I am not entirely objective on the subject of Janelle Brown—we worked together at a dotcom about a decade ago—but I’ll still say that this trailer, created by the British publishers of her debut novel, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, does an effective job of visual storytelling (even if the line readings are a bit stilted). Instead of just slapping a couple pictures together and laying in a soundtrack, this trailer lets the camera-eye roam around the digital collages, picking out details of narrative significance which resonate with the various voiceovers. The reason this works is that it isn’t trying to tell you it’s about a story, it’s trying to tell you a story—or enough of a story to make you want to “hear” more when Spiegel & Grau publish the book next week.
(There’s one brief NSFW background image, just so you know.)