Book Trailers: Putting the Multi into Multimedia

In another life I wanted to become a film-maker.

But then I sat in on a film-makers' convention in Manila (ages ago) and noticed that you had to wear a lot of make up and dress like an ice cream dessert.

So I became a writer.

Comes the internet, digital cameras, YouTube and the advent of book trailers and I decided I'd still love to have a go at film.

I mean, you only have to watch a few videos on YouTube to realise that the bar can't be that high. I took the advice of Edgar Wright, director of Hot Fuzz:

People always ask me how to become a director, and I always reply: Get camera. Start shooting. it's not great English but it's good advice. No matter what your background or experience, just get out there.

The Guardian Guide to Making Video (Jan 2008)

I went through my list of writerly friends, looking for gullible, willing and attractive talent to exploit and decided Elizabeth (whose sex-drugs-and-AIDS book The Wisdom of Whores is coming out next week! Buy it! You know you need to!) would be an ideal victim er, subject. She is pictured above preparing to throw a spear.

My equipment was rather thrown together - but hey, Edgar Wright, also says:

Don't let a low budget stop you. Having no money means you have no real limits. Just go for it. No excuses.

So what equipment does one need to create a book trailer?

1. Camcorder - my old hi-8 camcorder was last used filming my daughter falling out of her cot (she's nine now). The battery no longer charges so we had to keep it plugged into the wall. No problem.

2. Tripod - I had my late father-in-law's old tripod but it didn't have the right connection to my camcorder. So I decided to handcarry the camcorder. I brought up three kids, surely that means I've got steady hands.

3. Light - we had no lights but hey, there was a lot of sunshine around.

4. Sound - thankfully my old hi-8 camcorder had a socket for plugging in a microphone. And I had only recently blagged a proper microphone from a BBC friend (I was thinking of experimenting with podcasting) . In fact the microphone was the last piece of BBC equipment out of a news hotspot during one of the Beeb's quick escape routines - but that's another story ...

5. Red lipstick - presentation is key.

So Elizabeth came with a rather bedraggled sheet of paper listing the points she had to make. Lipstick was duly applied, camera plugged in. We could only shoot a certain distance from the open door because the power cable was rather short. No problem, no problem.

We shot a few lines and it was good. Then it began to rain. So we moved inside. Setting up inside involved moving all the furniture away from the door (we needed the natural light from the doorway).

We needed Elizabeth to sit because if she stood, the background would include some unattractive grey window frames. Also without the chair, the camcorder's power cable unhelpfully kept making cameo appearances.

Because we had no tripod, I had to stand rather painfully with bended knees. At one point the knees gave way - you will notice in the intro that in one shot the picture appears to turn over. That wasn't intentional fancy schmancy video work. That was me falling over. Having physio now.

Elizabeth had to hold the microphone, a rather tumescent presence in our video which happened to be about s-e-x. Without the mic you could hear the pitter-patter of the rain, the occasional rumble of thunder, and the neighbour's stereo blaring from an open window.

We tried to recruit some small people from the next room to act as microphone stands but they demanded compensation and Equity membership. So keeping faith with the traditions of indie cinema, we coped.

Here's the finished product -



The video was edited using Roxio Easy Media Creator - which pretty much does everything from capturing and editing music to cutting videos. I suppose next time I experiment with book trailers, it would be more appropriate for this blog if I sought a subject who's actually writing a book for children.

And in the spirit of committed geekery, I've started up my own channel on YouTube:

uk.youtube.com/candygourlay

Now all I need is a beret. Oh and dark glasses.

The Age Ranging Debate

My grandmother was not allowed to go to school beyond a certain age because she was a girl. She was desperate to improve herself and read voraciously, usually romances and serials.

When I was six, I opened one of her favourite book series, a 1930s serial about a character called Beverly Gray, and realised that I could read. I remember it to this day, that lightbulb going off in my head as I discovered that words together formed sentences and sentences formed paragraphs formed chapters.

I couldn't stop reading after that. I read the whole of the Beverly Gray series that long hot summer.

When I went back to school (age seven), I headed straight for the library in search of more books to read.

When I presented my stack of chapter books to the librarian she said, no, you're not allowed to borrow those books. The books were classified according to age.

I must have looked miserable because she sighed and said, all right, read this one aloud and prove that you can read. She made me read a paragraph from one book. And then another. And then another. And then she compromised and allowed me to borrow one of the books if I took one title from the younger reader section.

The majority of book publishers have just backed plans to print age guidance on their books.

In a Guardian piece titled Don't tell me how to buy books , Jack Hope denounces the idea as cynical:

The proposed move fundamentally misunderstands the egalitarian nature of reading - the idea that any reader can choose to read any book - and the choices all readers employ at times to challenge or soothe themselves. It also fails to understand the complex process of choosing the right books for the right child.

It does make me wonder. What will the kids make of it? Will the slow readers skulk around pretending that they are looking at picture books for phantom baby brothers? Will those kids who've had the reading lightbulb go off in their heads find themselves banished to the early reader department?

Here we go again.

Good Titles are It - and Some Shameless Advertising

I've just found out that the new book of my good friend Steve LeVine is now listed on Amazon (out this fall!!!) and it's got a beautiful cover and this humdinger of a title:

As it happens, the book of my other good friend, Elizabeth Pisani, is coming out next week and she's got a terrific title too which is amazing given her subject which is AIDS and the bureaucracy surrounding it.

Here's a screenshot from the outro I made for her video (that's the opposite of intro - and I'll talk about the video in another blog post):

I know, I know, this is a blog about children's book writing but there's no harm in a bit of shameless publicity between friends? That's what the internet is for.

Anyway, the main point I wanted to make was TITLES MATTER.

This became crystal clear to me at the recent SCBWI before-Bologna conference when a panel of agents read the first pages of blind submissions from the audience. They were asked to react the way they would to any submission.

Agents shredding submissions at SCBWI's Bologna conference

And react they did. It was at times a painful experience. It was like American Idol or any other show from TV's humiliation genre. It made me think of all the rejections I ever received and it made me imagine how agents must have opened my submissions and snickered over my leaden words, my unprofessional presentation, my ... but let's not tread that path again.

The main thing is: the agents always, always, ALWAYS wanted to read more when there was a good title.

So work on that title, folks. It opens doors.

Meanwhile, do feel free to buy Steve's and Elizabeth's books. I mean, it's sooo important that we children's authors inform ourselves about affairs in Putin's Russia and the state of the AIDs industry.