What happens when you translate a video clip into a short written story?
Let’s perform writing science together, using video clips suggested and voted on by YOU!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we transform a video clip into a story.
After a ton of great video suggestions from chat, this is the first one that was voted on:
It’s a video of some Brazilian performers doing Capoeira, a dance-like form of martial arts.
Here’s how we translated it to text:
The dance begins. The tin drums clang and beat, and the chants of the watching circle fill the air as I bound into its middle, the rhythm tugging at my limbs.
“Take, take that rhythm,” the circle chants in Portugese. “Capoeira is here now!”
My legs move on their own volition. Spinning high through the air, bouncing on the hot Sao Paulo pavement, kicking the air behind me so hard I flip and land only to do it all again. My arms, forbidden to move, are mere weights to keep me balanced.
“We dance to fight,” the chant continues. The rich twang of the berimbau one-string-bow melds with their singing. “We fight to dance. We joyful dance.”
Emboldened by the music, two other men join from the circle, flowing into my dance as streams merging. Our legs weave past each other, flying high, creating a tapestry from ourselves. This cloth is temporary, it disappears when our dance is done, but it warms us just the same.
“We don’t fight, we dance,” the chanters sing. “We dance for joy, we dance for our people.”
They are a choir of voices from the past. The same song that inspired capoeira dancers two-hundred years ago enchants me and my partners with the same rebellious magic.
The final chant. “We dance for those who can’t dance.”
Capoeira, the language of my forefathers, to disguise their martial arts as dance. As slaves they could not read or write, but they could show the power of sweat and hope through their sharpened movements.
The music cartwheels, kicks, bounces along with our limbs. In the white space of my mind, there is nothing but the flowing language of movement that only a few understand.
Note how the actual dancing/action part of the written story is only a small percent of it, as opposed to the video where it’s the entire thing. For a written story, it’s much more important to get inside the character’s head than it is to give an accurate blow-by-blow account of the action.
Next, chat voted that we try this one:
Here’s how we translated it to text:
Two wildebeests stood at the bank of a lake, staring at something floating on the surface. One of them grunted in their wildebeest language that he thought it was an alligator. The other grunted that he thought it was a log.
And that was the start of it.
The alligator-wildebeest tried explaining to the log-wildebeest that it was clearly an alligator. It had scales. It was swamp-green. But still, the log-wildebeest insisted it was a log.
The alligator-wildebeest was determined to prove him wrong. First, he splashed the thing with some water from his hoof, hoping that the alligator would swim away. But it didn’t budge.
Next, he poked the thing with a stick, hoping that the jaws of the alligator would snap open and prove the log-wildebeest wrong. But it still didn’t budge.
Finally, he jumped on the thing’s back, hoping that the alligator would spring to life and show that stupid log-wildebeest that he was wrong once and for all. But it still didn’t—
Snap! The alligator chomped the wildebeest down with one single bite, then went back to floating on top of the lake.
Still standing on the bank of the lake, the log-wildebeest realized he’d been wrong.
Another member of their herd stomped over, and grunted that he thought the thing in the lake looked like a log. Thankfully, the wildebeest knew a quick way to show him that it was actually an alligator!
This one was fun, because I had no idea that there was supposed to be a morale or anything until we wrote it down. Turning it from a video into a fairy tale, however, made the message very clear.
For both of the clips, the important part was translating the spirit of the original, not necessarily all of the details, which made them end up subtly different in fun ways.
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Pakutaso