Book trailer for Fairy Doctor Falls in Love is on my YouTube channel, which you can find by clicking here.
How I made my book trailer
Making a book trailer seemed impossible at first.
I couldn’t figure out how to do this. How do you make a video about a book? I researched Light Works and Open Shot. Both of these are professional video editing programs, so if you know what you’re doing, then they’re great. I even got busy with 3D art and animation with Blender – only to cry as it crashed several times during my tutorial. (Probably because my computer is 4 years old and has the processing power of a caterpillar.) None of these options gave me a simple design. (But I found them all fascinating. My new hobby? You guessed it: video-editing and 3D design.)
I dug deeper. I checked out various online options, like Powtoon, Vimeo, Biteable, Animaker, and Animoto. So many choices. Where do I begin? Which one will give me a trailer for my book without costing gobs of money and time?
Well, I started at the top of my list with Powtoon. It worked pretty well for me.
They offer a free basic version and include a 3-day trial for their Pro features so you can test them out. I checked out their video templates and eventually, I started experimenting. I had already collected a few things.
- A basic script
- music
That’s all.
The script was scribbled on a piece of paper, but I’m not good at outlining when I write a book, so of course, my script was messy. I wanted to focus on the Mystery of the Bride.
Did I use a Storyboard?
No. I made my video completely by trial and error and experimenting. I was learning on the fly, but it was satisfying to me to see how it looked and that I was making progress.
The nice thing about Powtoon is that they don’t overwhelm you right away. They encourage you. The loading icon shows ‘Loading Awesomeness’
Creating the Trailer
I’m an animation fan, so I picked the ‘whiteboard’ look, rather than entirely realistic. Next, for the background. I wanted something bright and tropical and found the swimming pool. It’s not ideal, but it’s playful. There is a swimming pool in chapter 3.
The first panel I edited was the last one, showing off the Title of the book. I borrowed the animation from a template, then added a heart and the little pink explosion.
None of the characters in their stock art worked for my story – too generic, and not diverse enough.
Mostly, I used the play button to test, test, test
The smaller gray play button lets you play just the panel you’re working on. The larger blue one plays the video from the Gray Triangle. Remember to slide this triangle to the beginning if you want to sample your entire video.
The Sound worked okay.
I lost the sound menu after it first appeared and then couldn’t find it, but it’s right there with the button that looks like a volume control. Add your music or use one of their tunes. After I added the music, I made sure my panels and effects were in sync with the sound. Unfortunately, you can’t add sound effects. Only a music track and a voice-over track. You can’t control where the music or voice begins, either. It plays through one panel, or it plays through all.
What did you think of my first book trailer? Be on the lookout for more of them. Maybe this is like a teaser trailer. Then I can make a longer full trailer. And perhaps a preview trailer for the next book.