| Lead: 7 | Excite: 69 | Amaze: 10 | Direct: 11 |
The joke is that most people go to YouTube to see puppy and kitten videos. Now we have a trailer with cute white bunnies. The images are all bunny shots in various positions while yawning and such. Quite cute. The narrative weaves from general discussion on babies to a revealing introduction to the protagonist.
The images are light and cute, but the spoken words hint at something darker.
Lead Analysis
| Lead | “All babies are adorable” along with video of a cute bunny. This plays on the notion that the most popular videos on YouTube are of puppies, kittens and other baby animals. |
| Excite [interest] | The narrative moves from general discussion to the main character telling us about her lost babies and her ordinary world. |
| Amaze [hook] | “All babies are cute, but none as cute as the baby I’ll have.” |
| Direct [directive] | Title, author and ending up with a plug for animal shelter. |
Trailer Arc
The trailer starts with a general discussion of babies over a video of cute bunnies. At 38 seconds in, the narrative gets personal. The protagonist describes losing three babies, then moves on to broader questions about what would have happened had they lived. This vehicle is used to introduce the character as well as her situation. The trailer ends with the hook, then the book title, author and a plug for the animal shelter.
Publisher Intro
The most adorable cinematic book trailer you have ever seen is for Monica Drake’s hilarious, often times heart-wrenching, and always stylistically brilliant novel THE STUD BOOK.
Sarah studies animal behavior at the Oregon Zoo. An expert on the mating habits of captive animals, she is increasingly desperate to create sweet little offspring of her own. Georgie is busy navigating the terrors of new motherhood—from misplaced postpartum painkillers to the potential sublimation of her identity—while her husband finds solace in bourbon and televised violence. (Dead girl on the screen? Take a shot!). Dulcet, defiantly married and childless, makes a living stripping down in high school gyms to sell the beauty of sex-ed. Nyla is out to save the earth while possibly losing her own teen daughter to the world of drugs and the occult. As these friends navigate a space between freedom and intimacy, they realize the families they forge through shared experience are as important as those inherited through birth.
A smart, edgy, and poignantly funny exploration of the complexities of what parenthood means today, The Stud Book demonstrates that when it comes to babies, we can learn a lot by considering our place in the animal kingdom.
| Author: | Monica Drake monicadrake.com Twitter@monica_drake |
| Publisher: | Penguin randomhouse.com Twitter@penguinrandom |
| Trailer by: | Film-14 Facebook @Film14Trailers |