video essay copyright

What is a Video Essay? The Art of the Video Analysis Essay

I n the era of the internet and Youtube, the video essay has become an increasingly popular means of expressing ideas and concepts. However, there is a bit of an enigma behind the construction of the video essay largely due to the vagueness of the term.

What defines a video analysis essay? What is a video essay supposed to be about? In this article, we’ll take a look at the foundation of these videos and the various ways writers and editors use them creatively. Let’s dive in.

Watch: Our Best Film Video Essays of the Year

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What is a video essay?

First, let’s define video essay.

There is narrative film, documentary film, short films, and then there is the video essay. What is its role within the realm of visual media? Let’s begin with the video essay definition. 

VIDEO ESSAY DEFINITION

A video essay is a video that analyzes a specific topic, theme, person or thesis. Because video essays are a rather new form, they can be difficult to define, but recognizable nonetheless. To put it simply, they are essays in video form that aim to persuade, educate, or critique. 

These essays have become increasingly popular within the era of Youtube and with many creatives writing video essays on topics such as politics, music, film, and pop culture. 

What is a video essay used for?

• To persuade an audience of a thesis
• To educate on a specific subject
• To analyze and/or critique 

What is a video essay based on?

Establish a thesis.

Video analysis essays lack distinguished boundaries since there are countless topics a video essayist can tackle. Most essays, however, begin with a thesis. 

How Christopher Nolan Elevates the Movie Montage  •  Video Analysis Essays

Good essays often have a point to make. This point, or thesis, should be at the heart of every video analysis essay and is what binds the video together. 

Related Posts

• Stanley Kubrick Directing Style Explained →
• A Filmmaker’s Guide to Nolan’s Directing Style →
• How to Write a Voice Over Montage in a Script →

interviews in video essay

Utilize interviews.

A key determinant for the structure of an essay is the source of the ideas. A common source for this are interviews from experts in the field. These interviews can be cut and rearranged to support a thesis. 

Roger Deakins on "Learning to Light"  •  Video Analysis Essays

Utilizing first hand interviews is a great way to utilize ethos into the rhetoric of a video. However, it can be limiting since you are given a limited amount to work with. Voice over scripts, however, can give you the room to say anything. 

How to create the best video essays on Youtube

Write voice over scripts.

Voice over (VO) scripts allow video essayists to write out exactly what they want to say. This is one of the most common ways to structure a video analysis essay since it gives more freedom to the writer. It is also a great technique to use when taking on large topics.

In this video, it would have been difficult to explain every type of camera lens by cutting sound bites from interviews of filmmakers. A voice over script, on the other hand, allowed us to communicate information directly when and where we wanted to.

Ultimate Guide to Camera Lenses  •  Video essay examples

Some of the most famous video essayists like Every Frame a Painting and Nerdwriter1 utilize voice over to capitalize on their strength in writing video analysis essays. However, if you’re more of an editor than a writer, the next type of essay will be more up your alley. 

Video analysis essay without a script

Edit a supercut.

Rather than leaning on interview sound bites or voice over, the supercut video depends more on editing. You might be thinking “What is a video essay without writing?” The beauty of the video essay is that the writing can be done throughout the editing. Supercuts create arguments or themes visually through specific sequences. 

Another one of the great video essay channels, Screen Junkies, put together a supercut of the last decade in cinema. The video could be called a portrait of the last decade in cinema.

2010 - 2019: A Decade In Film  •  Best videos on Youtube

This video is rather general as it visually establishes the theme of art during a general time period. Other essays can be much more specific. 

Critical essays

Video essays are a uniquely effective means of creating an argument. This is especially true in critical essays. This type of video critiques the facets of a specific topic. 

In this video, by one of the best video essay channels, Every Frame a Painting, the topic of the film score is analyzed and critiqued — specifically temp film score.

Every Frame a Painting Marvel Symphonic Universe  •  Essay examples

Of course, not all essays critique the work of artists. Persuasion of an opinion is only one way to use the video form. Another popular use is to educate. 

• The Different Types of Camera Lenses →
• Write and Create Professionally Formatted Screenplays →
• How to Create Unforgettable Film Moments with Music →

Video analysis essay

Visual analysis.

One of the biggest advantages that video analysis essays have over traditional, written essays is the use of visuals. The use of visuals has allowed video essayists to display the subject or work that they are analyzing. It has also allowed them to be more specific with what they are analyzing. Writing video essays entails structuring both words and visuals. 

Take this video on There Will Be Blood for example. In a traditional, written essay, the writer would have had to first explain what occurs in the film then make their analysis and repeat.

This can be extremely inefficient and redundant. By analyzing the scene through a video, the points and lessons are much more clear and efficient. 

There Will Be Blood  •   Subscribe on YouTube

Through these video analysis essays, the scene of a film becomes support for a claim rather than the topic of the essay. 

Dissect an artist

Essays that focus on analysis do not always focus on a work of art. Oftentimes, they focus on the artist themself. In this type of essay, a thesis is typically made about an artist’s style or approach. The work of that artist is then used to support this thesis.

Nerdwriter1, one of the best video essays on Youtube, creates this type to analyze filmmakers, actors, photographers or in this case, iconic painters. 

Caravaggio: Master Of Light  •  Best video essays on YouTube

In the world of film, the artist video analysis essay tends to cover auteur filmmakers. Auteur filmmakers tend to have distinct styles and repetitive techniques that many filmmakers learn from and use in their own work. 

Stanley Kubrick is perhaps the most notable example. In this video, we analyze Kubrick’s best films and the techniques he uses that make so many of us drawn to his films. 

Why We're Obsessed with Stanley Kubrick Movies  •  Video essay examples

Critical essays and analytical essays choose to focus on a piece of work or an artist. Essays that aim to educate, however, draw on various sources to teach technique and the purpose behind those techniques. 

What is a video essay written about?

Historical analysis.

Another popular type of essay is historical analysis. Video analysis essays are a great medium to analyze the history of a specific topic. They are an opportunity for essayists to share their research as well as their opinion on history. 

Our video on aspect ratio , for example, analyzes how aspect ratios began in cinema and how they continue to evolve. We also make and support the claim that the 2:1 aspect ratio is becoming increasingly popular among filmmakers. 

Why More Directors are Switching to 18:9  •  Video analysis essay

Analyzing the work of great artists inherently yields a lesson to be learned. Some essays teach more directly.

• Types of Camera Movements in Film Explained →
• What is Aspect Ratio? A Formula for Framing Success →
• Visualize your scenes with intuitive online shotlist software →

Writing video essays about technique

Teach technique.

Educational essays designed to teach are typically more direct. They tend to be more valuable for those looking to create art rather than solely analyze it.

In this video, we explain every type of camera movement and the storytelling value of each. Educational essays must be based on research, evidence, and facts rather than opinion.

Ultimate Guide to Camera Movement  •  Best video essays on YouTube

As you can see, there are many reasons why the video essay has become an increasingly popular means of communicating information. Its ability to use both sound and picture makes it efficient and effective. It also draws on the language of filmmaking to express ideas through editing. But it also gives writers the creative freedom they love. 

Writing video essays is a new art form that many channels have set high standards for. What is a video essay supposed to be about? That’s up to you. 

Organize Post Production Workflow

The quality of an essay largely depends on the quality of the edit. If editing is not your strong suit, check out our next article. We dive into tips and techniques that will help you organize your Post-Production workflow to edit like a pro. 

Up Next: Post Production →

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Visual Rhetoric

Video essay resource guide.

PAR 102 (M-Th, 9 AM- 5 PM) Fine Arts Library Media Lab (same hours as FAL) PCL Media Lab (same hours as PCL)

About video essays

What are they.

“The video essay is often described as a form of new media, but the basic principles are as old as rhetoric: the author makes an assertion, then presents evidence to back up his claim. Of course it was always possible for film critics to do this in print, and they’ve been doing it for over 100 years, following more or less the same template that one would use while writing about any art form: state your thesis or opinion, then back it with examples. In college, I was assured that in its heart, all written criticism was essentially the same – that in terms of rhetorical construction, book reviews, music reviews, dance reviews and film reviews were cut from the same cloth, but tailored to suit the specific properties of the medium being described, with greater emphasis given to form or content depending on the author’s goals and the reader’s presumed interest.”

Matt Zoller Seitz on the video essay .

what makes a good video essay? 

Tony Zhou on how to structure a video essay

Kevin B. Lee on what makes a video essay “ great “

why should we use them? what are their limits?

Kevin B. Lee’s  experimental/artistic pitch for video essays

Kevin B. Lee’s mainstream pitch for video essay

“Of all the many developments in the short history of film criticism and scholarship, the video essay has the greatest potential to challenge the now historically located text-based dominance of the appraisal and interpretation of film and its contextual cultures…”

Andrew McWhirter argues that t he video essay has significant academic potential in the Fall 2015 issue of  Screen

“Importantly, the [new] media stylo does not replace traditional scholarship. This is a new practice beyond traditional scholarship. So how does critical media differ from traditional scholarship and what advantages does it offer? First, as you will see with the works in this issue, critical media demonstrates a shift in rhetorical mode. The traditional essay is argumentative-thesis, evidence, conclusion. Traditional scholarship aspires to exhaustion, to be the definitive, end-all-be-all, last word on a particular subject. The media stylo, by contrast, suggests possibilities-it is not the end of scholarly inquiry; it is the beginning. It explores and experiments and is designed just as much to inspire as to convince…”

Eric Fadden’s “ A Manifesto for Critical Media “

Adam Westbrook’s “ The Web-Video Problem: Why It’s Time to Rethinking Visual Storytelling from the Bottom Up “

Video essayists and venues

Matt Zoller Seitz (various venues) A writer and director by trade, Zoller Seitz is nonetheless probably best known as a prominent American cultural critic.  He’s made over 1000 hours of video essays and is generally recognized as a founder of the video essay movement in high-brow periodicals.  A recognized expert on Wes Anderson, Zoller Seitz is also notable because he often mixes other cinematic media (especially television) into his analysis, as in the above example, which doubles as an experiment in the absence of voiceover.

Various contributors, Press Play Co-founded by Matt Zoller Seitz and Ken Cancelosi,  Press Play  (published by Indiewire)   is one of the oldest high-brow venues for video essays about television, cinema, and other aspects of popular culture.

Various contributors, Keyframe   (A Fandor online publication) Fandor’s video essay department publishes work from many editors (what many video essayists call themselves) on and in a range of topics and styles.  Check it out to get an idea of all that things a video essay can do!

Various contributors, Moving Image Source A high-brow publication for video essays.

Tony Zhou, Every Frame a Painting The master of video essays on filmic form, Tony’s arguments are clean, simple, and well-evidenced.  Look to Tony as an example of aggressive and precise editing and arrangement.  He’s also an excellent sound editor–pay attention to his choices and try out some of his sound-mixing techniques in your essay.

Adam Johnston, Your Movie Sucks (YMS) Although an excellent example of epideictic film rhetoric, this channel is a great example of what  not  to do in this assignment (write a movie review, gush about how good/bad you think a movie is, focus on motifs or narrative content instead of  film form  as the center of your argument).  What you  can  learn from Adam is a lot about style.  Adam’s delivery, pacing, and editing all work together to promote a mildly-disinterested-and-therefore-credible ethos through a near-monotone, which I’ll affectionately dub the “Daria” narratorial ethos.

Adam Westbrook, delve.tv Adam Westbrook is part of an emerging group of professional video essayists and delve.tv is his version of a visual podcast.  Using the video essay form, Adam has developed a professional public intellectual ethos for himself through skillful overlay of explanation/interpretation and concept.  Check out Westbrook’s work as a really good example of presenting and representing visual concepts crucial to an argument.  He’s a master at making an argument in the form of storytelling, and he uses the video essay as a vehicle for that enterprise.

:: kogonada (various venues) If you found yourself wondering what the auteur video essay might look like, :: kogonada is it.  I like to call this “expressionist” video essay style.  Kogonada is the ultimate minimalist when it comes to voiceover/text over–its message impossibly and almost excessively efficient.  Half of the videos in his library are simple, expertly-executed supercuts , highlighting how heavily video essays rely on the “supercut” technique to make an argument.  Crafting an essay in this style really limits your audience and may not be a very good fit for the constraints of assignment (very “cutting edge,” as we talked about it in class), but you will probably draw inspiration from ::kogonada’s distinct, recognizable style, as well as an idea of what a video essay can do at the outer limits of its form.

Lewis Bond,  Channel Criswell Narrating in brogue-y Northern English, Bond takes his time, releasing a very carefully-edited, high-production video essay once every couple of months.  He’s a decent editor, but I feel his essays tend to run long, and I feel rushed by his narration at times.  Bond also makes a useful distinction between video essays and analysis/reviews on his channel–and while most of his analysis/reviews focus on film content (what you don’t want to imitate), his video essays stay pretty focused on film technique (what you do).  Hearing the same author consciously engage in two different modes of analysis might help you better understand the distinction between the two, as well.

Jack Nugent,  Now You See It Nugent’s brisk, formal analysis is both insightful and accessible–a good example of what it takes to secure a significant following in the highly-competitive Youtube marketplace.  [That’s my way of slyly calling him commercial.] Nugent is especially good at pairing his narration with his images.  Concentrate and reflect upon his simple pairings as you watch–how does Nugent help you process both sets of information at the pacing he sets?

Evan Puschak, The Nerdwriter Nerdwriter  is a great example the diversity of topics a video essay can be used to craft an argument about.  Every week, Puschak publishes an episode on science, art, and culture.  Look at all the different things Puschak considers visual rhetoric and think about how he’s using the video essay form to make honed, precisely-executed arguments about popular culture.

Dennis Hartwig and John P. Hess,  FilmmakerIQ Hartwig and Hess use video essays to explain filmmaking technique to aspiring filmmakers.  I’ve included the channel here as another example of what  not  to do in your argument, although perhaps some of the technical explanations that Hartwig and Hess have produced might help you as secondary sources.  Your target audience (someone familiar on basic film theory trying to better understand film form) is likely to find the highly technical, prescriptive arguments on FilmIQ boring or alienating. Don’t focus on technical production in your essay (how the film accomplishes a particular visual technique using a camera); rather, focus on how the audience interprets the end result in the film itself; in other words, focus on choices the audience can notice and interpret–how is the audience interpreting the product of production?  How often is the audience thinking about/noticing production in that process?

Kevin B. Lee (various venues) A good example of the older, high-brow generation of video essayists, Kevin’s collection of work hosted on his Vimeo channel offers slow, deliberate, lecture-inspired readings of film techniques and form.  Note the distinct stylistic difference between Kevin’s pacing and someone like Zhou or Lewis.  How does delivery affect reception?

Software Guides

How to access Lynda tutorials (these will change your life)

Handbrake and MakeMKV  (file converters)

Adobe Premiere  (video editing)

Camtasia  (screen capture)

File management

Use your free UTBox account to upload and manage your files.  Make sure you’ve got some sort of system for tracking and assembling everything into your video editing software.   UTBox has a 2 terabyte limit (much higher than Google Drive) and is an excellent file management resource for all sorts of academic work.

Adobe Premiere saves versions with links to your video files, so it’s imperative that you keep your video files folder in the same place on every machine you open it up on.  That’s why I keep all my video files in a big folder on box that I drop on the desktop of any machine I’m working on before I open my premiere files.  The Adobe Premiere project walkthrough  has more details on this.

Where to find video and how to capture it

About fair use . Make sure your composition complies with the Fair Use doctrine and familiarize yourself with the four criteria.

The best place to capture images is always from a high-resolution DVD or video file .  The first place you should go to get the film is the library– see instructions for searching here .

To import the video and audio from your DVD or video file into your video editing software (like Premiere), you will first need to use a software to convert it to an .mkv.  See instructions on how to do that here .

Camtasia tutorials .  Camtasia is a program that allows you to capture anything that’s going on on your screen .  This is a critical tool for this assignment as you decide what kind of interface you want to present to your reader in your video essay.  Camtasia also allows you to capture any high-quality video playing on your desktop without licensing restrictions.

You can also use Clip Converter to capture images and sound from pre-existing YouTube videos , and it may be a little faster and easier than Camtasia.   I suggest converting things into .mkv before putting them into your video editor, regardless of where you get the material from.

Film theory and criticism

• /r/truefilm’s reading and viewing guide

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Academic Journals

• in[Transition] : The first open access, peer-reviewed journal on videographic criticism
• AUDIOVISUALCY: Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies : An online forum for video essays or works of audovisual screen studies that have an analytical, critical, reflexive or scholarly purpose; fully attribute all sources used; are made according to Fair Use principles; are non-commercial in nature.

Video Essay Channels

• Every Frame a Painting  
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Library Guides

• Tufts University Library: Multimedia Production
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What is a video essay ?

Christian Keathley, a Professor of Film & Media Culture at Middlebury College & co-founder of in[Transition], defines video essays as

“short critical essays on a given film or filmmaker, typically read in voice-over by the author and supplemented with carefully chosen and organized film clips”

Video essays have found incresased popularity in recent years on digital content sharing platforms like YouTube & Vimeo. Despite their scholarly-focused and argument-driven nature, video essays have since been associated with (and mistaken for) other popular forms of commentary (e.g. movie commentaries, reaction videos, online fan-edits, etc.) shared on the same platforms. The two do have similarities in their accessibility and utilize the same set of creative tools and texhniques. However, the video essay in its academic form does follow certain conventions (a written critical component from the author, scholarly research, and peer review), as opposed to popular commentaries. 

Video essays as a medium are an important audivisual form of scholarship, particularly in terms of expression, creation, and accessibility. Traditional essays may not always lend themselves to the fullest expression of film and how we interpret/analyze visual images. As students of film and media studies, it is important to both understand the medium from a critical point of view, as well as from a creative point of view. 

• Planning & Preparation
• Gathering Materials & Filming
• Editing & Sharing
• Understanding File Formats

So you've been assigned a video essay for class, or you want to make one on your own...

Where do you start? Like any other form of traditional essay, you will begin by Developing A Topic , whether it's a persuasive argument, a narrative story, or a research question. If you’re telling a story, think about good elements of narrative. If you’re making an argument in your video essay, think about the elements of making an effective argument. If you're drafting a research question, make sure to be specific and answer the following: who?, what?, where?, when?, why?, and how?

For more information about developing a topic or researcj question, please check out the following resources: 

• Pace Library Guide: The Research Process, Step-By-Step
• Pace Library Guide: Getting Started with Research

Once you have a well-developed topic and/or research question, then you can Create an Outline and Write a Script for your video essay. Utilizing your background research, evidence from whichever piece(s) of media you are analyzing/discussing, and your own arguments/interpretations of that media, you can build an outline and write a basic script to refer to when filmming and/or recording your video essay. This script will especially be important if you plan to record a voiceover. 

For more information about how to write a script/create an outline, please check out the following resources: 

• Excelsior Online Writing Lab: Video Essays
• How To Make A Video Essay: Writing   by  Indietrix Film Reviews

Now, you've got your script and you're ready to start gathering materials (scenes, images, audio, etc.) to edit into your video essay.  The best place to capture images is always  from a high-resolution DVD, Blue-ray, or video file. 

There are a couple of different places you can acquire these files. Of course, you can always invest in your own copies of the physical media. This is the best (and most ethical ) way to get high quality images, video, and footage.

Should you wish to do a screen capture, you can use platforms like Camtasia or Clip Converter to record images or footage directly from your screen. These aren't always the most ethical means to record footage, so if you choose to do so, be sure to consult Fair Use Guidelines before doing so. For this process, you will also likely need a DVD Drive, whether external or internal. Having one that can read DVDs and Blu-rays is a plus! Resoruces for how to do these technical processes are included below. 

Before you actually aquire any footage or media for your video essay, it's important to weigh the ethical considerations (i.e. Fair Use & Copyright Law) no matter what the media is or your intention to use it. 

Resources: 

• How To Make A Video Essay: Footage and Voiceover   from  Indietrix Film Reviews  
• How To Make Video Essays:  This video is especially helpful in terms of the technology of filming and recording voiceovers for video essays, less so the other aspects of video essay production. 
• Camtasia: Screen Capture & Recording Tutorials

As for finding stock photos or images to use that are in the Public Domain , check out this well-curated list of public domain image libraries, websites, and archives at the Tufts University Library Multimedia Production Resource Guide . 

Use editing software and experiment with available functionality to enhance and support your argument. Add a voice-over, sound effects, music and other aspects of multimodality. Be sure to include references and credits to all sources used in creating the video essay. 

For more information on editing video essays, please check out the following resources: 

• How to Make a Video Essay: Editing by  Indietrix Film Reviews
• Vimeo: Editing Basics

When creating, saving, uploading, and sharing video essays, it's important to have a basic understanding of digitail file formats, for videos, audio, and images. 

Linked below are some resources (websites, videos, & infographics) to help you learn how to navigate each file format and learn their best uses. It's likely you'll become aware of and proficient at most of this as you move through your Film & Screen Studies coursework, so think of these resources as a brief introduction to the topic and/or as little reminders for you to refer to in the future. 

Books: 

• Portable Moving Images: A Media History of Storage  Formats  by Ricardo Cedeño Montaña
• Images on the Move: Materiality - Networks -  Formats   Editor: Olga Moskatova

Blog Posts: 

• Understanding Video File Formats, Codecs and Containers by Andy Owen at TechSmith
• Video Formats – Meaning, types and everything you should know   by  Akeem Okunola at InEvent
• Image file formats: When to Use Each File Type   by Samual Lundquist at 99Designs

Other Resources: 

• Introduction to Digital Format Preservation, The Library of Congress

Image Credit: WonderShare, "Top 9 Video Formats You May Want to Know In 2023." 

The Place of Voiceover in Academic Audiovisual Film and Television Criticism from Ian Garwood on Vimeo .

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Home Copyright Considerations

Copyright Considerations

Copyright considerations for video essays, copyright law regulates all stages of video production, from ideas and concept development to scriptwriting, filming, editing, music, and distribution..

Copyright protects the video essays you create and regulates how you can reuse existing materials in your video essays. On the CopyrightUser.org website, you can find further guidance on how copyright protects videos and other creative works and how you can license and exploit your own work . This guide focuses on what you can do with other people’s works. In general, using a protected work in a video essay (or any other work) requires permission from the copyright owner. However, as explained below, copyright law provides a number of exceptions that - under certain conditions - allow teachers and students to reuse protected works without permission for educational, research and private study purposes. While using protected materials in a video essay for teaching and learning purposes will often be covered by these exceptions, understanding the basic principles of copyright law outlined below is important for anyone intending to produce or use creative works also beyond educational settings.

Ideas and concepts are free for everyone to borrow and use. In fact, copyright does not protect ideas, but only the expression of ideas. For example, the idea of making a ‘battle royale’ film, where characters are forced to fight against each other until a sole survivor remains, is not protected. What is protected is the way in which that idea is expressed, for example in the films Battle Royale (dir. Kinji Fukasaku, 2000) or The Hunger Games (dir. Gary Ross, 2012), or in the popular video games PUBG and Fortnite. This fundamental principle – known as the idea-expression dichotomy – can be further explored through the Copyright Bites resource .

If you want to reuse a work protected by copyright as a whole or any ‘substantial part’ of it, in principle you need to get permission from the copyright owner. This means identifying who owns copyright in the work you want to reuse and get a licence from them. However, if you intend to include various different works in your video-essays (e.g. clips from different films), the process of getting all relevant permission would likely be long and expensive.

There are licensing schemes that allow you to use copyright protected content in certain ways. For example, most UK Higher Education institutions hold the Educational Recording Agency licence, which allows teachers and students to record and use TV and radio programmes for educational purposes. If you study at a subscribing institution, you can use BoB – Learning on Screen’s on demand TV and radio service – to access over 2.4 million broadcasts. Also, a growing number of UK institutions have signed up to the Archives for Education licensing scheme, which allows student filmmakers to reuse clips from 142 documentaries in their projects.

Creative Commons (CC) are open licences that allow everyone to reuse videos and other materials for free, under certain conditions. This means that if you find a work that is distributed under Creative Commons, you can use it freely, but you need to check the terms of the licence. For example, all CC licences require ‘Attribution’, meaning that you have to credit the authors of the work you are using. Some also require ‘Share Alike’ (the work you create needs to be distributed under the same CC licence of the work you are using); ‘Non-commercial’ (you can use the work only for non-commercial purposes); and ‘No-derivative’ (you can’t modify the work). The following websites offer images, videos, music and books which are free to use under CC or other open licences:

● Wikimedia Commons – Images, sound and video: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

● Incompetech – Music: https://incompetech.com/

● Flickr – Images: https://www.flickr.com/

● Unsplash – Images: https://unsplash.com/

● Wikisource – Books: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page

● Prelinger Archives (US) – Films: https://archive.org/details/prelinger

Copyright doesn’t last forever. In the UK, it generally lasts for the life of the author plus 70 year. After that, the work enters the public domain, meaning that everyone can use it for free. For example, Charles Dickens’ novels, Shakespeare’s plays or Mozart’s compositions are all in the public domain.

Films enter the public domain 70 years after the death of the last to die of the four following persons: director; author of the screenplay; author of the dialogue (if different); composer of the music specially created for the film. So if you want to find out whether a film is in the public domain, you need to identify those persons involved in creating the film and check whether they all died more than 70 years ago. This means that only a few old films are currently in the public domain in the UK. However, these include some landmark films such as Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon .

It’s important to note that copyright law is territorial, meaning that different rules apply in different countries, so a work might be in the public domain in the UK but not in the US, or vice versa. For example, the Prelinger Archives listed above are a US resource and make films available based on US law. If you want to use a film from the Prelinger Archives in the UK, you should check that it is in the public domain under the life of the authors plus 70 years rule explained above. You can find guidance on copyright duration on the Copyright User website.

Works created by the US Federal Government are not protected by copyright, so you are free to use them. These include the NASA Image and Video Library .

UK copyright provides a number of copyright exceptions: cases in which – under certain circumstances and for specific purposes – you can use a copyright protected work without permission from the copyright owner. If you intend to include various clips from existing films in your video essays, copyright exceptions are probably your best option.

If you intend to use your video essay for research or study purposes only, you can rely on the exception for non-commercial research and private study . However, if you rely on this exception to use protected materials, you would not be able to use your video essay for commercial purposes, for example as part of your portfolio. Similarly, teachers can rely on the exception for illustration for instruction to use protected materials in their teaching for non-commercial purposes.

There are other exceptions that enable the creative reuse of protected works also for commercial purposes. You can find guidance on each of them below:

● Criticism or Review

● Quotation

● Caricature, Parody or Pastiche

Please note that relying on copyright exceptions is always a matter of risk management. Exceptions are defences that can be used if your use is challenged by the copyright owners, rather than rights to use the content. They are also based on ambiguous concepts such as 'fair dealing', which are not defined in the statute but by courts on a case by case basis.

Find out more

At Learning on Screen, we offer various copyright courses. If you are interested to learn more about each of the topics explained above, sign up to our copyright course.

Introduction to Video Essays

Finding coherence across journals, how to make video essay guides, dissemination.

How to do a Video Essay: What is a Video Essay?

Introducing the Video Essay: Assignment of Now!

• What is a Video Essay?

The term Video Essay is hard to define as it is still evolving from a long cinematic history. From the screen studies perspective, it is a video that analyses specific topics or themes relating to film and television and is relevant as it comments on film in its own language. On a basic level it could be defined as the video equivalent of the written essay.

This guide refers to the video essay from the context of the academic audiovisual essay as a multimodal form that combines written, audio and visual modes to communicate an idea. As a structure, the video essay is thesis-driven, and uses images with text so that the audience can read and interpret the idea or argument in a multimodal way.

In educational settings, the term video essay is used broadly for teacher/student-learner generated video and as a vehicle to transmediate between written-text to digital forms.  Through the video essay form, students are able to achieve learning outcomes in a new way as a multimodal experience while engaging with the subject, task or assessment through expression and creation of self-knowledge.

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• URL: https://ecu.au.libguides.com/video-essay

Edith Cowan University acknowledges and respects the Noongar people, who are the traditional custodians of the land upon which its campuses stand and its programs operate. In particular ECU pays its respects to the Elders, past and present, of the Noongar people, and embrace their culture, wisdom and knowledge.

The Audiovisual Essay

Practice and Theory in Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies

HOW-TO VIDEO ESSAYS by Greer Fyfe and Miriam Ross

HOW-TO VIDEO ESSAYS

By Greer Fyfe and Miriam Ross

If you have never done any video work before it may seem intimidating at first but you will find it easier than you think if you work through the following steps. Seek help if you get stuck (Google is often a quick solution).

Getting started

• Ideally just one sentence;
• Write this down, keep referring to it and don’t be afraid of modifying it as you go through the whole process.
• voice-over ( https://vimeo.com/96558506 )?
• text+image ( http://vimeo.com/28201216 )?
• supercut ( https://vimeo.com/88077122 )?
• Don’t try to create something too complicated. Start with simple ideas and gather limited material at the beginning until you are confident that you can add more.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o47Lr9GXEnI
• https://vimeo.com/album/3198467
• http://vimeo.com/groups/essay
• http://framescinemajournal.com/article/video-essays-in-the-cinema-history-classroom/
• http://festivalists.com/post/110533801961/videoessay
• http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/intransition/
• https://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/audiovisualessay/

Collecting material

• Remember not to go overboard at the beginning as it is easy to download multiple files. Think about what you need to start the project and add more later.
• There are some online guides to ripping DVDs using readily available software: http://lifehacker.com/380702/five-best-dvd-ripping-tools ; http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/2696/how-to-rip-dvds-with-vlc/
• This can be a tricky area, particularly as some DVDs with greater level of encryption might be harder to rip than others. If you are not confident in this area stick to the other options for gathering material.
• Try to cut down ripped files into sections that you will need. If not you will be working with very big files that may overload your editing software.
• If you can play a film on your computer then you can grab still images from it.
• On a PC. Press PrtScn and then find somewhere you want to paste the image (ie. image editing software). Press Ctrl+V. If you have captured the whole computer screen you may need to crop the image.
• On a Mac. Press Command+Shift+3. This will save the image to your desktop. If you have captured the whole computer screen you may need to crop the image.
• If you don’t have a microphone available, look at your phones and your computer to see if they have a voice/sound recording option.
• Think about who will provide the voice. Make sure whoever does so is comfortable with their voice being used in this way.
• One DIY solution is to use your phone to film material when it plays on a TV or other device. This will create low quality images but is an option if all else fails.
• Use your academic skills to find quotes, factual statements and citations you might incorporate
• Although the footage and images you are working with don’t have to be HD, they should be clearly visible when blown up to full screen size
• When working in groups decide who is gathering what material and make sure this workload is distributed evenly.
• Some of this material will take up a lot of space. Make sure you have designated folders available, that you label your material carefully so you know what it is and that you have a plan for backing-up this work.

Editing material

• If you have not used this editing software before, familiarise yourself with it and do a short practice run.
• If you are familiar with other editing software you can use it.
• Feel free to experiment with split screens, diagrams and text but don’t over do it.
• If you are including a voice over you will need to decide if you do the voice over first and edit the visual material to match the voice over or if you organise the visual material first and then create a voice-over to match it. Neither way is better than the other and there will be some to and fro between the two options.
• Include a bibliography/filmography of sources used at the end of the video
• If this is an academic piece that will be assessed in an academic context aim for a formal rather than colloquial/funny style.

Post-first draft

• Add colour filters
• Swap a voice-over for text screens and vice-versa
• Return to your original argument. Have you made a clear and obvious argument in the video essay?
• Test playback. Check the video will play okay on different computers/television screens.

The How-to Guides as PDFs

• GUIDE A: Downloading Audiovisual Content
• GUIDE B: Editing your Own Content
• GUIDE C: Creating a Mash Up
• GUIDE D: Sharing your Work
• GUIDE E: Extra Software
• How-to Video Essays [as PDF]

Copyright information

The above and linked to information, where it pertains to the use of copyright material, is shared under the understanding that  Fair Use or Fair Dealing  legal exceptions are generally established—for educational, critical and private research purposes—in many, if not all, national jurisdictions. These exceptions have also been supported and successfully defended by a number of prominent professional academic associations including the Society for Cinema and Media Studies . Readers or users of this information will need to ensure for themselves that they obey the laws of the legal territories in which they live. Neither the authors nor REFRAME , University of Sussex, will accept any liability for actions readers or users freely choose to take.

The authors and copyright holders of the above text and linked PDFs— Greer Fyfe and Miriam Ross —have shared their work under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence.  CC BY-SA. February 2015.

• TEXT: Greer Fyfe and Miriam Ross
• GUIDE Design: Greer Fyfe

Biographical Note

Miriam Ross is Senior Lecturer in the Film Programme at Victoria University of Wellington. She is the author of South American Cinematic Culture: Policy, Production, Distribution and Exhibition (2010) and 3D Cinema: Optical Illusions and Tactile Experiences (2015).

Greer Fyfe is a Research Assistant at Victoria University of Wellington.

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What is a Video Essay? Creators Grapple with a Definition

by Paula Bernstein in Filmmaking on May 3, 2016

Chantal Akerman , Kevin B. Lee , No Home Movie , Video Essay

Perhaps video essays are like pornography in that, as the saying goes, you know it when you see it. But what distinguishes a video essay from a short film and what are the ground rules for this relatively new form? Finally, how much creative leeway can a video essayist take with a filmmaker’s work without being disrespectful or misrepresentative?

These questions arose last month when we published a  video essay  from Kevin B. Lee, chief video essayist at Fandor, about the spaces in Chantal Akerman’s final documentary,  No Home Movie . Initially, Lee edited the video to music. But after receiving some complaints, including from the distributors of the film, Lee reassessed the music in his video essay and decided to create a new version without the music.

“I watched the essay and I was surprised because there was no commentary on it. It was five minutes of Chantal’s film put in a different order with this very sentimental music laid over it,” said Jonathan Miller , president of Icarus Films,  No Home Movie ‘s U.S. distributor. “I wasn’t sure what made it an essay. It was as if he (Lee) cut Chantal’s footage to make another film entirely.”

Lee understood Miller’s concern and opted to leave  both versions online  in order to show how a piece of music can define the same footage in two separate videos.

As the video essay continues to emerge as an entirely new form of commentary, this particular issue raises questions about authorship and intention. What makes something a video essay and not an entirely new film created from re-editing the same footage? Is it okay to add music to a film without any?

As a relatively new media form, video essays have yet to conform to any structural guidelines, although they’ve been around long enough for define patterns to emerge: the supercut and the fan tribute, for example.

We can all agree that a video essay is a short online video which cuts together footage from one or more films in order to reveal new insights about them. But are there any ground rules? And how much (if at all) should video essayist concern themselves with the original filmmaker’s intent?

Filmmaker Magazine reached out to a select group of video essayists to weigh in on the question. Below is a selection of their responses.

Arielle Bernstein :  I’m primarily an essayist and cultural critic, so I’ve never thought of the video essays I’ve collaborated on as films in their own right. The video essays I’ve worked on are thesis-driven and images are used along with text in order to persuade the viewer to  read and interpret these images in a certain way. For me, a video essay is distinct from a film because the work that is being done is about creating this kind of analytic framework for the viewer and reader to re-interpret or re-imagine original images.

Agnes Varda’s Search for Meaning from Fandor Keyframe on Vimeo .

Kevin B. Lee, Founding editor and chief video essayist for Fandor’s Keyframe :  I don’t think one can so neatly separate “a video essay from a reworked version of a film” – nearly all video essays qualify as reworked versions as a film. I don’t see it as a black and white issue of  “what is or isn’t a video essay,” but more of a spectrum measured by the degree of thought put into the reworking of the film. I see video essays as one strain of the essay film whose defining characteristic is the articulation of thought in audiovisual form. By that logic, the more thinking on a subject that can be discerned in a video, the more it can qualify as a video essay.

However, that thinking isn’t measured simply by how much talking or commentary is put into the video, otherwise we should just stick to writing articles and essays in text form. We also have to take into consideration how much thoughtfulness can be found in the reworking of the material through the use of editing, sound and music. That’s what makes the video essay such an exciting new form, because now we have to combine the criteria by which we measure good critical thinking with good filmmaking as well.

Watch Lee’s video essay on video essays, What Makes a Video Essay Great? below:

What Makes a Video Essay Great? from Fandor Keyframe on Vimeo .

Max Winter, Editor-in-Chief, Press Play:  One of the most interesting things about this particular form is that there aren’t any rules, or rather that there is no firm set of such rules. The video essayists tend to make up the rules as they go along. The one thing that binds all of them of course, is a love of film itself. That holds everything together: anything the essayist might say in a piece has that in its backdrop, that, in the range of experiences available to connoisseurs of culture, the experience they most wish to examine, and probe, and on whose examination they will spend hours and hours of meticulous work, is film. Another rule, possibly contradictory, is that something of the essayist has to come forward in the piece.

The most memorable video essays I’ve seen bring an element to the fore —  symmetry in Wes Anderson , first shots vs. last shots  –that is such an area of obsession for the essayist that the piece itself becomes something they have to express –and that feeling of urgency communicates itself in the drive of the piece. Another ground rule, or perhaps we’re talking about cornerstones of “success,” is that the piece remind you of something crucially true about the filmmaker addressed, that it drop anchor, in a sense–that you watch it, and you think, yes exactly, I’d never quite thought about that, but–how true.

Another “goal” these pieces could be said to have is explosiveness: instant immersion in the work of a filmmaker. This immersion is obviously literally explosive when the subject is someone like Tarantino or Godard, but just as much, in a quieter way, if the piece is about mirrors in Bergman , or the geometrical framing of Ada.

Video essays have, in my experience, what could be called a boiling point. Many of them simmer, and are no less remarkable for simmering, but some of them boil. It’s ultimately about the essayist’s mastery of the material, the degree to which that person absorbs and can re-express the idea he or she has, i.e. framing in Kurosawa, or what watching Breathless might have meant to a young film student, or what it takes to become a “cinephile.”

Boiling is the goal, but I like to think that there’s a little boil in all of them, and that all of these pieces are transformative, in both the legal and the intellectual sense. They make us watch more carefully–and what higher goal of any form of criticism could there be? The knee-jerk response to these pieces is, in the more resistant viewer, “why don’t you make your own film?” That question, unfortunately, is wholly beside the point. Most video essayists could  make their own films, but the simple fact is that they didn’t. And to find out why not, you have to watch their work.

V. Renee, NoFilmSchool :  What defines a video essay and when does it become its own film? I think it’s a little difficult to answer, because the film essay has only just started gaining popularity in the last year or so, so there aren’t really any defined rules or archetypes yet. However, I’ve found that there’s a huge difference between the ones with accompanying narration and/or text and the ones without. The ones with them are exactly what they advertise themselves to be, video essays, while the ones without, I think, are the ones that force us to question the definition of a video essay.

You’ve got, for example, Lewis Bond of Channel Criswell who narrates these insanely in-depth pieces on topics like the cinematic techniques of Miyazaki , and then you’ve got kogonada who does these supercuts sans voiceover or text, like the one on the use of eyes in Hitchcock films .

Both teach us something about the subject of their videos, but while one has an overt lesson with evidence and research and bullet points, the other simply has a series of images and leaves it up to the viewer to take from it what they will.

The question is do we hold these video essays up to the same standards of written academic essays? If we do, then a supercut set to classical music without any narration probably wouldn’t qualify. I mean, imagine turning in the written equivalent of that essay to a professor…you’d flunk. If we don’t, then the video essay could take whichever form it wants to, unless it starts veering away from being a teaching or observational piece, transforming from a critique into a film with its own story…I think that’s when it’s no longer a video essay.

But I don’t think it’s an either/or thing…there are plenty of video essays that celebrate the work of a director by editing together a bunch of their shots set to emotional music. All of a sudden you’re like, “My god! I just love Jeff Cronenweth and his beautiful work.” The video works more as a tribute piece than a video essay or supercut; I think that’s where creative leeway comes in. If you’re truly making a video essay, I’m not sure how much creative leeway you need, to be honest.

It’s an interesting thing to think about, especially because this might be one of the first times where the line between a critique and the piece in which it is critiquing has been blurred.

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How to Write a Video Essay: A Step-by-Step Guide and Tips

• by Joseph Kenas
• January 5, 2024
• Writing Tips

The video essay has become an increasingly popular way of presenting ideas and concepts in the age of the internet and YouTube. In this guide, we present a step-by-step guide on how to write a video essay and tips on how to make it.

While it is easy to write a normal essay, the structure of the video essay is a bit of a mystery, owing to the newness of the term.

However, in this article, we are going to define what is a video essay, how to write a video essay, and also How to present a video essay well in class.

What is a Video Essay?

A video essay is a video that delves into a certain subject, concept, person, or thesis. Video essays are difficult to characterize because they are a relatively new form, yet they are recognized regardless. Simply, video essays are visual compilations that try to persuade, educate, or criticize.

These days, there are many creatives making video essays on topics like politics, music, movies, and pop culture.

With these, essays have become increasingly popular in the era of video media such as Youtube, Vimeo, and others.

Video essays, like photo and traditional essays, tell a story or make a point.

The distinction is that video essays provide information through visuals.

When creating a video essay, you can incorporate video, images, text, music, and/or narration to make it dynamic and successful.

When you consider it, many music videos are actually video essays. 

Since making videos for YouTube and other video sites has grown so popular, many professors are now assigning video essays instead of regular essays to their students. So the question is, how do you write a video essay script?

Steps on How to Write a Video Essay Script

Unscripted videos cost time, effort, and are unpleasant to watch. The first thing you should do before making a video writes a script, even if it’s only a few lines long. Don’t be intimidated by the prospect of writing a script. All you need is a starting point.

A video script is important for anyone who wants to film a video with more confidence and clarity. They all contain comparable forms of information, such as who is speaking, what is said, where, and other important details.

While there are no precise criteria that a video essay must follow, it appears that most renowned video essayists are adhering to some steps as the form gets more popular and acknowledged online. 

1. Write a Thesis

Because a video essayist can handle a wide range of themes, video analysis essays lack defined bounds. The majority of essays, on the other hand, begin with a thesis.

A thesis is a statement, claim, theme, or concept that the rest of the essay is built around. A thesis might be broad, including a variety of art forms. Other theses can be quite detailed.

A good essay will almost always have a point to express. Every video analysis essay should have a central idea, or thesis, that ties the film together.

2. Write a Summary

Starting with a brief allows you and your team to document the answers to the most pressing project concerns. It ensures that everyone participating in the video production is on the same page.

This will avoid problems of mixing ideas or getting stuck when you are almost completing the project.

3. Choose a Proper Environment and Appropriate Tools

When it comes to writing your script, use any tool you’re familiar with, such as pen and paper. Also, find a writing atmosphere that is relaxing for you, where you can concentrate and be creative.

Consider what you don’t have to express out loud when you’re writing. Visual elements will be used to communicate a large portion of your content.

4. Use a Template

When you don’t have to reinvent the process every time you sit down, you get speed and consistency.

It’s using your cumulative knowledge of what works and doing it over and over again. Don’t start with a blank page when I sit down to create a script- try to use an already made template. 

5. Be Conversational

You want scripts that use language that is specific and targeted. Always avoid buzzwords, cliches, and generalizations. You want your audience to comprehend you clearly without rolling their eyes.

6. Be Narrative

Make careful to use a strong story structure when you’re trying to explain anything clearly. Ensure your script has a beginning, middle, and end, no matter how short it is. This will provide a familiar path for the viewers of your video script.

7. Edit Your Script

Make each word work for a certain position on the page when you choose your words.

They must serve a purpose.

After you’ve completed your first draft, go over your script and review it.

Then begin editing, reordering, and trimming. Remove as much as possible.

Consider cutting it if it isn’t helping you achieve your goal.

 8. Read Your Script Loudly

Before recording or going on in your process, it’s recommended to read your script aloud at least once. Even if you won’t be the one reading it, this is a good method to ensure that your message is clear. It’s a good idea to be away from people so you may practice in peace.

Words that flow well on paper don’t always flow well when spoken aloud. You might need to make some adjustments based on how tough certain phrases are to pronounce- it’s a lot easier to change it now than when recording.

9. Get Feedback

Sometimes it is very difficult to point out your mistakes in any piece of writing. Therefore, if you want a perfect video essay script, it is advisable to seek feedback from people who are not involved in the project.

Keep in mind that many will try to tear your work apart and make you feel incompetent. However, it can also be an opportunity to make your video better.

The best way to gather feedback is to assemble a group of people and read your script to them. Watch their facial reaction and jot own comments as you read. Make sure not to defend your decisions. Only listen to comments and ask questions to clarify.

After gathering feedback, decide on what points to include in your video essay. Also, you can ask someone else to read it to you so that you can listen to its follow.

A video essay can be a good mode to present all types of essays, especially compare and contrast essays as you can visually contrast the two subjects of your content.

How to make a Good Video from your Essay Script

You can make a good video from your script if you ask yourself the following questions;

• What is the video’s purpose? What is the purpose of the video in the first place?
• Who is this video’s intended audience?
• What is the subject of our video? (The more precise you can be, the better.) 
• What are the most important points to remember from the video?- What should viewers take away from it?

If the context had multiple characters, present their dialogues well in the essay to bring originality. If there is a need to involve another person, feel free to incorporate them.

How to Present a Video Essay Well in Class

• Write down keywords or main ideas in a notecard; do not write details- writing main ideas will help you remember your points when presenting. This helps you scan through your notecard for information.
• Practice- in presentations it is easy to tell who has practiced and who hasn’t. For your video essay to grab your class and professor’s attention, practice is the key. Practice in front of your friends and family asking for feedback and try to improve.
• Smile at your audience- this is one of the most important points when presenting anything in front of an audience. A smiley face draws the attention of the audience making them smile in return thus giving you confidence.
• Walk to your seat with a smile- try not to be disappointed even if you are not applauded. Be confident that you have aced your video presentation.

Other video presentations tips include;

• Making eye contact
• Have a good posture
• Do not argue with the audience 
• Look at everyone around the room, not just one audience or one spot
• Rember to use your hand and facial expressions to make a point.

Joseph is a freelance journalist and a part-time writer with a particular interest in the gig economy. He writes about schooling, college life, and changing trends in education. When not writing, Joseph is hiking or playing chess.

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Welcome to the video essay

Cams 266 & cams 105   •   maurizio viano.

It is a true pleasure to share with you some reflections on and results of the pedagogic, digital experiments I conducted with the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Blended Learning Initiative. I specifically worked towards implementing the making of video essays in all of my film courses, and more specifically in CAMS 266 Power to the Imagination: The Animated Film (taught in the Spring 2016) and the First Year Seminar CAMS 105 Twenty-First Century Cinema (Fall 2016).

What is a video-essay?

The video-essay (also called videography) constitutes a new form of intellectual/scholarly production, sanctioned by the professional organization in our field, the Society for Cinema and Media Studies ( SCMS ). Three years ago, they launched a website that publishes peer reviewed video-essays. The key word here is “peer-reviewed,” that is the process through which written academic scholarship must go through to be published. In short, the video-essay, at least in the field of Cinema and Media Studies, is quietly becoming a viable alternative to the traditional written essay. The website they sponsor is appropriately and significantly called [in]Transition . You can follow the vicissitudes of the scholarly videos-essay’s birth also here, at http://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/audiovisualessay/ . The scholarly video-essay is different from a fan tribute or a simple mash-up of favorite clips. Academic video-essays have a clearly identifiable argument, they rely on ‘serious’ research and essentially demonstrate that the audiovisual can be a form that thinks.

Video-essays in my film courses

In both of the courses mentioned above, I replaced the previous emphasis on papers with videography. The major challenge, of course, was to find a way to gradually teach the tools to think and produce knowledge audio-visually. For CAMS 105, for example, a first year seminar in which the emphasis on thinking audio-visually is virtually built in the course description, students are trained in the use of editing software in the second week of the semester and are subsequently asked to produce audio-visual assignments where before there would have been written ones. Here are some examples:

• During the week when we examined the expressive potential of film editing, students were asked to select thirty seconds of film that the include the transition from one shot to the next, and then insert a brief theoretical reflection on the meaning unleashed by the association of the two moving images. So, the written word is not entirely replaced, just relocated on the audiovisual text. This opens all sorts of interesting questions regarding the esthetics of the image-text combination.
• During the week dedicated to the study of sound, students had to detach the audio track from a clip, delete the visual track and comment on how the sound was ‘designed’ and what kind of meaning might be conveyed aurally.’

In CAMS 266, things worked a bit differently in that I gave students the option of doing a video essay or write a paper. Thus, only those students who were already skilled in editing chose the video-essay option.

I will be teaching the course again this Spring (2017) and I plan to proceed as in CAMS 105, that is to have students trained in editing software from the first week. Of course, the shift from the customary written work to the video-essay, while liberating for some, is threatening to others, so one has to find ways to work around that. This much said, let me add that a few of video-essays I got in CAMS 266 last Spring were outstanding — see links below.

What video-essays end up accomplishing

From a certain point of view, videography entails a circular movement: [1] the student watches an audio-visual artifact, a film; [2] she then reads about it, discusses it with her peers and the professor in class; and this ‘translates’ the experience of film watching into a verbal register; [3] in the wake of her readings and discussions, the student then writes a script of sorts where she envisions arguing AUDIOVISUALLY the points she would argue in a conventional paper. This in turn forces her to to foresee how to couch verbal arguments within an audio-visual format; [4] the student then selects the images she needs to substantiate her argument and transfers them into an editing application [most typically Final Cut Pro X or Adobe Premiere]; [5] a dialogical process of a peculiar kind then must take place, namely the process of going back and forth between the written script with its logically formulated ideas and its ideal translation into another ‘idiom,’ that of audio-visuality. Words and ideas must somehow be transmuted into images and sounds, inter-titles and voice-overs, musical soundtracks and split-screens for comparison purposes. It is an INTERMEDIAL exercise that forces the student’s mind to shuttle back and forth between two forms of communication, two forms of thinking, thus proving that the moving image is a form-that-thinks. * Indeed, it only makes sense that, thanks to the unprecedented tools technology is making available to us, we ask students to produce work that, instead of using words to describe film’s scenes, uses those very scenes, manipulating them to extract and express thoughts.

A few examples of students’ work

I have started a Vimeo page where I am collecting some of the outstanding video-essays made by students: https://vimeo.com/album/4100674

Although without an artist statement, this video-essay on the transgressive ‘rock musical’ Hedwig and the Angry Inch by Carlyn Lindstrom is also a great example of what students have done with the form. Note in Carlyn’s video-essay the creative way she uses to indicate that a certain portion of the voice over is a quote.

As a great example of a video-essay from the animation class, see: https://vimeo.com/180982372 . The student who made it asked me to make it private, so you’ll need a password to watch it: cams266

I’m eagerly waiting for the final projects in CAMS 105 to share some of the work done by first year students.

Can video essays be used in courses other than film?

I think so. The ‘form-that-thinks’ can be used in virtually any discipline, and it is foreseeable that it will become more and more widespread as professors realize its potential.

Central to Foucault’s argument is that we can never stand outside of disciplinary power, because who we are is a product of how power works: we have internalized it, we are the vehicles as well as the subject of it. Do you agree with Foucault? If you agree: what is the point of analyzing disciplinary power if we can’t get outside it? If you disagree: what openings do you see for people to subvert the workings of disciplinary power in our lives? To answer this question, draw on Discipline and Punish and either one of the other course readings through Saidiya Hartman or an outside reading of your choosing. Be sure to choose a source that will enable you to evaluate Foucault’s argument by looking at historical or contemporary examples.

And here is Jalena’s video essay: https://vimeo.com/188194446

Frames Cinema Journal

Peer-reviewed | open access | annual.

The Video Essay: The Future of Academic Film and Television Criticism?

By erlend lavik.

That the Internet has transformed film and television criticism ( 1 ) is readily apparent, though the ways in which it has done so are exceedingly hard to pin down. The most obvious change is simply quantitative: digital technology has made the maxim “everyone’s a critic” more nearly true than ever before. It is far harder to gauge the internet’s impact on the quality of film and television criticism, mainly because developments are so diverse and contradictory. Online criticism ranges from brilliant to banal, and it is as easy to argue that film criticism has never been better as it is to argue that it has never been worse. It merely depends on where we cast our nets and on what evaluative criteria we bring into play. What we can say for sure is that digital technology has a great potential to reinvigorate film and television criticism. The aim of this article is to tentatively explore what this potential consists of and how it can be realized. Of course, it is impossible to deal with such a vast topic at a general level. Film criticism is a sweeping concept, ranging from amateur blogs to newspaper reviews to dense scholarly studies that shade into film theory and film history. I will concentrate on the latter pole of the continuum, partly to make the discussion somewhat manageable, and partly because it is in the area of more academically oriented criticism that I think fulfillment of this potential is both most realistic and enticing. ( 2 )

One of the obvious fortes of digital criticism is its flexibility. For example, unlike their print counterparts, most online critics need not worry about word counts or deadlines. They are also free to write about any film they want, not just theatrical releases, or to put to the test generic conventions and explore alternative writing styles, unconstrained by editorial policy. Interactivity is another frequently cited resource. Hypertext links can point readers in the direction of relevant background information, while comment sections make online criticism more like the first move in an ongoing conversation rather than a verdict from on high. Most importantly – and promisingly – online critics may incorporate in their work moving images and sound. The burgeoning genre of the video essay commonly employs edited footage from the films under analysis in order to enrich and expand the function of criticism: to shed light on individual films, groups of films, or the cinema as an art form.

The inability to quote their object of study has been a long-standing drawback for film critics. The predicament has been most famously, and perhaps enigmatically, expressed in Raymond Bellour’s classical essay, “The Unattainable Text”. For Bellour, the literary text occupies a privileged position due to “the undivided conformity of the object of study and the means of study, in the absolute material coincidence between language and language” (1975: 20). Unlike literary critics, film critics have not been able to replicate portions of works, but have had to cope as best they can, mimicking, evoking, describing, “playing on an absent object”, as Bellour puts it ( ibid .: 26). In this digital day and age, though, this is no longer the case. For the first time, there is material equivalence between film and film criticism, as both exist – or can be made to exist – simply as media files.

That final statement requires a couple of qualifications, however. First, film critics have naturally not been incapable of reproducing any cinematic attribute. Film is a multimodal medium, and its repertoire includes print critics’ symbolic means of expression: the written word. Hence those portions of a film that consist of text are, to be sure, quotable. The problem is that text rarely, if ever, functions autonomously in the cinema. Certainly, when filmmakers started using intertitles in the silent era, critics could accurately quote movie dialogue – but not, crucially, its preceding and/or subsequent visual enactment (presumably the very reason such works assumed cinematic rather than solely literary form in the first place). With the introduction of sound, dialogue and performance were synchronized, throwing into relief the inadequacy of partial quotation (or more accurately, in this case, transcription). Print critics may still duplicate the literal meaning of the words spoken onscreen, but not the act of speaking itself, i.e. the what but not the how (except, of course, as always, through ekphrasis). ( 3 )

Second, since the 1970s film scholars have occasionally made use of frame enlargements when performing close readings. While useful for some purposes – scrutinizing image composition or lighting schemes, for example – still frames can merely hint at some of the key characteristics of film as a temporal art form: camera movement, blocking, editing, and so on. As Kristin Thompson – who, with David Bordwell, pioneered the use of still images in scholarly studies – points out, frame enlargements were quite rarely used because “It took special equipment to photograph such frames: expensive camera attachments, color-balanced light sources, and the expertise to use both” (2006: n.p.). Thus, until DVDs made frame grabbing easy, most scholars persisted with studio-generated publicity photos as illustrations, which of course were useless for close analysis, seeing as they “did not reflect what really appeared in the film, since they were still photos taken on the set, often with different poses, lighting, and camera position” ( ibid .).

Third, not all films are available in digital format. Numerous cinematic works cannot be quoted even in video essays, if only for the simple reason that they are unavailable either online or on DVD. Fourth, if we think of a film’s theatrical distribution as an “original”, some aural and visual information may be lost or altered as celluloid prints are converted to digital files on a computer. There is no surround sound, for example; film grain is often removed; and the image will typically be cropped along the perimeter. ( 4 ) Still, for most purposes these are minor problems (and it is worth bearing in mind that literary critics are not able to quote all aspects of a book either: to appraise the quality of its paper, its layout, or font style, they too must resort to description).

The obvious advancement that digital film criticism offers is the ability to quote in order to illustrate and exemplify, to hold up for the reader fragments of the work as a shared frame of reference for the critic’s observations and evaluations. The upshot of this facility is hard to specify at this stage. The video essay is still in its infancy, and has not coalesced into established patterns or forms yet. The label refers to sometimes widely divergent works. Matt Zoller Seitz’s wonderful five-part analysis of the film authorship of Wes Anderson, “The Substance of Style”, is a fairly conventional auteur study, tracing key influences on the director’s style and themes. ( 5 ) However, rather than putting forward his argument as text, it is presented in the form of a voiceover accompanied by carefully edited footage from Anderson’ work, sometimes juxtaposed by the work of the major artists that have inspired it. This allows Zoller Seitz to make his case with far greater economy, precision, and persuasion than a written piece with some frame grabs could hope to accomplish.

By contrast, Jim Emerson’s video essay, “Close-Up”, presents a very different approach to the format. ( 6 ) A collage of excerpts from classical films with no expository narration, it offers not so much a straightforward line of reasoning as an evocative meditation on the medium of film. With some modifications (if, no doubt, somewhat to its detriment) Zoller Seitz’s essay could probably be adapted into a scholarly article; Emerson’s, meanwhile, would not look out of place in an art gallery. These examples, though far from exhaustive, point up the scope of the video essay. As we will see, the format overlaps in myriad ways with a number of more established generic structures. The aim of the following discussion is partly descriptive – i.e. it attempts, in broad strokes, to provide an overview of the main genres with which the video essay intersects – and partly normative, i.e. it seeks to tentatively indicate some fruitful avenues for how the video essay may enhance film criticism.

One obvious point of reference is the so-called essay film, itself a notoriously elusive creature. Phillip Lopate calls it a centaur, “a cinematic genre that barely exists” (1992: 19). What he searches for, but struggles to find, is the cinematic equivalent of the literary essay: an eloquent, personal attempt to work out some fairly well-defined problem or mental knot through coherent arguments that flaunts, traces, or preserves the act of thinking.

While I share Lopate’s desire to see this fabled genre brought to fruition far more often, it is both too broad and too narrow for my purposes here. It is too inclusive because there are no thematic constraints. An essay film may deal with any topic under the sun; film criticism must be concerned with film. On the other hand, it is too restrictive, for Lopate seeks to describe a certain style, or tone of voice: elegant, probing, subjective, reflective, reflexive, and so on. The essay film assumes an intermediate position between avant-gardist and documentary practices. On the one hand, it is more accessible and less radically experimental than the avant-garde. For Lopate, the essay presents a reasoned discourse on a reasonably identifiable topic. Thus he finds it hard to think of a filmmaker such as Jean-Luc Godard as an essayist, as he is “too much the modernist […] to be caught dead straightforwardly expressing his views” ( ibid .: 20). While the essay form “allows for fragmentation and disjunction […] it keeps weaving itself whole again, resisting alienation, if only through the power of a synthesizing, personal voice with its old-fashioned humanist assumptions” ( ibid .: 21). Most controversially, perhaps, Lopate insists that an essay-film “must have words, in the form of a text either spoken, subtitled or intertitled” ( ibid .: 19).

On the other hand, the essayist’s rhetoric is invested with less authority than the documentarian’s; it is less assertive, impartial, proclamatory, or didactic: “The text must present more than information”, writes Lopate, “it must have a strong, personal point of view. The standard documentary voiceover which tells us, say, about the annual herring yield is fundamentally journalistic, not essayistic” ( ibid .: 19). The documentary’s typically omniscient mode of address is communal and collective. The essay, by contrast, invites us to adopt a more singular spectatorial position. It speaks to us as embodied individuals rather than as an undifferentiated mass. As Laura Rascaroli observes, the essay film’s argument is less “closed”, and its “rhetoric is such that it opens up problems, and interrogates the spectator; instead of guiding her through emotional and intellectual response, the essay urges her to engage individually with the film” (2008: 35).

While the essay form can be very rewarding, it would obviously be unwise to consign digital film criticism to such a Procrustean bed. We can all agree that the video essay – or, if we want to avoid the restricting connotations of the latter term: audiovisual film criticism – would benefit both from more documentary and from more avant-garde practices. Indeed, it seems to me that, among academics, it is the avant-gardist brand of audiovisual criticism that is most prevalent. For example, the recently launched, and tellingly titled, online journal Audiovisual Thinking ( 7 ) largely consists of experimental videos. Vectors is another online journal in a similar vein, promoting itself as “a fusion of old and new media in order to foster ways of knowing and seeing that expand the rigid text-based paradigms of traditional scholarship”. ( 8 ) While this work is highly varied and very hard to categorize, at least parts of it might be said to share some affinities with certain pre-existing, though somewhat marginal and interrelated, practices. Thus, some pieces appear to have a theoretical agenda, calling to mind the tradition of scholar-filmmakers like Noël Burch, Laura Mulvey, and Peter Wollen. Other pieces seem inspired by self-reflexive, avant-garde art engaging in political activism, recalling for example the efforts of situationist filmmakers like Guy Debord. Accordingly, Eric Faden, a prominent advocate and practitioner of multimedia-based scholarship, writes that “media stylos” or “critical media” (as he calls his video essays) consist of “using moving images to engage and critique themselves; moving images illustrating theory; or even moving images revealing the labor of their own construction” (2008: n.p.).

These efforts are interesting and rewarding, for there is no clear-cut line that neatly separates academic from artistic ventures in all cases, or at all times. Of course, most products and practices we encounter can be assigned exclusively and conclusively to one realm: It is either art or scholarship, and distinctions can be made comfortably enough, based on generic conventions, for example, or institutional affiliation. But it is also self-evident that there will be overlaps and limit cases. Most elementarily, artworks can be informed by academic theories or concepts (from philosophy, say, or narratology, or psychoanalysis), while an awareness and understanding of the craft that has gone into a work of art may sharpen scholars’ analytical and theoretical prowess.

Seeking out grey areas, exploring intersections and reciprocities, can be fruitful, and it swiftly demonstrates how random the boundaries between the arts and the academy can be. In some cases, artists and scholars appear, by and large, to engage in the same basic enterprise, except that they fall back on different modes of discourse. But this is hardly a revelation. After all, debates about the distinctions and interdependencies between literature and philosophy can be traced back at least to Plato. ( 9 ) It is, or ought to be, incontrovertible that the borderline between adjacent fields is not determined once and for all by the intrinsic features of the respective phenomena themselves. Nevertheless, the fact that the dividing line could easily have been drawn differently does not mean that it might as well be drawn anywhere. The ways in which we compartmentalize artistic and scholarly activities and creations are obviously not wholly natural, but neither are they completely arbitrary. Over time, the two domains have developed mostly distinct, if occasionally converging, rules and habits. These conventions continue to evolve, of course, but there is considerable continuity, and the pragmatic partitions remain because they have been found to serve certain purposes quite well.

Consequently, while I would certainly not discourage audiovisual scholarship that approaches experimental and “performative” modes of inquiry and communication, this is not where I think the greatest potential of audiovisual film criticism lies. I find that it adopts too readily the conceptual abstractionism of the artistic avant-garde, and does not strive hard enough to preserve the particular competencies of film scholars as scholars : the ability to not just engage with complex thought, but to pull it into focus, and to articulate and communicate those ideas clearly. ( 10 ) I share Lopate’s desire to see more intellectually ambitious work that endeavors not just to get us to think – though there is nothing wrong with that, of course – but “also tells us what its author thinks” (1992: 20).

Of course, I share the concern of many video essayists that the audiovisual material should not serve simply as ornamentation, but ought to contribute something that mere text on its own cannot. I agree with Faden that many electronic journals simply replicate traditional print journals, only on a computer screen, “same dense content now only more difficult to read” (2008, n.p.). But I think he overstates the differences between print-based and multimedia-based scholarship when he writes that:

Traditional scholarship aspires to exhaustion, to be the definitive, end-all-be-all, last word on a particular subject. The media stylo, by contrast, suggests possibilities – it is not the end of scholarly inquiry; it is the beginning. It explores and experiments and is designed just as much to inspire as to convince (…) In a key difference, the media stylo moves scholarship beyond just creating knowledge and takes on an aesthetic, poetic function (ibid).

I do not think this adds up to a relevant distinction between print-based and multimedia-based scholarship. Rather, Faden arbitrarily maps the different means of expression onto different epistemological ideals and procedures, which seem to roughly correspond to the old – and admittedly hazy – distinction between continental and analytical philosophy. Thus, on the one hand, Faden’s description of the media stylo would be just as applicable to the work of many influential thinkers that formulated their ideas in the form of print: In Critical Excess , Colin Davis points out that “What matters for Heidegger is the philosophical yield of his readings, not their critical pursuasiveness” (2010: 24), while Deleuze “wanted to create something new through his encounters with [texts and films]” (ibid: 56); Zizek, meanwhile, “wavers between patient, scholarly coherence-building and outrageous leaps of the interpreting imagination”, and “relies more on assertion than argument” (ibid: 128). Harold Bloom wrote that “all criticism is prose poetry” (1973: 95), while Derrida preferred to say that he wrote “towards” rather than “about” texts (1992: 62).

On the other hand, audiovisual scholarship may of course adopt a more conventional and pedagogical means of inquiry and presentation, and I think there is much to be gained from exploring more carefully the possibilities offered by more expository – “documentary”, if you will – modes of audiovisual film criticism. And to be sure, there are examples. Another online journal, Mediascape , ( 11 ) has published some video essays whose rhetoric is more straightforwardly explicatory than interrogative or associative. Other web sites target a more general audience of cineastes. Moving Image Source ( 12 ) contains many video essays, predominantly by Matt Zoller Seitz, with clear trains of thought and voiceover narration to guide the viewer. Critic and filmmaker Kevin B. Lee ( 13 ) is another frequent contributor. Zoller Seitz also curates Press Play – a blog springing from Indiewire , a daily news site for independent filmmakers – which consists mostly of video essays.

However, the contributors to such web sites are rarely academics; they tend instead to be freelance writers, critics, or filmmakers. This observation is not offered as a form of critique, of course, but rather as an indication of the extent to which academics have been hesitant to explore audiovisual scholarship, except as an avant-garde practice. One recent and promising project is Audiovisualcy , ( 14 ) whose subtitle ( Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies ) and self-presentation (“An online forum for video essays about films and moving image texts, film and moving image studies, and film theory”) suggest a more scholarly profile. But while there are original contributions, it functions more like an archive, collecting video essays from around the Internet, Consequently, it largely resembles and replicates what is available on web sites like Press Play .

I want to emphasize that these are all valuable contributions to film culture, ( 15 ) so I hope I do not sound too critical or prescriptive when I say I believe the format can be put to even better use, at least from a scholarly perspective. First and foremost, I would like to see audiovisual film criticism offer more ideas, in greater detail and greater depth. Most of the efforts so far tend to be relatively short, usually somewhere around ten minutes. ( 16 ) It is a tall order indeed, of course, but it is possible to envisage audiovisual work as densely informational and intellectually ambitious as a traditional scholarly article. ( 17 ) Certainly, recourse to visual quotations often eliminates the need for exposition, ( 18 ) but I also tend to agree with Lopate that – contrary to the utopianism of Alexandre Astruc’s famous 1948 article “The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Camera-Stylo” – the camera “is not a pencil, and it is rather difficult to think with” (1992: 19). Audiovisual film critics should not accept too uncritically the old filmmaking maxim show, don’t tell . Now, I certainly do not want to foreclose too hastily any avenues yet to be pursued; we should experiment with the genre and not try to settle in advance the best way forward. Thus I will simply assert that in my, admittedly tentative, vision for the most fully-realized audiovisual film criticism of the future, it is still text – whether written or spoken – which does the heavy lifting in opening its author’s mind to us.

There is an understandable concern that, having added moving images to its toolbox, audiovisual criticism ought to contribute or express something that mere text cannot. To be sure, the visuals should not simply serve as illustration, if by that we mean mere ornamentation. However, I fail to see how they could be “merely” decorative as long as they are sensibly selected and utilized. Imagine famous exemplars of historical-theoretical film criticism like Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” or Tom Gunning’s “The Cinema of Attractions” as voiceovers, accompanied by illustrative film clips: Perhaps it would not literally add new insights – it might, of course, but they would be hard to spell out hypothetically – but it would, I think, help get some of the authors’ points across with greater immediacy and precision, or make the texts accessible to a wider audience. It probably would not be worth the effort to visually illustrate these texts, but surely there are good reasons to think it would have added something of value.

Others would benefit more; say, Raymond Bellour’s renowned examination of twelve shots from Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep , “The Obvious and the Code”. Formalist studies would obviously be a prime candidate: David Bordwell – who uses frame enlargements more extensively and skillfully than anyone to illustrate his observations – would profit immensely. Just imagine his analyses – of depth staging strategies, ( 19 ) of action sequences in Hong Kong films ( 20 ), or of intensified continuity in modern blockbusters ( 21 ) – with the added benefit of moving images, complete with side-by-side comparisons of films from different periods and traditions. Clearly, the benefits to film studies would be considerable.

All kinds of close analyses, whether hermeneutic or descriptive, would stand to gain: mise-en-scene criticism, for example, or statistical style analysis, or the interpretation of themes, symbols and intertextual references. Generally, it would make film criticism richer: not just more reliable and verifiable, but more enjoyable and accessible as well. Traditional print criticism of the academic variety undeniably tends to place huge demands on, or faith in, the reader’s visual memory. Sophie Fiennes’ The Pervert’s Guide to the Cinema (2006) is an intriguing case in that regard.  A 150-minute “documentary” in which philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek, embedded in the diegesis, pontificates on the meaning of individual films, and on the cinema in general, richly illustrated with clips, hints at how visual quotations may serve to exemplify and clarify ideas – even if the film reads more like a general introduction to Zizek’s thought than an in-depth, concentrated examination of a distinct issue. ( 22 )

Commentaries on DVDs by filmmakers, critics, and historians may also hint at some of the forms that digital film criticism can take, though this genre has a serious drawback: the voiceover is at the mercy of – or forever playing catch-up with – the film’s linear, temporal unfolding. As Adrian Martin observes, this means that the voiceover narration tends to “coincide only loosely with the moment-by-moment flow of the film”, making it “easy to more or less ignore the film and offer a standard lecture on its context, background information, director biography, etc.” (2010: n.p.). ( 23 ) In the digital film criticism that I have in mind, however, text and image are carefully coordinated or “co-written”. Thus, the video essayist can arrest the action, for example by freezing the frame, to develop a detailed argument about shot composition, or inserting footage from other movies as points of comparison.

Other familiar frames of reference for audiovisual film criticism are the academic lecture and the conference presentation, both of which typically combine the spoken word, moving and still images, and text in the form of bullet points or quotations. All of these elements could enter into the video essay as well, so one template for the genre is a lecture over which the presenter has full control. Delays, distractions, technical hiccups, digressions, nervousness, false starts, and lapses of memory can all be eliminated. Rather, the video essayist can fine-tune every detail of the presentation in order to present an argument with maximum precision and clarity.

So far I have concentrated on how visual quotations may enhance the kind of criticism and analysis that film scholars and students are used to reading. There can be no doubt that the ability to make use of moving images allows the critic to express ideas more accurately and vividly. The value of this should not be underestimated. Still, the greatest cause for excitement is perhaps the prospect that the visuals may push thought further. This is a tricky point to demonstrate, of course, though I will try to hint at what I have in mind by way of an example: In 2009 I wrote an article on intertextuality in the HBO television series The Wire (2002-2008), noting that that the drug raid on Hamsterdam in the season 3 finale invokes Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) by, amongst other things, using the same music (Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries”). In short, I made the case that this parallel, when considered in the context of other references and analogies, establishes certain emotionally and ideologically charged associations that contribute to the The Wire’s sociopolitical concerns. Having since started to experiment with audiovisual criticism it strikes me, when I see these scenes again, that there are additional semblances at the level of form that also merit consideration. To be more precise – though it is difficult to be too precise without recourse to the audiovisuals – the two attacks are similarly filmed in terms of sequencing, camera placement, and sound and image editing, the cumulative effect of which, in both The Wire and Apocalypse Now , is to create an intriguing contrast between the narrational and the moral points of view.

Although I was vaguely aware of these issues when I wrote the initial article, it never really occurred to me to fully think them through and include them in the study. Because I was creating a text-based analysis, I did not find this hunch worth pursuing. I intuitively sensed that, without the ability to quote the two objects of study adequately, it would have been too difficult and laborious to get my points across to the reader. And even if it were possible, it might not have been worth it, as it would probably have made the text terribly exposition-heavy and dull. Had I instead been composing an audiovisual piece of criticism, I am quite confident that I would have pressed on and explored these ideas in greater detail and depth.

As research for a book project as well as for a video essay on The Wire , ( 24 ) I recently rewatched all five seasons of the series, and it struck me how potently the different means of expression shape thought. For example, with the audiovisual essay I am putting together in mind, other features of the show announce themselves as candidates for further reflection and analysis, such as acting, dialogue and delivery, and character complexity. Media scholar Anders Johansen has made a general observation that is pertinent here: “When I work with the same material in different media, I see it from slightly different angles. I do not search the archive in the same way when I am writing a book as when I am building a database […] The medium is a means of investigation” (2011: 73 [author’s translation]). In other words, different means of expression also constitute different instruments of contemplation. We use words, images, and sounds not merely to capture and pass on pre-existing and fully-formed ideas, but also as thinking devices. By confining film criticism exclusively to text and still images, we are simply not using every piece of intellectual equipment potentially available to us.

Admittedly, the proposals set forth in this article may be purely utopian. Criticism that is as rich in information, knowledge and ideas as an academic article, accompanied by carefully edited audiovisuals to illustrate and exemplify – all of it conceived as a single, cohesive intellectual enterprise – is obviously hugely challenging. For example, many scholars simply lack the practical know-how required to make video essays, though at least ripping DVDs and embedding clips in Keynote or Powerpoint presentations is becoming increasingly common. ( 25 )

Of course, those who are proficient may still not find it worth the effort. Firstly, it is very time-consuming to extract all the clips, and then to edit them, before synchronizing the visuals and the text/voiceover so that everything comes together as an integrated, unitary argument. Secondly, there are few, if any, publication outlets for such work that bring the institutional rewards that would make the quest worthwhile. Particularly younger scholars who have not yet secured permanent positions – precisely those, it seems reasonable to think, who are most likely to possess the required technological skills – are expected to publish frequently and in prestigious journals. Both of these expectations would be hard to meet for devoted video essayists. To put it bluntly, then, there are simply few incentives to undertake serious audiovisual work for academics today (though it is also conceivable, of course, that swimming against the stream might be a wise – if rather riskier – career move for newcomers).

Copyright is another obstacle to audiovisual film criticism. Currently, copyright norms and regulations are confusing and poorly understood. Even though European legal systems give protection for the use of copyrighted materials for critical and educational aims, media scholars have generally not exercised their right to quote strongly enough. Universities and university presses, who ought to spearhead the digital rights campaign, tend to adopt absurdly conservative safety-first policies. This is regrettable, as it may lead to “a recalibration of the law itself towards a less permissive setting” (Jaszi, 2007: n.p.). In the US, the situation is somewhat healthier. Organizations like the Center for Social Media and The Electronic Frontier Foundation have lobbied intensely and successfully to defend the American public’s digital rights. Their efforts have been crucial in securing new exemptions to the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), as when circumventing copy protections on DVDs for purposes of criticism was made legal for film and media educators and students in July 2010. ( 26 ) In Europe, though, it is still illegal to bypass DVD encryption, even when it is done in order to create works that are wholly innocent. Thus, while it is permissible to use film clips in audiovisual film criticism, it is unlawful to get around the encryption that would make it possible to create said clips in the first place. Moreover, in the US fair use guidelines ( 27 ) have been created for a number of practices, including for scholarly research in communication, ( 28 ) for online video, ( 29 ) and for teaching for film and media educators. ( 30 )

Clearly, there are considerable practical and legal obstacles on the path to the brave new world of audiovisual film criticism. Still, the potential rewards are such that it is tempting to paraphrase Lopate’s concluding remarks (1992: 22) on his centaur genre, half-text, half-film: I will go on patiently stroking the embers of the form as I envision it, convinced that the truly great audiovisual film criticism has yet to be made, and that this succulent opportunity awaits the daring critic of the future.

( 1 ) The rest of the article refers exclusively to film. This is merely to steer clear of awkward phrasings, however. It is simply implied that what I have to say about digital film criticism applies to digital television criticism as well.

( 2 ) I am not suggesting that this kind of film criticism must be performed by academics, or be founded on scholarly conventions. Indeed, part of the promise of digital film criticism is that it may challenge the often overly rigid distinctions between “professional” and “amateur” practices. What I have in mind, rather, is measured and reflective criticism more generally – i.e. responses that are intellectually ambitious, informed by a profound understanding of the medium’s expressive resources and history, and strive to offer up more than mere opinions and consumer guidance – of which academic film criticism at present is the prototypical example.

( 3 ) See Adrian Martin’s contribution to this issue of Frames in which he discusses ekphrasis .

( 4 ) For a detailed comparison of frames captured from DVD and frames photographed from celluloid, see Kawin, 2008.

( 5 ) See http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/the-substance-of-style-20091109 .

( 6 ) See http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2007/10/close_up_the_movie_essay.html .

( 7 )  See www.audiovisualthinking.org . The journal is not dedicated to film criticism, but describes itself as “ the world’s first journal of academic videos about audiovisuality, communication and media. The journal is a pioneering forum where academics and educators can articulate, conceptualize and disseminate their research about audiovisuality and audiovisual culture through the medium of video”.

( 8 )  http://vectorsjournal.org/journal/index.php?page=Introduction

( 9 ) For a useful overview of the ancient quarrel between literature and philosophy, see chapter 1 in Davis (2010).

( 10 ) Research is not a popularity contest, of course, and public perception should not be allowed to dictate findings or methodologies. But given the severe crisis that the humanities find themselves in today, it seems wise to make a concerted effort to reach out and reconnect with the public at large. Video essays could well be a useful way for film and media scholars to reach audiences that do not seek out the kinds of highly specialized academic journals and books where most studies are published. It is doubtful, however, that uncompromisingly experimental efforts will realize this potential. That is more likely to alienate tax payers further, exacerbating the image problem that the humanities suffer from, as excessively cloistered and esoteric.

( 11 )  See http://www.tft.ucla.edu/mediascape/ .

( 12 )  See http://www.movingimagesource.us/ .

( 13 ) See http://alsolikelife.com/shooting/ .

( 14 ) Online at: https://vimeo.com/groups/audiovisualcy .

( 15 ) Fine individual efforts include Benjamin Sampson’s visual study of Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence , available from   http://la.remap.ucla.edu/mias/ben/index.php/Main_Page ; Catherine Grant’s “Unsentimental Education: On Claude Chabrol’s Les Bonnes Femmes ”, available from http://filmanalytical.blogspot.com/2010/06/unsentimental-education-on-claude.html ; Steven Santos’s audiovisual essays on Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Fritz Lang’s M , available from http://vimeo.com/channels/127338 ; and Matthias Stork’s two-part essay on what he calls “chaos cinema”, available from http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/video_essay_matthias_stork_calls_out_the_chaos_cinema .

( 16 ) There are some longer pieces in which different facets of a broad topic are published in installments. One example is Press Play’s “Magic and Light: The Films of Steven Spielberg”, which consists of six discrete chapters, some of which are even further divided into separate parts.

( 17 ) What I have in mind is something akin to Richard Misek’s Mapping Rohmer: A Research Journey Through Paris , an excerpt of which was presented at the Remix Cinema workshop in Oxford on March 24, 2011. It is shown in its entirety here  in this issue of Frames .

( 18 )  A nice example is Kirby Ferguson’s “Everything Is a Remix” series. For example, part two manages, in just under three minutes, to sum up the numerous sources of inspiration for George Lucas’ Star Wars (1977) more clearly and persuasively than many an article could. See http://www.everythingisaremix.info/everything-is-a-remix-part-2/ .

( 19 )  See for example Bordwell (1997).

( 20 )  See Bordwell (2000).

( 21 ) See Bordwell (2002).

( 22 ) Of course, audiovisual criticism need not function as stand-alone creations, but may usefully supplement (or be supplemented by) print-based work.

( 23 )  There are ways around this problem, however. See Rosenbaum (2010). For more on the practical challenges of DVD commentaries, see Bennett and Brown (2008).

( 24 ) This video essay “Style in The Wire ”, together with a text which discusses its making both appear  here in this issue of Frames .

( 25 )  As is information about how to go about it. See Mittell (2010).

( 26 ) See two other significant discussions of ‘fair use’ and copyright in this issue of Frames by Steve Anderson and Jaimie Baron .

( 27 ) Such guidelines have no legal authority, but they have often proved highly useful, as they specify what practices and procedures agents in some creative community – aided by input from legal experts – consider fair. For example, the Documentary Filmmakers’ Statement of Best Practices in Fair Use has made it far easier and less risky for documentarians to use copyright material in their films. See Aufdeheide and Jaszi (2007).

( 28 ) See http://www.centerforsocialmedia.orghttps://framescinemajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/WEB_ICA_CODE.pdf .

( 29 ) See http://www.centerforsocialmedia.orghttps://framescinemajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/online_best_practices_in_fair_use.pdf .

( 30 ) See http://digital.lib.pdx.edu/resources/SCMSBestPracticesforFairUseinTeaching-Final.pdf .

Bibliography:

Aufdeheide P and Jaszi P (2007): “Fair Use and Best Practices: Surprising Success”, in Intellectual Property Today , vol. 14, no. 10.

Bellour R (1974): “The Obvious and the Code”, in Screen , vol. 15, no. 4: 7-17

Bellour R (1975): “The Unattainable Text”, in Screen , vol. 16, no. 3: 19-27.

Bennett J and Brown T (2008): “The Place, Purpose, and Practice of the BFI’s DVD Collection and the Academic Film Commentary: An Interview with Caroline Millar and Ginette Vincendeau”, in Bennett J and Brown T (eds.), Film and Television After DVD . New York: Routledge, 116-128.

Bloom H (1973): The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry , London, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Bordwell D (1997): On the History of Film Style , Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press.

Bordwell D (2000): Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema and the Art of Entertainment , Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press.

Bordwell D (2002): “Intensified Continuity Visual Style in Contemporary American Film”, in Film Quarterly , vol. 55, no. 3: 16-28.

Davis C (2010): Critical Excess. Overreading in Derrida, Deleuze, Levinas, Zizek and Cavell , Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

Derrida J (1992): “This Strange Institition Called Literature”. An Interview with Jacques Derrida, in Attridge D (ed.), Acts of Literature , London: Routledge.

Gunning T (1990): “The Cinema of Attractions. Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant- Garde”, in Elsaesser T (ed.), Early Cinema: Space – Frame – Narrative , London: BFI Publishing, 56-62.

Jaszi, Peter (2007): Copyright, Fair Use and Motion Pictures , available from http://www.centerforsocialmedia.orghttps://framescinemajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/documents/pages/fairuse_motionpictures.pdf .

Johansen, Anders (2011): “Skrivingen er et høreapparat for den som virkelig lytter” [“Writing Is a Hearing Aid for Those Who Truly Listen”], in Prosa , no. 1, vol. 11.

Kawin, Bruce (2008): ”Video Frame Enlargements”, in Film Quarterly , vol. 63, no. 3: 52-57.

Lopate, Phillip (1992): ”In Search of the Centaur: The Essay-Film”, in The Threepenny Review , no. 48: 19-22.

Martin, Adrian (2010): “A Voice Too Much”, in De Filmkrant , available from http://www.filmkrant.nl/av/org/filmkran/archief/fk322/engls322.html .

Mittell, Jason (2010): “How to Rip DVD Clips”, in The Chronicle of Higher Education , available from http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/how-to-rip-dvd-clips/26090 .

Mulvey, Laura (1975): “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, in Screen , vol. 16, no. 3: 6-18.

Rascaroli, Laura (2008): “The Essay Film: Problems, Definitions, Textual Commitments”, in Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media , vol. 49, no. 2: 24-47.

Rosenbaum, Jonathan (2010): “The Mosaic Approach”, in Moving Image Source , available from http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/the-mosaic-approach-20100818 .

Thompson, Kristin (2006): “Film educators no longer criminals”, available from http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=152 .

Copyright :

Frames #1 Film and Moving Images Studies Re-Born Digital? 2012-07-02, this article © Erlend Lavik . This article has been blind peer-reviewed.

Communications: Video Essay

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What is a video essay?

A video essay is a short video that illustrates a topic, expresses an opinion and develops a thesis statement based on research through editing video, sound and image.

(Source: Morrissey, K. (2015, September). Stop Teaching Software, Start Teaching Software Literacy. Flowjournal . https://www.flowjournal.org/2015/09/stop-teaching-software-start-teaching-software-literacy/?print=print )

It is made of three main elements:

• Image (filmed footage and found footage)
• Sound (music and audio)
• Words (spoken and written)

All of them are linked to your own voice and argument. It is a way to write with video.

• Guidelines for Video Essay Best Practices Official technical guidelines by Prof. Antonio Lopez.

Video essays about video essays

Why Video Essays are just plain AWESOME by This Guy Edits  on YouTube .

Elements of the Essay Film from Kevin B. Lee on Vimeo .

F for Fake (1973) – How to Structure a Video Essay from Tony Zhou on Vimeo .

Sample Video Essays

• If Educational Videos Were Filmed Like Music Videos by Tom Scott
• How to Use Color in Film A blog post with multiple video essays about the use of color palettes by multiple great directors.
• Seed, Image, Ground by Abelardo Gil-Fournier & Jussi Parikka.
• Every Covid-19 Commercial is Exactly the Same
• Top Video Essayists some videos on this page are set to private
• VideoEssay: A subreddit for analytic videos and supercuts
• ISIL videos imitate Hollywood and video games to win converts
• Best Video Essays of 2023
• Best Video Essays of 2022 by British Film Institute
• Best Video Essays of 2020 by British Film Institute.
• Best Video Essays of 2019 by British Film Institute.
• Best Video Essays of 2018 by British Film Institute.
• Best Video Essays of 2017 by British Film Institute.
• Video Essays (Historical) A YouTube playlist of historically important films that helped define the concept of video essays.
• What Is Neorealism by kogonada.
• Analyzing Isis' propaganda - Mujatweets by Azza el Masri and Catherine Otayek.
• Oh dear! by Adam Curtis.
• Fembot in a Red Dress by Alison De Fren.
• WHY IS CINEMA: Women Filmmakers? NOT SEXIST, BUT LET'S BE REAL??? by Cameron Carpenter.
• Women as Reward - Tropes vs Women in Video Games by feministfrequency.
• Il corpo delle donne (sub eng) by Lorella Zanardo.

Video essays beyond COM

Video essays can be a valuable form of academic production, and they can be brilliant and insightful in many other fields apart from Communications and media studies. Here are some examples that cover all the JCU departments:

• Lady of Shalott | Art Analysis A look at John William Waterhouse's Pre-Raphaelite painting "The Lady of Shalott".
• How to ace your MBA video essay The 60-second online video essay is a recent addition to the MBA application process for some business schools.
• The Last Jedi - Forcing Change An analysis of Finn's and Kylo's narrative arc in Episode VIII of the Star Wars franchise.
• How The Economic Machine Works by Ray Dalio A simple but not simplistic and easy to follow 30 minute animated video that answers the question.
• Evolution of the Hero in British Literature This video essay discusses the literary heroes throughout the Anglo-Saxon Period, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance Era in British Literature.
• Fast Math Tricks - How to multiply 2 digit numbers up to 100 - the fast way! An easy video tutorial unveiling some math tricks.
• Here's why we need to rethink veganism A brief climate change video essay on the environmental impacts of veganism, and how we can reframe going vegan less as a lifestyle and more as an aspiration.
• Italy on the edge of crisis: Should Europe be worried? Channel 4 discussing the delicate political juncture in Italy (May 2018).
• International Relations: An Introduction An overview by the London School of Economics and Social Science.

A video is basically a series of still images- each one is called a frame- that play back at a specific  rate . The frame rate (often abbreviated FPS for "frames per second") differs depending on where you are in the world and what you're shooting on.

If you're shooting a movie on celluloid (actual film that needs to be developed) then you are probably shooting at 24fps.

If you are shooting video in Europe then you are probably shooting at 25fps...

...unless you are shooting sports. Then you're probably shooting at 50fps.

If you're shooting video in the US or Canada then you are probably shooting at 30(29.98)fps...

...unless you're shooting sports. Then you're probably shooting at 60(59.98)fps...

...or unless you're shooting "cinematic video" at a frame rate of 23.976fps.

***The weird numbers for shooting in the US and Canada stem from the fact that while Europe's 50Hz electrical system operates at 50Hz, the 60Hz electrical system of the US actually operates at 59.98 Hz.***

If you're shooting at a higher frame rate (like 120fps or 250fps) it is probably because you want to play it back at one of these frame rates in order to achieve a slow motion effect.

Video sizes are measured in pixels. Resolution   refers to Width x Height. Here are some common resolutions:

• FullHD (1080p): 1920 x 1080
• HD (720p): 1280 x 720
• 4K (2160p): 3840 x 2160
• 4K Cinema: 4096 x 2160
• Standard Defintion (NTSC- US/Canada): 720 x 480
• Standard Definition (PAL- Europe): 720 x 576
• VGA: 640 x 360

Types of video essays

1. Supercut

A supercut is a compilation of a large number of (short) film clips, focusing on a common characteristic these clips have. That commonality can be anything: a formal or stylistic aspect, a shared theme or subject matter... 

Supercuts are a staple of fandom, but they can also be used as a form of audiovisual critique: to reveal cinematic tropes, to trace thematic or stylistic constants in a filmmaker’s work and so on.

Examples: ROYGBIV: A Pixar Supercut  or Microsoft Sam's  Every Covid-19 Commercial is Exactly the Same  or Chloé Barreau's  NON UNA DI MENO - l'8 MARZO sta arrivando!

2. Voiceover based

In this form, analysis is done by combining clips and images with a narrator’s voice that guides the process. This could be done for a variety of video essays styles: scene breakdowns, shot analyses, structural analyses, vlogs, etc. What is common is the integral role of the creator’s voice in advancing the argument.

Example: Tony Zhou’s Jackie Chan—How to Do Action Comedy or David Chen’s Edgar Wright and the Art of Close-Ups .

3. Text/Image/Sound-Based

In this form, analysis is done by combining text, images and sounds without a narrator’s voice to guide the process. Again, this could be done for a variety of video essays styles, but relies much more on editing to advance the argument.

Example: Kevin B. Lee’s Elements of the Essay Film or Catherine Grant’s All That Pastiche Allows Redux .

4. Desktop Films

A desktop film uses the screen of a computer or gadget to serve as the camera and canvas for all of the content of an audiovisual narrative. It can include content from videos, apps, and programs that would be viewable on a screen. It is a screen-based experience that uses the desktop as its primary medium.

Example: Katja Jansen’s Desktop Films ; Kevin B. Lee’s Reading // Binging // Benning .

Descriptions adapted from  Filmscalpel

Resources: background and fundamentals

Best Practices

• Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education Also downloadable as a PDF file
• Streaming: film criticism you can watch by Guy Lodge
• What is a Video Essay? Creators Grapple with a Definition Paula Bernstein from Filmmaker journal .
• The Video Essay As Art: 11 Ways to Make a Video Essay by Norman Bateman.
• Video essay: The essay film – some thoughts of discontent by Kevin B. Lee.
• Deep Focus - The Essay Film by British Film Institute and Sight & Sound .

Scholarly Websites about Video Essays

• The Videographic Essay: Practice and Pedagogy
• Audiovisualcy Video Essays on Vimeo.
• [In]Transition Journal of Videographic Films and Moving Image Studies.
• Introductory guide to video essay From the British Universities and Colleges Film and Video Council.

Resources: software and how-to

• How-to video essays by Greer Fyfe and Miriam Ross.
• Media Production Guide by Tisch Library, Tufts University.
• Video Reactions with OBS (Open Broadcast Software) Part 01 Setting up your scenes
• Video Reactions with OBS (Open Broadcast Software) Part 02 Recording with OBS

Storyboarding

• Planning and Storyboarding from Royal Roads University Library.
• Video Essay Script Template

Screencasting

• Quicktime (cross-platform)
• Screencast-O-Matic
• OBS Studio (open source, cross-platform) Open Broadcaster Software
• Flashback Express (PC only)
• 5 Free Tools for Creating a Screencast from Mashable.

Downloading and ripping

• Pasty Software for downloading.
• Savefrom allows up to 720p downloads of full video, 1080p downloads of video only (no audio). Select “download video in browser” on the site.
• Y2mate allows up to 1080p video downloads.
• Jdownloader Software for downloading
• Handbrake Software for ripping and converting
• DMA Basics: OBS for Video Essays A tutorial on how to use OBS for Netflix.

Note: Try to to ensure that you download in 720p resolution or higher. Your minimum level of quality should be 480p. If searching on YouTube, you can filter the search results to only show HD or 4K results. Check also the  Find Video   tab of this guide.

Free editing software options

• DaVinci Resolve (cross-platform) A color grading and non-linear video editing (NLE) application for macOS, Windows, and Linux, incorporating tools from Fairlight (audio production) and Fusion (motion graphics and visual effects that throw shade on After Effects).
• iMovie (Mac only)
• Videopad (cross-plaftorm)
• OpenShot (open source, cross-platform)
• Shortcut (open source, cross-platform)
• HitFilm Express (cross-platform)
• Free Music Archive An interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads directed by the radio station WFMU.
• SoundCloud SoundCloud is one of the world’s largest music and audio platform and you can search for creative commons music.
• YouTube Audio Library A library of free music and sound effects by YouTube. Each track is accompanied by information on the use.
• Sound Image Free music (and more) for your Projects by Eric Matyas. Only requires crediting the author for legal use (see "attribution info" page).
• Audacity A free and open-source digital audio editor and recording application software. Very useful to trim audio, convert a sample rate, apply a little compression, chop & screw, etc.
• REAPER A digital audio workstation and MIDI sequencer software. Technically a paid-for platform, its free-trial never ends.

Check also the  Find  Audio Resources  tab of this guide.

Creating credits, copyright and fair use

• Creating credits for video essays From Digital Design Studio at Tisch Library
• Fair Use Evaluator
• YouTube Fair Use Channel
• Society for Cinema and Media Studies Statement on Fair Use
• Blender A free and open-source 3D computer graphics software toolset used for creating animated films, visual effects, art, 3D printed models, motion graphics, interactive 3D applications, virtual reality, and computer games.
• GIMP A free and open-source raster graphics editor used for image manipulation (retouching) and image editing, free-form drawing, transcoding between different image file formats, and more specialized tasks.
• Inkscape A free and open-source vector graphics editor used to create vector images, primarily in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format.
• Krita A free and open-source raster graphics editor designed primarily for digital painting and 2D animation. Good for sketching and conceptual art.

Stock footage

For stock footage, please check under the  Find video tab of this guide.

• Final Cut Pro X Tutorial by JCU Digital Media Lab.
• Final Cut Pro X Tutorial (PDF)
• Final Cut Pro X Full Tutorial by David A. Cox
• Audio Recording Tutorial by JCU Digital Media Lab.
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• Next: Find Images >>
• Last Updated: May 20, 2024 5:10 PM
• URL: https://johncabot.libguides.com/communications

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The best video essays of 2020

Creators continue to push the envelope of criticism on YouTube

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For the last few years, video essays have gained more and more prominence on YouTube . With more and more creators choosing a video essay — or video essay-inspired — format, there are video essays about almost any topic you want to learn more about.

To discuss what makes a video essay one of the best of the year, let’s first break down what a video essay was in the year 2020 . There’s more gray area between formats than it initially may seem, especially given how many videos that lack an essay structure take on an essay aesthetic. We used the following criteria for this list:

• The video must be scripted. Momentary improvised asides are fine, especially if they come in the form of voice over added in editing, but the video must otherwise follow a written script.
• The video must have a thesis, and that thesis must be more than “this is good” or “this is bad.” The thesis should concern the impact of the subject matter, not just its content. This means no straight reviews (like La’Ron Readus’s review of Candyman ), no commentary/discussion videos (like Sherliza Moé’s series on cultural appropriation in the Star Wars prequels and Avatar: The Last Airbender ), no lore recaps (like My Name Is Byf’s meticulous archival works of the Destiny 2 lore), and no straight-up histories (like Sarah Z’s retelling of the infamous DashCon).
• The video also shouldn’t be a documentary (like NoClip’s documentary about the making of Pyre ). The focus should be a subject from an analytical standpoint, not an interview standpoint.
• But this doesn’t mean the video should necessarily aim for pure objectivity; personal video essays are, in fact, a thing.

This isn’t to say the excluded videos aren’t great. On the contrary: the ones mentioned above absolutely rule. Defining the parameters of a video essay, though, puts the videos discussed here on an equal playing field. When you watch, you know you’ll come away understanding the subject matter, and likely how art and society impact each other, a little better. Almost all of these videos contain spoilers, so watch at your own risk — but most can be enjoyed regardless of your familiarity with the subject matter, too.

1. “In Search of Flat Earth,” Dan Olson (Folding Ideas)

Dan Olson of Folding Ideas has been a video essayist for years, helping solidify the medium on YouTube. “In Search of Flat Earth,” though, is his masterpiece to date. The video is shot beautifully, with loving and reverent shots of nature that not only contribute to the video’s content and concepts, but also capture a sense of still beauty. If the video seeks to claim that flat earthers feel powerlessness in the face of the government and science, the way this video is shot makes the claim that maybe our powerlessness can be good, actually. But “In Search of Flat Earth” isn’t just a response to flat earthers; it’s also a response to Olson’s contemporaries who have made videos trying to convince flat earthers that their ideas are wrong. “In Search of Flat Earth” argues that flat earthers, and people with similar mindsets, can’t be logicked out of their mindsets — which turns into a surprise, mind-blowing third-act twist.

2. “The Satirical Resurgence of Reefer Madness,” Yhara Zayd

Yhara Zayd is somewhat of a newcomer to video essays, posting her first, “The Remake That Couldn’t: Skins U.S. ” in June 2019. Her catalogue of work has boomed in 2020, making selecting a video to feature difficult; her work is consistently standout, mixing analysis with dry comedy and heavy aesthetics. In a landmark year for marijuana legalization, “The Satirical Resurgence of Reefer Madness ” feels especially timely and important, but it’s also just a delight to watch. The video is not just a look into a criminally underrated musical starring Kristen Bell, Alan Cummings, and Ana Gasteyer. It’s a look into the real 1936 propaganda film of the same name, how the laws around marijuana criminalization were formed, and the deeply racist roots of anti-marijuana campaigns. Zayd’s soft but direct voice and distinctly internet-culture-informed humor make the video consistently engaging and fun while never shying away from what makes Reefer Madness so worthy of a campy parody musical.

3. “The Strange Reality of Roller Coaster Tycoon,” Jacob Geller

Roller Coaster Tycoon is a nostalgic classic — but what can it teach us about death? A weird amount, as Geller explains in “The Strange Reality of Roller Coaster Tycoon .” This video opens with the sentence, “There is at least one roller coaster designed specifically to kill you.” The “Euthanasia Coaster,” Geller explains, was never made, but would effectively kill a rider in just about a minute. As he breaks down the rituals around death, he winds his way around curves and loops, masterfully bringing the audience back to the game at the core of the video: Roller Coaster Tycoon . In just over 18 minutes, Geller’s analysis breaks down how the game allows for meaningful struggle in its mechanics — which the video essayist notes are similar in their coding to a roller coaster — while allowing for monstrosities, lethal roller coasters that bring your virtual park-goers to their grave. A roller coaster is meant to scare us, meant to spike adrenaline, meant to put the fear of death right in us, but fun! Geller’s discussion of Roller Coaster Tycoon shows just how much coasters, real or virtual, say about how we deal with death.

Disclosure: Jacob Geller has written for Polygon.

4. “ CATS ! And the Weird Mind of TS Eliot,” Maggie Mae Fish

Cats may have come out in 2019, but Maggie Mae Fish’s video essay on it came out in March 2020, so early into what the rest of the year would become. It was a small, but wonderfully unhinged blessing for video essay lovers who needed something bonkers to keep us afloat during quarantine. Fish’s performance background is in comedy and improv, notably working with Cracked before starting on her own video essays. Her writing and performance have a level of effervescent delight and bewilderment at most of the trash media she discusses, coming through most in her discussion of Cats .

But while a video on why Cats was bad could have been engaging and funny, Fish takes a step deeper, looking into the musical’s source material: the poetry of T.S. Eliot, a homophobic, antisemitic weirdo. Fish doesn’t just express Eliot’s politics, but explains why Cats pulls from fascist ideologies in its depiction of a tradition-heavy death cult. (Just, you know, with cats.) From there, Fish’s analysis goes even deeper. This video isn’t about not liking problematic media, or even “bad” media. It’s a video about deeply loving something that winds up parodying and subverting its roots.

5. “The Anatomy of Stan Culture,” Elexus Jionde (Intelexual Media)

Historian Elexius Jionde of Intelexual Media often takes a cultural anthropology lens in her videos, discussing topics like life in the American 1970s and the history of Black homelessness . In “The Anatomy of Stan Culture,” Jionde breaks down a current social phenomenon through a historical lens, asking why we stan and how we got here. Jionde dissects “celebrity worship disorder” and how fans obsess over their favorite celebrities, while not letting people who think they’re too good for the goss off the hook either. Using examples ranging from Bhad Babie to Selena Quintanilla to Victorian actors, Jionde shows how current celebrity culture is rooted in everything from politics to evolutionary biology. This 18-minute video is a crash course in how the celebrity industry runs, and it’s also an analysis of how we interact with celebrity right now. How do stans go from liking Ariana Grande’s music to replicating Ariana Grande’s voice to sending death threats to people who besmirch Ariana Grande’s name? Jionde doesn’t necessarily judge stans; instead, she shows how celebrity culture affects the rest of culture.

6. “On Writing: Mental Illness in Video Games,” Tim Hickson (Hello Future Me)

Before talking about what makes this video essay great, a warning: this video discusses struggles with mental health, including several aspects of suicide. It’s the heaviest video essay on this list, so make sure you know what you’re getting into before you watch.

Tim Hickson of the channel Hello Future Me opens the video by disclosing his experience working for a youth mental health and suicide intervention hotline. From there, he first discusses the ways in which video games, immersive narratives where players have control and make choices, can be cathartic for people with mental illnesses and informative for people who don’t. Citing games from World of Warcraft to Celeste to Prey to Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice , Hickson shows the different ways games dive into depression, social anxiety, and schizophrenia. A segment focused on Life is Strange ’s Kate Marsh dissects how a story can be cathartic for one person, but harmful for another. It’s a deeply empathetic video essay with rich research. It’s sobering, emotional, and moving.

7. “Why Anime is for Black People - Hip Hop x Anime,” Yedoye Travis (Beyond the Bot)

Beyond the Bot is a new New York-based collective making video essays about how anime impacts culture, and like with Yhara Zaid’s work, it was difficult to choose a favorite. “Why Anime is for Black People” is a standout for just how deep the analysis goes into the crossover between Black and East Asian culture. Going back to ’70s Blaxploitation and kung fu films, host and writer Yedoye Travis chronicles how East Asian media permeated Black culture, eventually leading to the Wu-Tang Clan sourcing their samples from films like The 36th Chamber of Shaolin and Shaolin and Wu Tang . Legendary producer J Dilla would later go on to sample East Asian music as well. And, of course, Travis spends a good deal talking about the important of the Toonami block of Adult Swim, and the importance of the network playing music from bands like Gorillaz and their lo-fi hip-hop bed music for bumps. Travis explains how the shows themselves — namely Cowboy Bebop , Samurai Champloo , and, of course, The Boondocks — made an impact on Black youth who grew up alongside the programming. The historical lens of the cross-culture influences allows this analysis to go deeper than similar video essays, but the tone stays casual, giving plenty of asides and jokes for people familiar with the content.

8. “What Is *Good* Queer Representation in 2020?,” Princess Weekes (MelinaPendulum)

2020 has been a landmark year for queer representation in the media, and Princess Weekes’ “What Is *Good* Queer Representation in 2020?” seeks to pick apart what has been “good,” what has been “bad,” and most often, what has just been complicated. Like any discussion of representation, Weekes talks about how important it is for queer people to see different versions of queer people in a variety of media, and the tendency for queer people to overlook works by queer creators, or judge them more harshly than works by creators who aren’t queer. She breaks down queer assimilation and respectability politics, taking a stance that’s emotional and personal, while still being relatable and pervasive. This video essay is a great start for how we can start discussing ways to complicate representation, to move away from the sanitization of queer narratives, and understand that what makes one person feel seen might do the opposite for someone else.

9. “Fallout: New Vegas Is Genius, And Here’s Why,” Harry Brewis (hbomberguy)

Harry Brewis’ trend of surprisingly long videos with sarcastically simplistic titles continues with his hour-and-a-half testament to what makes a good narrative-heavy RPG, using Fallout: New Vegas as an example of the best of the best. Don’t let the title trick you into thinking the video is a review. It’s much closer to a masterclass on writing for games, and implementing your story and worldbuilding into every single aspect of that game. From the world to the companions to the main plot to the side quests to the combat to the continuity of consequences, Brewis lays out how Fallout: New Vegas gives its players genuine choices, and then makes those choices genuinely significant in the game. He argues the game actually deals in “gray morality” instead of just saying it does while pushing players to be Good or Evil. The choices in the game often leave the player ambivalent, while placing them in a wild world that players can choose to make even wilder. Brewis uses the video to talk about what makes Fallout: New Vegas work, and why so many games pale in comparison. It isn’t just that Fallout: New Vegas is good —it’s that it’s a meticulous game made by people who cared about every single detail they developed.

10. “Whisper of the Heart: How Does It Feel to Be an Artist,” Accented Cinema

Whisper of the Heart is one of the quieter Studio Ghibli films, and likewise, this video essay by Accented Cinema is quiet, lovely, and tender. Accented Cinema is a video essay channel that focuses on foreign (at least, foreign to the United States) media and its impact. “ Whisper of the Heart : How Does It Feel to Be an Artist” is the most personal essay on this list, a necessity for an analysis of the very personal feeling of creating art. In the video, the host discusses how most artists don’t have the frenzied drive media often depicts. Instead, they have the slow, sometimes frustrating, sometimes euphoric drive of anyone who does something because it’s who they are. This video also comes with a warning that it discusses a tragic death in the studio — but the way it brings the discussion of that death back to the essay’s thesis is spectacular.

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Guest Essay

Press Pause on the Silicon Valley Hype Machine

By Julia Angwin

Ms. Angwin is a contributing Opinion writer and an investigative journalist.

It’s a little hard to believe that just over a year ago, a group of leading researchers asked for a six-month pause in the development of larger systems of artificial intelligence, fearing that the systems would become too powerful. “Should we risk loss of control of our civilization?” they asked.

There was no pause. But now, a year later, the question isn’t really whether A.I. is too smart and will take over the world. It’s whether A.I. is too stupid and unreliable to be useful. Consider this week’s announcement from OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, who promised he would unveil “new stuff” that “ feels like magic to me.” But it was just a rather routine update that makes ChatGPT cheaper and faster .

It feels like another sign that A.I. is not even close to living up to its hype. In my eyes, it’s looking less like an all-powerful being and more like a bad intern whose work is so unreliable that it’s often easier to do the task yourself. That realization has real implications for the way we, our employers and our government should deal with Silicon Valley’s latest dazzling new, new thing. Acknowledging A.I.’s flaws could help us invest our resources more efficiently and also allow us to turn our attention toward more realistic solutions.

Others voice similar concerns. “I find my feelings about A.I. are actually pretty similar to my feelings about blockchains: They do a poor job of much of what people try to do with them, they can’t do the things their creators claim they one day might, and many of the things they are well suited to do may not be altogether that beneficial,” wrote Molly White, a cryptocurrency researcher and critic , in her newsletter last month.

Let’s look at the research.

In the past 10 years, A.I. has conquered many tasks that were previously unimaginable, such as successfully identifying images, writing complete coherent sentences and transcribing audio. A.I. enabled a singer who had lost his voice to release a new song using A.I. trained with clips from his old songs.

But some of A.I.’s greatest accomplishments seem inflated. Some of you may remember that the A.I. model ChatGPT-4 aced the uniform bar exam a year ago. Turns out that it scored in the 48th percentile, not the 90th, as claimed by OpenAI , according to a re-examination by the M.I.T. researcher Eric Martínez . Or what about Google’s claim that it used A.I. to discover more than two million new chemical compounds ? A re-examination by experimental materials chemists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, found “ scant evidence for compounds that fulfill the trifecta of novelty, credibility and utility .”

Meanwhile, researchers in many fields have found that A.I. often struggles to answer even simple questions, whether about the law , medicine or voter information . Researchers have even found that A.I. does not always improve the quality of computer programming , the task it is supposed to excel at.

I don’t think we’re in cryptocurrency territory, where the hype turned out to be a cover story for a number of illegal schemes that landed a few big names in prison . But it’s also pretty clear that we’re a long way from Mr. Altman’s promise that A.I. will become “ the most powerful technology humanity has yet invented .”

Take Devin, a recently released “ A.I. software engineer ” that was breathlessly touted by the tech press. A flesh-and-bones software developer named Carl Brown decided to take on Devin . A task that took the generative A.I.-powered agent over six hours took Mr. Brown just 36 minutes. Devin also executed poorly, running a slower, outdated programming language through a complicated process. “Right now the state of the art of generative A.I. is it just does a bad, complicated, convoluted job that just makes more work for everyone else,” Mr. Brown concluded in his YouTube video .

Cognition, Devin’s maker, responded by acknowledging that Devin did not complete the output requested and added that it was eager for more feedback so it can keep improving its product. Of course, A.I. companies are always promising that an actually useful version of their technology is just around the corner. “ GPT-4 is the dumbest model any of you will ever have to use again by a lot ,” Mr. Altman said recently while talking up GPT-5 at a recent event at Stanford University.

The reality is that A.I. models can often prepare a decent first draft. But I find that when I use A.I., I have to spend almost as much time correcting and revising its output as it would have taken me to do the work myself.

And consider for a moment the possibility that perhaps A.I. isn’t going to get that much better anytime soon. After all, the A.I. companies are running out of new data on which to train their models, and they are running out of energy to fuel their power-hungry A.I. machines . Meanwhile, authors and news organizations (including The New York Times ) are contesting the legality of having their data ingested into the A.I. models without their consent, which could end up forcing quality data to be withdrawn from the models.

Given these constraints, it seems just as likely to me that generative A.I. could end up like the Roomba, the mediocre vacuum robot that does a passable job when you are home alone but not if you are expecting guests.

Companies that can get by with Roomba-quality work will, of course, still try to replace workers. But in workplaces where quality matters — and where workforces such as screenwriters and nurses are unionized — A.I. may not make significant inroads.

And if the A.I. models are relegated to producing mediocre work, they may have to compete on price rather than quality, which is never good for profit margins. In that scenario, skeptics such as Jeremy Grantham, an investor known for correctly predicting market crashes, could be right that the A.I. investment bubble is very likely to deflate soon .

The biggest question raised by a future populated by unexceptional A.I., however, is existential. Should we as a society be investing tens of billions of dollars, our precious electricity that could be used toward moving away from fossil fuels, and a generation of the brightest math and science minds on incremental improvements in mediocre email writing?

We can’t abandon work on improving A.I. The technology, however middling, is here to stay, and people are going to use it. But we should reckon with the possibility that we are investing in an ideal future that may not materialize.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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Julia Angwin, a contributing Opinion writer and the founder of Proof News , writes about tech policy. You can follow her on Twitter or Mastodon or her personal newsletter .