Tag Archive for A Pirate’s Guide Book Trailer

Fan Mail Wednesday #176: The Video!

This one comes with a book trailer!

Kelsey, who has her own blog, writes:

I really enjoy your book. I am a student in edm 310 at the Univerity of South Alabama. My assignment this week was to make a book trailer. I chose your book because my kids enjoy it so much. I wanted to share the trailer with you.

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I replied:

Kelsey,

Thanks for sending along that link. I love the trailer. Love the focus on the boy’s journey, well-edited, and the music was especially invigorating. It got me standing up, marching around the room, punching myself in the chest. (Which hurt a little bit, btw.) I was, I should say, fully prepped for a reading adventure!

I love Greg Ruth’s artwork in that book. He’s pretty spectacular and has a new graphic novel out, The Lost Boy. A staggering talent and a nice guy, too.

There is also a sequel out, A Pirate’s Guide to Recess. It expands on the boy — Greg and I call him “Red” — and his imaginary world, as it collides with another first-grader, Molly, and her swashbuckling crew of seafaring scallywags.

Good luck in your teaching career. We need good, young, committed teachers, now more than ever. Thank you for choosing that honorable path.

JP

Forget the Book — Watch the Trailer!

Here’s the hot new trailer for A Pirate’s Guide to First Grade — just flown in from Hollywood on a big ol’ jet airliner!

My friends made this as a personal favor to me, at cost. I was surprised to learn these videos are so expensive to produce — upwards to $40,000! — and that they refused to start filming until the check cleared. I guess the Screen Actors Guild is a pretty powerful union. What can you do, you know? It’s not like the old days, when you could just write a book and hope people read it.

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Like the films of James Cameron, you can see every penny on the screen. For example, just look at that tree house/pirate ship . . . that’s all done on blue screen . . . much of the video was shot on location in the Caribbean (the well-tanned director insisted on “authenticity”) . . . and the “mother” figure is actually a product of Robotic Technology, first pioneered at Stanford University. Incredibly lifelike, and worth the $12,750. An alert reader may also recognize the vocal stylings of former child actor, Mason Reese. He really brought the intensity to the shoot, and it was just a privilege being around a Hollywood legend. (Note: Um, I never got to meet Mason, actually, but I did write a check, made out to “CASH,” for $3,200.)

Seriously: I really like this video. I love the homemade feeling and, of course, that it features ordinary boys at play the old-fashioned way. More and more, I’m seeing book trailers that are these elaborate, bloated, phony-baloney productions. How’s a little guy like me supposed to compete with that? With a book? Words on paper? Don’t be so naive!

The answer, of course: Robotics . . . and Mason Reese!