Cover art by John Rocco
A few months ago, I created a script and a storyboard for my own book trailer of Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard: The Sword of Summer, by Rick Riordan. It was one of my favorite books I’d read this semester, and contained many fun and interesting scenes that wouldn’t be too difficult to act out. My storyboard and script were sent (with some technical difficulties) to the students of Ms. Lang in Ohio.
SCRIPT
First let me say a few things about storyboards.
It’s a way for movie creators to organize the plot of a movie before it’s actually shot. Basically, how it works is you draw out every scene of the movie and lay it out to see the different angles and expressions . If you don’t like one scene, you can scrap it and draw a new one. If you start filming first—without any plan, organization, or thought—well, you’ll end up with a mile-long list of things you don’t like, and many things you’d want to reshoot.
Storyboard of Disney’s Tangled (source)
Storyboardthat.com is a really good website to use for creating storyboards. I was able to match the scenery and characters (and even their expressions!) to the book as closely as I could without too much effort, and in just 12 simple boxes.
STORYBOARD
This website has more information about storyboards, including tips on how to make your own.
TRAILER
Well here it is…the book trailer
Ten seconds in I saw that the trailer was different from my script. 49 seconds later I saw that they were completely different.
But…I totally don’t mind.
This trailer was fabulous. It’s awesome how someone took the effort to use green screen to change the setting from an obvious school environment to some other place.
This is like…gah. I can’t. I’m fangirling again.
The music was also really really nice, and the acting was wonderful and also pretty adorable. The trailer still followed the book, which I was really relieved about. I don’t think my partner was really paying attention to this, but their clothes matched the book. The colors were definitely different, but at least they weren’t wearing basketball jerseys or something. Also, the trailer was put together really well. Something about it just flows smoothly, like it was made by actual directors.
There are three things I’d want to change. One is the font of the trailer. I don’t remember whether the font can be changed or not in iMovie, but all the same, it doesn’t look fantasy or action-y enough. It looks more like a movie about a kid growing up and learning about life. Another change would be to add some dialogue. I’d be even more blown away if there was talking in this. The last thing was probably the one that bothered me the most. It wasn’t be their fault, because I don’t know whether they’d read the novel or not, but the name of the book was written wrong. There’s only one “the.” That’s really it, the rest was very impressive. I was staring at the video in awe the entire time. Maybe I’m just brainwashed by the pretty backgrounds, but I genuinely like this trailer.
I liked writing the script and making the storyboard much more than I thought I would. Perhaps it’s because of my interest in reading. I suppose that if you’re both hard-working and passionate about something, you can truly create something incredible. It’s so great to see one of my favorite books come to life in a book trailer. I might even write some more scripts just for fun.
Shawn Schreckengost Jr., you are fabulous.
