As avid followers of media—as I suspect those reading this post are apt to be—we’re all familiar with awards for achievements in the communication arts, from books to films to animations and to music and more. At one end of the spectrum in rich media pursuits, communication professionals hone their craft by recognizing excellence and highlighting the work of others in their sector. Awards ceremonies are a time-honored, public way to do this and an expanding field of dreams to capture and honor the achievements in a diverse sector of pursuits. We’ve got the Emmy awards, sponsored by the Television Academy, the original Bammies (largely a San Francisco/LA phenomenon) and the new Bammies (best advocate marketing awards in the B2B space), the Viddy awards (a reboot of the original dedicated to visual excellence in a digital world), the Clio awards (covering creative advertising, design, and communication), the Grammy Awards (a project of the Recording Academy), the Tony awards for theater, and the British Academy Games Awards (focused on the best games each year). And, of course, the Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, established the model for extolling technical excellence in the film industry and has since 1929 been a pinnacle for those working in cinema.
In an excerpt from his book posted on Storyknot, Untying Aristotle’s Poetics for Storytellers, Rune Myrland traced the history of tragedy awards back to ancient Athens: “Before Hollywood, before Elizabethan drama, before even Roman theatre, were the Ancient Greek tragedy competitions. They were held during the big City Dionysia in Athens, in front of up to 15,000 spectators. It is, in more ways than one would imagine, the cradle of modern storytelling.”
Out of a whirlwind of communication arts achievements, another awards category has emerged as a lively and swiftly evolving sector: book trailer awards. The fluid ease with which digital video content can be distributed across the Internet has spawned a promotional market devoted to drawing interest to both print and electronically published book titles. This dynamic and growing creative channel has attracted a wide swath of musicians, cinematographers, scriptwriters, and creatives of all stripes.
The German Book Trailer Award
Reliable statistics on the effectiveness of book trailers for increasing book sales are hard to come by, but the importance of this sector of the publishing industry is gaining more respectability and attention. Berlin-based future!publish, a conference established in 2015, instituted the Deutscher Buchtrailer Award that has become an annual feature of the conference. The conference draws publishers, bookstore owners, students, and service providers, focusing on electronic publishing as well as innovative marketing and sales strategies, which, of course, includes book trailers.
As future!publish stated on their awards page for 2021: “Film is one of the most suggestive means of drawing attention to authors and their book. The fascination for cinema seems unbroken, moving images are one of the most popular formats on the web. Authors, publishers, and bookstores have long discovered the topic for themselves. Book trailers now receive appropriate recognition with the German Book Trailer Award, which is given annually.”
Through an arrangement with the largest theater chain in Berlin, Yorck Kinogruppe, winners have their trailers screened for a week in 12 theaters.
Publishing Perspectives first zoned in on this award program last year and provided trailer examples from the shortlist being judged. One of the trailers highlighted by Publishing Perspectives editor-in-chief Porter Anderson, Couchsurfing in China, placed third in the competition in the Adult literature category.
The 2021 winners of the German Book Trailer Award, listed here, employed a variety of cinematic approaches. Of the top winner in the adult category, Heart thread by Thomas Hettche, Kiepenheuer, & Witsch publishing house, future!publish commented, “The trailer impresses with its successful composition of language and image, of the auditory and the visual. The passage was aptly chosen and wonderfully spoken and arouses curiosity about the novel. Visually, the trailer impresses with its minimalism: the reduced drawing and choice of colors, which do not distract from what is heard, fit seamlessly into the evoked world of the novel and its language.”
It is not an easy task to concisely and persuasively capture the interest of prospective readers in a film that runs anywhere from 30 seconds to a couple of minutes, but, based on the award-winning examples shown, this new art form is evolving rapidly, gaining momentum as book trailer creators hone techniques and sharpen their expertise.
Cinematic Storytelling in Germany
Germany has a long and storied history in cinema, dating back to 1895 when Max and Emil Skladanowsky debuted the Bioscop, a film projector they had designed and built. Eight short films were shown by the brothers to a paying audience at the Wintergarten music hall in Berlin on November 1, 1895 (almost two months prior to the Lumiére brothers moving picture debut in Paris in December 1895).
Although the Bioscop was eclipsed by other projector technologies, Berlin became a hub for film in Germany and by 1905 sixteen movies theaters were active in the city.
Much pioneering cinema work was accomplished in later years. A short history of German filmmaking posted on The German Way notes, “Beginning with the great pioneering silent films of the 1920s, such as Metropolis, Nosferatu, and Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, and continuing with the advent of sound after 1929—Der blaue Engel, Die Drei von der Tankstelle, M—German film became a model for a distinctive technique and style of filmmaking. Borrowing from the Germans, Hollywood adapted sound techniques, lighting, storytelling, and set design.”
Aligning with this energy and history, Film 14 recently launched its German website, continuing a tradition of producing top-notch cinematic book trailers and author videos, combining stellar production values, professional crews, writers, and directors, and employing an imaginative, innovative way of capturing the essence of books and authors. For some insight into the approach and stylistic techniques used by Film 14, check out these book trailers. Or, visit the original US site for more examples, articles, and a fresh perspective on cinematic book trailer sector.