PYGMY - book trailer

Book promos are like haiku. So much to tell in such a tiny space.

I find this specialized niche of production fascinating, since you have thirty to sixty seconds to try and set up a book in a film style, and make people want to go get it and read it. All the more so when all they give you is a handful of data and a title. This is at once very freeing and very nerve-wracking, because you're having to make a lot of guesses as to what will please the client and work for the audience, which are not always the same thing.

So I really am impressed by what was done here with so little to work from. One of the challenges is to keep the author's voice and style prominent in how you express the ideas of the book, and keep your own voice muffled. I think it mostly succeed at this.

I really like the 2.5D animation look, and the motion graphic work here is very good. If anything, I would speed up the transition points a little bit, but I think this promo does the job and certainly has a distinctive look on screen. If it was for book store in-house use, I would approach the timing and layout differently than if it was for TV commercial use, for in-store promo, you could add more stuff about the author, reviews, etc. but for TV you need to have a narrower, more laser-like focus. In this case, that focus is on the plot beats, which sound like they could work for a full-length movie as well as a book.

This is a very interesting type of work, I would love to learn more about it in a COW magazine article some time.