"The Raven Cycle" Fanmade Book Trailer - Media Journal #3
A book trailer, common on Youtube, is as simple as it sounds: it is a trailer made, usually by fans, to promote a book they enjoyed. The particular trailer I found on “The Raven Cycle”, currently a series of three books by Maggie Stiefvater, was made by a YouTuber called Cookie Polly. The book series, follows the main quirky characters, Blue, Gansey, Ronan, Adam and Noah, on their magical and mysterious adventures. The book trailer Cookie Polly created, portrays several plot lines throughout the story as well as suspense given in the novels. While the quality differs, in that it is amateurly made, the goal to publicize the books is the same.
Typically, book trailers are made by fans that cut clips from various other film-media sources to create one video. Sometimes, this may be done through footage the fan takes, but it is mostly commonly a collage of clips from movies or other video forms. Similarly, the fan chooses what audio is put over the footage; sometimes that is a single song that fits the storyline, the audio provided in some of the clips they chose, or audio they produced themselves. The book trailer itself is made for readers the creator feels would be attracted to the book or series they are created the trailer for. In example to the Raven Cycle, a comparison can be made that readers attracted to books such as “The Secret History” by Donna Tart or Daughter of Smoke and Bone series by Laini Taylor are likely to enjoy the Raven Cycle novels.
While the quality is typically less than other trailers, such as movie ones, the message and goal remains the same : to advertise the books to potential readers. In addition, unlike movie trailers, book trailers are created to encourage readers to read the novel being promoted; thus, there is not any video footage the creators can use that are specially for the book, unless they want to use footage from the movie of the book. Therefore, the creator’s of the book trailers must create their own footage or compile footage from other sources to tell the share the interesting parts of the story within the books.
Thus, the creative license usually given to movie makers is not the same as those to creating book trailers. Book trailers are made specifically to promote the book, whereas movies are to simply share the story, even if that means cutting minor details out. The Raven Cycle book trailer made by Cookie Polly depicts the novel almost perfectly, sharing visually the best points of the plot without too many spoilers. Similarly, since the footage is cut from different sources, the viewer is left unsure who is who except for the one main female character being obvious, but the boys being unknown, unless one has already read the series. Having read the series, I found the trailer to be accurate, intriguing, and suspenseful. The goal of the creator, Cookie Polly, was well received even in the comments of the YouTube video, capturing the atmosphere the “Raven Cycle” series written by the author herself.
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