
Papillion-La Vista South High School
(402) 829-4600
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