Go All In for National Year of Reading video transcript
This transcript is for video on the National Year of Reading page.
The video opens with a young white teenager in a football kit walking up a grey rainy alley, distracted from his environment, staring at his phone.
[Narrator: You into football?]
Young person: [Defensively] "Yeah?"
[Narrator: You're not really into it until you read into it!]
A football crowd cheers, and the young person is transformed into colourful football players from past years in lots of different kit, as if someone is creating a collage with cutouts from books and magazines. Bits of ripped newspaper with headlines like ‘All time goals!’ and player stats appear, as the boy looks shocked and excited, his head turns into a football and pops! Someone shouts GOAL! and the young person is transformed into a football manager with a collaged bald head and big coat, standing in front of a big book called ‘Being the Boss’, as he shouts, “Go on!”.
A football bench appears with two female footballers who are also being transformed into different players past and present through collaged images and cutout. In between them sits a fancy older white woman with grey hair wearing a beret, reading a book. The collage elements disappear to show she’s sitting on a park bench with a small dog.
Older woman: "Seasons come and go, my boy."
She turns to look straight into the camera.
Older woman: "Horror… [in a distorted eldritch voice] is forever."
There’s an evil cackle and lightning strikes. The ‘Horror’ book in her hand suddenly takes up the full screen. The cover of the book has a creepy image of the woman and dog on the front, and they are transformed into vampires, zombies, and mummies, then a Lovecraftian entity and cult leader, insects inspired by The Fly, and finally werewolves. The book whizzes backwards through a stone castle window, which transforms into a child’s drawing of the same.
We’re now in a child’s bedroom, where a younger black father with a beard is reading to his young daughter on her bed. The walls are covered in lots of colourful drawings, a cosy lamp is on by the bed and the little girl is in a comfy fluffy onesie. They are reading a picture book called ‘Knighty Night Little Dragon’.
Dad: "Make haste, noble steed!"
He neighs like a horse, and the child giggles. A drawing of a knight’s helmet appears on the dad’s head. A page turns across the screen, and suddenly we’re in the book itself. Dad is now an animated knight with a joust and hobby horse, beard and all, and his daughter is a giant green animated dragon with natural (but bright green) dragon hair.
The dragon: "I like your funny voices Daddy."
Each person flashes by, with the shot focusing on their surprised and engaged faces and widening eyes as they read their books - including the dog and a visually impaired man listening to an audiobook.
[Narrator: Whatever you're into, reading lets you Go All In.]
[The video ends with the National Year of Reading logo appearing on screen.]