Pick your book. All your creative choices will depend on this selection. If your audience is very young, gear your creative choices toward bright, simple designs. Older children can handle spookier, darker themes.
Make a storyboard paring your materials and ideas down to the trailer's limited time in a frame-by-frame format. Frames are single shots, pictures or title cards that stay onscreen for a few seconds. In Windows Movie Maker Live, the default time for a frame is seven seconds. This can be reduced to fit more frames within the 30-second to one-minute format of a trailer. The storyboard breaks down what needs to be included in each frame.
Select your visual materials. Trailers use title frames, graphics, pictures and even video. Be aware that copyrighted material may require permission depending on how you intend to use your book trailers, such as posting publicly on a website like YouTube.
Select or create your audio materials. These may include a narrator for your script, or music or sounds of different animals. Some websites offer free or royalty-free sound effects, but music is typically copyrighted and will require permission if you are going to publicly post your trailer.
Record any narration you need for your trailer and save it as an audio file on your computer. Movie-making software generally provides this option to record right into the program. This audio track can be added later wherever it needs to fit into your mini-movie.
Add your frames into the movie-making software in the order you determined beforehand. You can shoot photos, record video or use images you have downloaded and saved from an Internet search. If you need to rearrange the frames, use your mouse to click and drag the frames around.
Add animated transition effects between your frames. This will provide motion and make the transition from one frame to the next more seamless. Experiment with the different types available, including swiping from one frame to the next, blurring, dissolving or even scattering one frame to the next.
Add special effects to your frames. This gives a still photo or title frame motion to make it a moving picture. Zoom in or out, slide in from one side to the other or experiment with different types of colorization effects, such as sepia or black and white. You can do this before or after the transitions are put into place.
Add captions over title frames or photos, if needed. Experiment with different fonts and colors, but make the text large enough to read. You can use your mouse to move the caption text around with the cursor.
Add your audio. Mix and match as needed. If your book is about wild cats, for example, include the various sounds of the different animals. Add narration before, after or even during a music clip.
Include a frame that contains an image of the book cover. This provides the critical information about the book's title and the author's name. You can do this at the beginning, at the end or both.
Include credits to name the people who participated in making the trailer and cite any outside sources for your material. Any copyright information will go here.