As I put a few finishing touches on the book trailer John and I have worked on, I realize how much detail needs to go into a 2 minute clip. I have struggled with thoughts all night long that we didn't put in the right pictures, or that the pictures don't give enough detail. But, in my heart, I knew detail would be detrimental to the success of this book trailer.
John and I made the book appear to be entertaining and tried hard to entice readers to want to pick it up in the library. But, truth be told, I didn't like the book. It didn't capture my attention, and each chapter was a repeat of the previous...only a different math concept. That's scary when the plot of a book is about learning shortcuts to difficult math. It was like the book was trying to cram all the math concepts, from addition through calculus, into a novelette, and by the end of the reading, I was a bit turned off to math...AND I'M A MATH TEACHER!!!!!
This is, however, how movie and book trailers hook an audience. They pull out snippets from the story line to entertain and entice, sometimes a bit dishonestly to the genre itself.
My undergraduate degree is in Marketing, so... sure I can market this book. With more time, I can make a book trailer that would make Paris Hilton want to purchase copies of the book to place in each room of her new half-way house for ex-convicts...I can figure a way to make this trailer so "juicy" that Oprah will consider it for her July Book Club...I can manipulate the book's plot on my book trailer so that Donald Trump would call me up and ask for advice on how to turn trash into treasure. My undergraduate training says I can do all that...but, my lifelong training on honesty and ethics says otherwise.
I'll just leave it at that.
2 comments:
I'm so sorry you didn't like the book. I really enjoyed it. There were a few concepts that I thought would be hard for my 7th grade students to digest, but overall I thought it was interesting and informative.
Post a Comment