Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Book Trailer Class Starts Tomorrow

I'm excited about teaching a six-day class for Junior High short term, but I'd be lying if I didn't also confess to being terrified, overwhelmed and worried. I'm always like this before a short term class starts!

I have nine students who are going to be working on creating short promotional trailers for favorite books. We'll be working for 90 minutes each afternoon -- I really can't wait to see how they turn out. Part of the class will be about the legal use of images and sound found on the Internet; what's ok for a class project under Fair Use but not for public performance use. Trailers that correctly use Creative Commons-licensed media will be posted on YouTube on the PiLibrarian channel.

To walk the talk, I've created my own trailer over the past few days, and I can say from this experience that the hardest parts were 1) the storyboard/script and 2) finding legal music. Flickr makes it easy to find CC images, but finding decent music that's OK took a lot longer.

The trailer is for Three Girls and Their Brother by Theresa Rebeck, my favorite so far of the Alex Award winners I'm reading this spring. I don't think I'll be taking it to Cannes, but it's alright. If it makes you curious to read the book, it's done its job. And let me know, ok? Thanks!

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