The Book Trailer for my First Novel - ALMOST
Palaces and Calluses by Rebecca Woodhead
UPDATE - If you arrived here from the short URL, sorry, nothing to see here. Everything below is the 'first draft' madness of my first vid. The polished book trailer you seek is in the post above. The short URL for it is http://tiny.cc/RWbookvid Thanks for your interest. Hope you like it. :)
*edit* (21st) Video removed for polishing :) Thanks for all the feedback. There have been many DMs on Twitter about this trailer. People seem split over whether they find it intriguing and want to buy my book (a satisfying number said this) or are just confused (a smaller, but still significant group.) Confusion's not the best response, so I've pulled the vid and am putting together a less confusing one. It will be less of a 'teaser' and have more of the plot in it - which worries some - but I'll try to keep spoilers out as much as possible. Not an easy task. As ever, thanks for all your feedback. Every day's a school day!
*edit* (22nd) After 10 hours work on a vid formatted to the specifications required by the criticisers of the last vid, I asked my husband's opinion on the new creation. His laughter nearly burst my eardrums. I protested that it is absolutely the kind of trailer the big publishers are putting out (it was - I got proper images and everything) and he said it was sterile and, whilst all trailers are cheesy by nature, it was cheesy in a bad way. Idiosyncratic cheese is good. Processed cheese is bad. The processed cheese has been binned. I daren't put it up here in case anyone likes it and I'm forced to keep it here. It's very polished. It's not very 'me' though. *Sigh* Back to the cheese board.
*edit* This is confusing. Going to start a new blog post and... put up the next 'first' book trailer (hopefully The One).
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I am confused about the images of the dog. Is the dog the friend that makes the wrong choice? Perhaps include images of what the main character might look like. It is hard to be engaged, if you don't know who you are routing for.
Yes, the dog's the friend. I thought if I spelled that out it would patronise my readers, so I included the second appearance of her 'friend' to confirm the reference. You're not the first to mention this though, so I may have to spell it out more clearly. I was going for 'show don't tell.' The implication is that if her best friend is a dog she may not be in the best place. There are other strands to the story but I liked the idea of basing the book trailer around this one as there are so many 'romance' based trailers out there and this felt a little different.
Thanks for your feedback. Much appreciated.
From trailers I know you only have 2 min or less to say something - capture a mood or meaning and that's difficult isn't it? But I captured a wistful mood from this - poignant and a bit sad . . .
From this, without knowing anything about your book, I'd guess a woman has some secrets or something happened, so she is going to run away from her homeland to America . . but, then, her friend makes a choice and that forces a choice from her. I did wonder on the dog some - is this one of those "dog and master" stories, or is the dog not a "character" but ? since the "best friend having a choice" personifies the dog...is that what you were going for or...?
I like the "old movie" effect a lot!
Don't know if I was any help at all!
Hi Kathryn,
Yes, this one's only 1 minute - I could have stretched it out further. The mood you captured is exactly what I was going for.
Detail-wise, a few people on Twitter have picked up what I threw out but some people are confused by the trailer so I think I need to spell it out a bit more.
This is an interesting process actually. Once you've read the book, this trailer will make total sense but I realise that's not the point of a trailer. The dog IS the friend in this instance - more friends arrive later in the story but the dog is the first friend you meet. An American company plays a big part in the story, and Mary's mother is American.
I hoped I could release a kind of 'teaser' trailer that didn't spell the story out, but was intriguing. This once seems to intrigue some and confuse others so I might have to tinker with it. Very interesting to read the feedback. Thanks for sharing it.
Past 1am now and still working on the new improved vid. Too tired. Spent food money on stock photos to give more of the plot - as that seems to be the main gripe - but am a bit worried about spoilers. Will keep at it. :)
I'm late to the party again! I wanna see that trailer. Keep me up on what's going on, ya hear? So excited for you!
:) Thanks for popping over. Posted it in next post - http://tiny.cc/RWbookvid