As with all of the book promotional video trailers that ReelSmart creates, we had to help Simon & Scuster visually interpret the complex subject matter and capture its narrative tone with engaging animations that would pull viewers into the world of the book, leaving them wanting to know more.
We started with the book’s cover image of Elon Musk and designed motion graphic animations to convey the central idea about Musk that Isaacson discusses in his voiceover: that Elon is a very complex, controversial, and multifaceted character. This idea recurs throughout the video, from the pieces of Elon’s face shifting into place during the cover intro to the photos of Musk at different ages sliding out in rainbow-colored layers later in the video. Where needed, we also employed Midjourney AI to create renderings of Musk that captured his various ambitions, from dressing him as an astronaut on Mars to portraying him as a messianic figure in white. We rounded the whole thing out with a cinematic soundtrack to give the final video that movie trailer feel.
The video served as a central pillar of Simon & Schuster’s marketing campaign for the best seller. The video received over a quarter million views on X and thousands of engagements, including a like from Elon himself.
