Chapter 15: Baptismal
Have you seen the book trailer for Lidia Yuknavitch's The Chronology of Water? I’d like to discuss it today because it is so closely tied to Chapter 15: Baptismal. The words you hear Lidia reading as you watch the trailer are taken from this particular chapter, but it is worth noting that Lidia changes a lot of her own words during her voiceover.
Actually, Molly Gaudry was going to try to write this post, but since I kinda do this exact thing for a living, she asked me to write it instead. And since I’m such a nice guy, I agreed. To put that link into context, I’m an ad critic for Adweek Magazine, a journal of record for the ad biz, and their weblog, Adfreak. Now, more than one person has wondered just where the hell I get off critiquing ads when I don’t work in the industry and never have. A fair observation, that. The answer, as far as I know, is that I’m a white straight non-disabled male between the ages of 18 and 35, so literally everyone on the planet Earth has tried to sell me something at least once over the past ten years or so (other consumer groups are targeted by marketers, of course, but my demographic is the sweetest plum). Not having some kind of eye for marketing by this point would violate the law of averages.
My own criteria for what makes an ad work is very simple, and while it saddens me to hold the Chronology trailer to the same standards as Snickers commercials and really bad Vogue photoshops, said criteria applies all the same. Ads, to me, have to answer three basic questions: what is this thing, what does it do, and how will it improve my life?
The Chronology trailer scores high on the first two; the title and author are clearly identified from the start (which sounds elementary, but a lot of ad people live in a weird post-modern bubble where basic details are easily forgotten), and it’s clearly a book. The portion that Lidia reads is well-picked too, in that it’s relatively short and can be understood without much context.
What it doesn’t do is apply the full use of the visual medium to the book’s content, or themes therein. Which is hard to do -- trailers are designed to promote experiences that are immediately, concretely visual, i.e. movies, video games, and television. But guys like Jeff Somers have found the pieces of their novels that can best be visualized and used them as concepts for book trailers, so it can be done. While the Chronology trailer is clear and professional, it doesn’t represent many of the qualities -- rawness, honesty, sexuality, the classically dramatic structure of Lidia’s journey -- that would really sell this book to people.
I mean, if I were to ask you, “What is The Chronology of Water (the book, not the trailer)? What does it do? And how will it improve my life?” you would have some amazing answers, based on comments we’ve seen here in the past. But when we apply these three questions to the trailer, do we feel the same energy in our responses? And, for the trailer to be effective, shouldn’t we?
That’s not to say that the trailer doesn’t try to reel you in -- it does. Watch the trailer with the book in front of you, and read along with Lidia. Notice what words she changes. If the language in the trailer is meant as a lure, the language in the book is the angler fish on the business end of it.
In any case, let me turn it over to you now: Do you think this is an effective book trailer? Do you think book trailers are a useful tool for the publishing industry? More generally, do you think an abstract craft like writing can even be sold cinematically?
