Canada Reads 2021 - Book Trailer

A book trailer animated for Canada Reads 2021, a CBC Radio and Television annual program where, over 4 days, celebrity panelists talk about 5 great Canadian Books. The debate is broadcast nationally on TV, radio, podcast and online.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) approached me to direct and create a 1-minute visual trailer for their television and online audience. The book my animation championed was Two Trees Make a Forest by Jessica J. Lee.

ILLUSTRATION REVEAL ANIMATION

We settled on a mix of delicate watercolor wash with elegant ink lines that would tie in with the Chinese painting tradition that Jessica talks about in the book. I used "illustration reveal" animation technique that showed delicate ink illustrations washing in / revealing in synchronization with the voice-over and music cues. In terms of scene changes, I used dissolve transitions which played into the pensive, elegant mood and symbolized a passage of time. Each illustration was hand-drawn in Procreate and the reveal was animated frame-by-frame in Photoshop timeline.


DISTRIBUTION & PRESS

The animated trailer was released on 2021 Canada Reads, broadcast on:

  •  Television at CBC TV, for an average audience of 1.1 million;
  •  online at CBCbooks.ca;
  • social media (reaching 32.4K @cbcbooks IG audience);
  • and the free CBC streaming services, CBC Gem and CBC Listen.

The Canada Reads 2021 debate show was streamed on TV, podcast, radio and online, reaching ~ 1 million of views.

Canada Reads is an annual "battle of the books" competition organized and broadcast by Canada's public broadcaster, the CBC. The program has aired in two distinct editions, the English-language Canada Reads on CBC Radio One, and the French-language Le Combat des livres on Ici Radio-Canada Première.

Using Format