Animated trailer for Jim Shepard's short story "Your Fate Hurtles Down at You"

I enjoyed this three-minute trailer for Jim Shepard's short story "Your Fate Hurtles Down at You," which appears in the Electric Literature: #1 paperback anthology.

[#1 posted by rothstei, July 27, 2009 12:26 PM]

We need trailers to sell short stories now?

We writers are all fucked.

(nice animation though. is animating as easy as writing? sign me up!)

[#2 posted by jeremyhogan, July 27, 2009 2:39 PM]

@1

Need? No. Enjoy? Yes. This is less "selling" than supplementing IMHO.

[#3 posted by jeremyhogan, July 27, 2009 2:42 PM]

@1

Need? No. Enjoy? Yes. This is less "selling" than teasing and even supplementing IMHO. Like a great book cover and jacket description, but, you know... modern.

[#4 posted by Little John, July 27, 2009 8:21 PM]

Interesting pronunciations of Harschblödeln, Weissfluhjoch, und Davos. I hardly recognized them. Surely if the subjects of the story know enough German to give themselves a German name, the narrator can say the place names with a more authentic pronunciation. Or, well, maybe not.

Story seems interesting anyway, though.

BTW, the narrator sounded like Shawn Mullins at the beginning, but then near the end, not so much.

[#5 posted by Anonymous, July 28, 2009 7:22 AM]

Very nice animation and design. But is it worth it?
The narration and voices seem incongruous... is that what researchers in 1939 Switzerland would sound like? Seems to me that by adding such hitech features to dress up and 'promote' a short story... we actually LOSE something. We lose the personal, unique, intimate imagination that reading triggers in the reader's mind. The images, the voices, the pacing. All that DEPTH is replaced by something like this. A cheap, short movie. A tv commercial. Something that, despite the skill and intentions, ultimately is a crashing bore.