Presenting...the official trailer for Adaptation!

Yesterday, the official trailer for Adaptation launched on SF Signal. Thanks, SF Signal! I'm very excited to share it with you here today because I LOVE IT. Book trailers can be a funny thing. In the old days (of, say, 2009) they used to be slideshows with captions and dramatic music. Now that we're a couple of years into this book trailer making thing, some have become elaborate productions that resemble big-budget movie trailers. And do people even watch trailers? Are they effective in getting someone interested in reading a book? The jury's still out on that one.

I admit, I wasn't initially planning to make a trailer for Adaptation because book trailers have gotten so elaborate lately. I felt like the time for my good old home-made book trailers of yore had passed. So I was going to pass this time around, too.

Until I saw the trailer for Nina LaCour's The Disenchantments. Now that was a trailer that made me want to pick up the book and read it. It wasn't overproduced; it felt authentic. It was short — 30 seconds only — which I think is just about the perfect length for what is essentially an ad. And the feel of the trailer was just fantastic: young, light, fun. When I learned that Nina and her friend and co-producer, Amanda Krampf, were starting up Less Than Perfect Productions to make more trailers, I knew immediately that I wanted them to make a trailer for Adaptation.

Nina and Amanda live in the San Francisco Bay Area, so it was even more perfect. We were able to shoot the trailer on location, and next month I'll blog more about the behind-the-scenes details of our shoot. (We went to a mausoleum!) For now, I'll say this: the trailer turned out exactly as I dreamed. I wanted it to be creepy but real. Adaptation is a sci-fi thriller, but it's set in the real world. I didn't need special effects; I needed something a little gritty. I didn't want to summarize the whole book in the trailer; I just wanted to hook viewers, to leave them wanting to know more. I think (and hope!) that this trailer does all that.

Without further ado:

Directed by Amanda Krampf Produced by Amanda Krampf and Nina LaCour Videographer: Joshua Blank Narrator: Matia Emsellem Featuring: Roma Oeh and Evan Pricco

What do you think? Adaptation comes out Sept. 18! (Preorder from Amazon, Barnes & Noble)