Blog Post #7: I Made a Book Trailer for "Everywhere Blue"!

Click here to watch my book trailer for Everywhere Blue!

I'm not going to lie, it took me quite a while to put this one-minute and 26-second video together. It's not that I didn't enjoy making it- I actually ended up quite loving the process and end product- but I spent a significant amount of planning, constructing, and tweaking my video to make sure that I was accurately representing Massler's wonderful eco-narrative, Everywhere Blue. And, more importantly, I had to achieve this lofty goal while working within the restraints of Animoto's video-making software. This is the first time since middle school that I have used Animoto, and while having a free account was still a bit restrictive and annoying at times, I found it just as user-friendly as it was back in the day. I remember my 7th-grade Spanish teacher being quite a big fan of the website, so maybe I had a fairly seamless experience "making" this trailer because I was able to dust off and use the skills she taught us. I am grateful for the time she took working with us to navigate and purposefully use the website since, as Jenkins points out in Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture, "simply passing out technology is not enough," and teachers must provide an equitable playing field for students by coupling it "with new educational initiatives to help youth and adults learn how to use tools efficiently" (13). Having a free account meant that I had to find and drag in my own images and videos and that some other design/music features were off-limits, but I would nonetheless recommend signing up. The opportunities for play and creativity on there are pretty impressive, and I will most definitely be revisiting this website as both a student and a future ELA teacher. 

When it came to creating the book trailer itself, I mentioned that it took quite some time because I wanted to be deliberate with nearly every aspect of the video, from the background music to the images to the color and size of the font. The cover of Everywhere Blue served as the major inspiration for the layout and images I used in my trailer since it was so rich in visuals that, in my opinion, captured the essence of the book (blue butterflies, instruments, an "underground"/missing figure, icebergs). The cover is also, of course, blue to match the metaphorical use of this color throughout the novel. I made my video's background, font, and accents various shades of blue to set this somber yet grounded tone, even experimenting with darker shades to signal shifts in the story (ex: a dark blue/black background when Maddie and her family respond to Strum's disappearance). Finding images that matched the characters I created in my head was a bit of a struggle, but I made do with what was available on google and focused on ensuring that the people captured the age/emotional state of the characters. Being intentional about which slides "needed" images or not was also important; sometimes I believe that words should get all of the "space" so that they can make the right amount of impact. 

Sound was another crucial piece of my trailer-building process. It was one of the main reasons why I wanted to do some sort of video presentation of Everywhere Blue- music is such an important piece of Maddie's identity, and is even discussed as a way for her to express her emotions. I didn't just want to click on the first option available under the "dramatic" music category on Animoto, and instead took my time really searching for a song that had a mood and pace that would fit the mysterious and somber tone of the book/its premise. I also found that selecting the music first helped set the tone for the rest of my creative process, and I looked for ways to reflect the shifts in the song's pace with the shifts in color and word choice on the slides. To what extent I was successful in this, I'm not too sure. I had fun, nonetheless, and absolutely loved getting the opportunity to share my reading multimodally!