Category Archives: Communicating with a Diverse Audience

How to Make a Book Trailer: Part Three

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camera_operation_klmckeeThis is step three in a series of instructions for creating a book trailer. If you’ve not read the previous two steps, you may want to do so before proceeding.

OK, now you’ve got the core message for your book trailer written and the key elements outlined. The next step is to gather or create the visuals for your book trailer. If at all possible, let pictures tell your story. In fact, it is helpful to make a storyboard, which shows the complete sequence of scenes that will comprise your trailer (easily done with post it notes or PowerPoint, as I describe in my book). Either sketch out or use a photo to illustrate each scene and indicate how many seconds will be spent on each one. By estimating the time for each scene, you can more easily keep your trailer within your target time limit.

If you watched my book trailer, you’ll see that most scenes lasted no more than one or two seconds. I was aiming for a fast-paced trailer that accelerated over time. What times you set will depend on the pacing you are going for (more than five seconds per scene, however, will make your trailer seem to drag). Important point to keep in mind: Even though you are describing a book, which may be read at a leisurely pace, your trailer should be designed differently—to satisfy the expectations of a video viewer, rather than a book reader. By this I mean that the content (what the book is about) should appeal to the book reader, but the way the information is delivered should meet the expectations of a video viewer (brief with mostly visual elements, constant movement and addition of new information, and appropriate music carefully keyed to the visual elements—to name a few). See my book for more detailed information about what video viewers expect.

The media you use will depend on a number of factors, including your book’s topic as well as your abilities. You can use video clips, still images, animations, or graphics to serve as visuals in your trailer. The big question is where do you get those media you want to use? In my case, I had a whole library of film clips and images I had shot during years of scientific research. My problem was deciding which ones to use. Authors of textbooks may also have a good library of images they’ve acquired about their topic. However, most authors will not have a lot of visual media at hand and will have two options: to go out and shoot whatever video or still images they need or use media from an outside source.

The latter option may appear to be the easiest approach, but let me caution you to use only media (images, music) for which you hold the copyright (or have gotten permission/paid a fee to the copyright holder) or use media in the public domain (and even this can be tricky). There are many misconceptions about copyright and “fair use”. Just because you can download it does not mean you are legally justified in using it.  But this is a good rule of thumb: Assume that anything on the Internet is copyright protected unless evidence to the contrary can be found. I devote an entire chapter in my book to copyright as it relates to video.

Your best option is to create your own content. Take your smartphone, iPad, or camera out and shoot whatever you need. If you’ve seen something online that you like, try to duplicate it with your own footage or still images. Collar some friends, relatives, or co-workers and get them to help you recreate a scene or action from your book. Use your imagination and have fun!

Once you’ve captured all the media necessary to tell your story, the next step will be to create the trailer. In the next post, I’ll provide a video tutorial that will walk you through the process of compiling your media into a book trailer using a powerful, but inexpensive movie-editing app for mobile devices.

How to Make a Book Trailer: Part Two

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In this series of posts, I’m describing how to make a book trailer, which is a video designed to attract more readers to a storyboard_cover_klmckeetextbook, a novel, or some other written document. In the previous post, I talked a bit about how book trailers are being used in publishing and then began describing the steps I went through to create a trailer for my recently published ebook—The Scientist Videographer. I explained that the first step is to study other book trailers to get some good ideas and to figure out what style of trailer might work for your book.

In this post, I will cover the second step in the process.

Step Two: Hone Your Story. In this step, identify your core message and then select key elements from your book and organize them in a way that will intrigue a potential reader. What your message will be and the elements you select will depend on the specifics of your book. Begin by describing what your book is about. Strip it down to the essential story it tells (or what it teaches, in the case of a textbook). Strive to condense your story into a single sentence. In my case, I wanted to get across the message that the reader will learn how to make science videos (for various purposes), which will help them reach a broader audience with their science message.

Next, you want to outline some key elements from your book that will serve to deliver that core message. Here is the text I outlined, which was organized into four main segments:

1. Opening sequence

-A few visuals to get the viewer’s attention
-Book title and author

2. What the reader will learn:

-How to shoot your video
-How to interview
-How to edit your video

3. How the reader can use what they learn:

-Film scientific methods
-Film class field trips
-Create animations
-Create video abstracts for journal articles
-Record class lectures
-Create online lessons
-Develop outreach materials
-Explain current events or discoveries
-Raise your visibility and build an online profile

4. Ending sequence:

-Book title and tagline
-Where to buy the book and get more information

That list probably doesn’t sound very exciting to most people, but it would be to a scientist who wants to learn how to use video to deliver a science message. So think about those elements that are likely to excite your readers. You don’t necessarily need as many as I outlined. For an adventure travel book, you might hone your list to five intriguing statements, for example:

They traveled into the wilderness.

Where their knowledge and skills were tested.

Where perseverance was everything…

…and failure was not an option.

This summer—get ready to read..

[Insert title of adventure travel book]

Also, once the visuals and music are added, the words in your list will come alive. Note that I did not include every aspect of my book in the trailer—just a few tidbits that would convey the essence of the book. I planned to get my message across primarily with visuals, so I used minimal text and no voice over. This approach worked for me, but you might want to verbally explain (on camera or with a voice over) some aspect of your book or your motivation for writing it. Another idea is to have one or more people act out scenes from your book.

Also, I set a time limit of one minute (give or take a few seconds) to get my message across. Any longer, and most viewers will stop watching. By setting a time limit, you are forced to focus on the most important or intriguing aspects of your book and leave out things that are redundant or less interesting. You may find that setting a time limit for the trailer also will get your creative juices going (a topic I discuss in more detail in my book).

You can take the same outlining approach I used to identify key elements. Most authors are familiar with outlines and will find this approach most comfortable. However, eventually you are going to have to develop some visuals to compose your trailer. So if you can begin imagining those visuals as you outline, all the better. You can describe these visual elements in words or draw some simple scenes on your notepad to illustrate what you might include in the way of media in your trailer. I’ll expand on this point in the next post. For now, focus on honing your central message and identify what elements to use to deliver that message.

How to Make a Book Trailer: Part One

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clapper_klmckeeA hot trend in publishing these days is to make a media trailer to call attention to a book and its author. Whether you are an educator who’s written a textbook or a novelist, you may be considering a book trailer to reach a wider audience.

First off, what is a book trailer? A book trailer is a video that briefly summarizes what the book is about and what the reader will get out of it. Most people are familiar with movie trailers, which are used to advertise films. A movie trailer is typically composed of clips from the full-length film, which are strung together to give a preview of what the movie is all about. The whole point is to stimulate people’s interest and encourage them to go see the movie. A book trailer is very similar, except that it is advertising a written document instead of a cinematic product.

Why would an author need a book trailer? As a recently published author, I am aware of how difficult it is to get a book onto the radar of potential readers. A book trailer can be a very effective way to promote a book, along with all the traditional approaches of book marketing. A growing number of people are searching for information in the form of video. The public is already primed for visual advertisements such as movie trailers; so a book trailer is a form of advertisement that is readily understood by the public. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it can be expensive to hire someone to create a trailer for your book. Your publisher may not be willing to cover that cost, or you may be self-published and cannot afford it.

So what do you do?

Well, you can consider creating the book trailer yourself. It was a no-brainer for me to create a book trailer to advertise my ebook on how to make science videos. As I explain in my book, how we communicate has changed radically in the past few years, and having multimedia skills, such as videography, opens a whole new world of opportunity for anyone whose livelihood depends on getting a message out to end-users. In the past, one needed a trained film crew to make a video, but today we have inexpensive equipment that can capture high-definition images (even an iPhone can record 1080p video), powerful movie editing software that is cheap and easy to use (apps for mobile devices cost less than $10.00 US), and free video-sharing sites that make it easy to show your movie trailer to the world.

In this series of posts, I explain the process I went through to create a book trailer for The Scientist Videographer and then provide a tutorial to show an easy way to make one yourself with an iPad (or other mobile device).

Step One: Study Examples of Trailers. Watch a few book trailers and study what makes them effective and what aspects detract (ask yourself which parts make you want to buy the book and which ones turn you off). You want to peruse book trailers that advertise books in a variety of categories but especially those in your specific specialty. You want to know how the top sellers in your book category are structuring their trailers so that you can better decide whether to go along with the crowd or make a trailer that sets you apart from your competitors. By watching a variety of trailers for other types of books, you may get some good ideas for your particular book that will make it seem unique to potential readers. Oh, and you might also want to watch a few movie trailers as well. Hollywood has been successfully selling movies for decades; so you may pick up some good pointers from the experts.

Here are a few sites where you can watch some book trailers (and movie trailers). Note that I’m not saying these are good or bad examples, just examples to study:

http://www.booktrailersforreaders.com/

http://www.quirkbooks.com/stuff-categories/book-trailers

https://www.pinterest.com/librarygerbils/book-trailers/  (you have to follow the links to YouTube to watch the videos)

http://www.imdb.com/

In the next post, I will explain step two: Hone your story.

 

I’m Not Interesting, But My Research Is

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wesIf you are a scientist or graduate student, it’s likely that you agree with the sentiment expressed in the title of this post. What’s also likely is that you are totally wrong.

What other people find most interesting and what will hold their attention is a story—what motivated you to study armadillo penises, how you tried to impress your graduate advisor and almost destroyed his lab, or that a biology laboratory has an intricate social dynamic that eclipses its research complexities.

You can hear those stories and others at The Story Collider, which is a collection of podcasts by scientists, science journalists, and other interesting people, who talk about how science has affected them. The effort was co-founded by Ben Lillie and Brian Wecht. Theirs is part of a larger effort to help scientists connect with a larger audience beyond their peers. I’ve talked about this topic previously because it is a key concept in making videos about science. When someone trained in science tries to explain science to others, they often make the mistake of focusing on facts, data, and statistics and forget that what grabs people’s attention and holds it is a story.

The take-home message you will get from listening to a few of these podcasts is that it’s possible to get those science facts across by telling a story about how your work made a difference in someone’s life—yours or someone else’s. Another thing these podcasts do that many science videos fail to do is they make scientists seem likeable, interesting, and even funny. That is an important accomplishment. People won’t listen to your message or watch your video if they don’t like you. Telling a story makes a scientist sound human.

We can’t always tell a personal story, of course. Sometimes it just won’t work for a particular video project. Also, some of us may be constrained by our organizations as to the format, formality, and content of our videos. However, storytelling techniques can help us craft better science videos. I’ll talk more about that in later posts. For now, try listening to a few podcasts at the Story Collider to better understand how stories can make a science message come alive.

In the TEDMED 2013 video I’m embedding below, you’ll hear from Ben Lillie (co-founder and Director) and Erin Barker (senior producer) of Story Collider who talk about storytelling and why it’s so important in getting across a message about science.

World’s Most Embarrassing Dad (and Climate Change Denier)

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Humor can be an effective way to get across a message about an important science topic—and reach the viewer on more than an intellectual level. In the following video created by the League of Conservation Voters, the creators have used humor to poke fun at climate change deniers (and some filmmakers). One might nitpick certain aspects of this video (as some of the video comments indicate); however, my purpose is to use it to illustrate and analyze how humor (and storytelling) might be used in a science video. First, take a look at the video:

Most scientists tend to cringe at the idea of using humor or storytelling in a science communication product. If we are funny, silly, or imaginative, people might think less of us, or—horrors—even decide that we are not “serious scientists”.

In science, we are trained not only to be serious but to communicate with facts and data. When we try to make videos about a science topic, our impulse is to present just the bare facts because we think that everyone else will be as impressed with data as we are—and any emotional injection will diminish credibility. That impulse can be wrong, especially if we are trying to reach a broader audience—one that needs to be reached on a more emotional or “gut” level.

As you saw in the video, Science Fair Nightmare, there are multiple messages presented. The main message is that climate change is a real problem—one that even children recognize as something needing attention (or at least reasoned discussion). Another message is that even the most die-hard climate change deniers (e.g., some members of Congress) can change, once they get their facts straight. These messages are delivered through a series of hilarious skits (science fair fiasco, makeover montage) and satirical dialog between an actor/activist and a climate scientist (Dr. Jason Willis, who actually works for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory).

Not only does the video use humor to poke fun at climate change deniers and some of their outdated and/or wrongheaded ideas, it tells a story. The storyline is the classic “Hero’s Journey” (see previous post about storytelling). The hero (protagonist) is Jason Sherman, a fictional Congressman and climate change denier played by actor Ken Fitzgerald. Sherman embarrasses his daughter at the science fair but then redeems himself by learning the facts about climate change and eventually gets on board with the movement, even installing solar panels on his house. Given the recent childish antics by some lawmakers, this fictional character should ring true for many viewers.

Does this humorous approach work? Well, judging by the viewer voting on this video, the answer is yes. So far, the “likes” to “dislikes” are running 10 to 1. The comments (279 so far) have attracted the usual climate change trolls (and I don’t have the patience to wade through them). The video was posted on October 9, 2013 and has had over 139,000 viewers in about a month. So it appears to be attracting attention, and of those viewers who bothered to vote, the majority liked it. If that voting ratio is indicative of the entire viewer population, then it would seem that most people reacted positively to it. Whether their views on climate change were altered by this video is unclear, but at least they heard the message.

Humor can perhaps be most effective for “controversial” science topics—ones that cause rancorous debate such as climate change. When everyone gets so worked up and angry, people tire of the same old rants (on both sides) and turn off. Humor or an interesting story can be a welcome respite and draw in otherwise jaded viewers. Also, climate scientists, environmental activists, and climate change denialists provide a lot of fodder for satire. This video not only satirizes certain lawmakers and climate change deniers, it also mildly mocks those in the opposing camp and makes the scientist the “straight man” in the piece.

Another point is that humor or satire may be most effective at reaching those audiences who are unwilling to listen to a fact-filled lecture by a boring scientist. Such people are simply not going to spend time watching (or seek out) a video that is likely to bore them. I’m not arguing here that all of your science videos need to be infotainment. My point is that you might reach a broader audience by injecting some humor into some of your videos or by telling a more interesting story about your science topic.

What can we learn from all this? I think humor and/or storytelling can work well to send a serious message, as I’ve discussed in numerous posts. I think humor and storytelling together can be a particularly powerful combination. However, using these techniques effectively is not easy and requires some skill and definitely a lot of planning and practice. Otherwise, it’s going to fall flat. When it works, though, your video will be memorable—and just as important—will prompt people to recommend it to others. That appears to be the case with Science Fair Nightmare.

If you have some favorite science videos that are either humorous or tell a story, please share them.