Jane and the Damned – Book Trailer of the Day

Three minutes plus — on the long side. I didn’t watch it all the way through the first time. But I did come back to it, because it’s well done.

This uses a technique of “pseudo-animation”: A series of cartoons or illustrations that accompany the text, or, in this case, voice over, at a sentence-by-sentence pace. Unlike a random jumble of stock images, the succession of cartoons gives the trailer a unified motif, holding it together with greater style. A few stock photos are thrown in, for instance, a shot of Bath. It works okay. The color scheme is simple but striking. The cartoonish b&w drawings are highlighted by red. A nice way to quietly shout: Hey! Vampires!

The voice over and sound effects really carry this trailer, even when the cuts could use a brisker pace. I laughed my head off when the ridiculous French accents began at 1:39. “Those English bastards! They cut of my…!”

The premise of the book is also a riot. Here we have the Jane Austen and the Undead craze joined with the Use Famous Writers as characters craze, and hell, a little Alt Hist thrown in for jolly fun. At least, when I last took my Survey of Modern European History Since the French Revolution, I don’t remember the French invading England twice. That alone made me want to read this book.

Jane of the Damned, by Janet Mullany.

Dumb But Hilarious Writing

“I did it with my last baby and it wasn’t totally accurate.”

— referring to a test that predicts the gender of a baby

Hm. It wasn’t “totally” accurate? Either it was accurate or it wasn’t, riiiiiight? Unless what you really mean is, “Well it predicted a male, but my baby boy is suspiciously fond of Tinky Winky.”

(The real answer, in case you were wondering? The test is a scam.)