A video essay is a piece of video content that, much like a written

essay An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal a ...

, advances an

argument An argument is a statement or group of statements called premises intended to determine the degree of truth or acceptability of another statement called conclusion. Arguments can be studied from three main perspectives: the logical, the dialectic ...

. Video essays take advantage of the structure and language of film to advance their arguments.

Popularity

While the medium has its roots in

academia An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membershi ...

, it has grown dramatically in popularity with the advent of the online video sharing platforms like

YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...

and

Vimeo Vimeo, Inc. () is an American video hosting, sharing, and services platform provider headquartered in New York City. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high-definition video across a range of devices. Vimeo's business model is through software as ...

. While most of such videos are intended for entertainment, some argue that they can have an academic purpose as well. In 2021, the

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...

series ''

Voir ''Voir'' was a francophone alternative weekly newspaper in Montreal, Quebec, published by Communications Voir. ''Voir'' was founded by Pierre Paquet in November 1986. The first issue of the newspaper was published on 27 November 1986. Later on t ...

'' premiered featuring video essays focusing on films like ''

48 Hrs ''48 Hrs.'' (pronounced 'forty-eight hours') is a 1982 American buddy cop action-comedy film directed by Walter Hill, who co-wrote the film with Larry Gross, Steven E. de Souza and Roger Spottiswoode. It stars Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy, the ...

'' and ''

Lady Vengeance ''Lady Vengeance'' (; ; titled ''Sympathy for Lady Vengeance'' in Australia and Russia) is a 2005 South Korean psychological thriller film directed by Park Chan-wook. The film is the third and final installment in Park's '' Vengeance Trilogy'', ...

''.

Notable video essayists

Frequently cited examples of video essayists and series include ''

Every Frame a Painting ''Every Frame a Painting'' is a series of 28 video essays about film form, film editing, and cinematography created by Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou between 2014 and 2016. They were first published on YouTube but have also been released on Vimeo. ...

'' (a series on the grammar of film editing by Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos) and

Lindsay Ellis Lindsay Ellis (born 1984/1985) is an American author, film critic, video essayist, and former YouTuber. Her debut novel, '' Axiom's End'', published in July 2020, became a ''New York Times'' Best Seller. Education and career Ellis received he ...

(an American media critic, film critic, YouTuber, and author formerly known as

The Nostalgia Chick Lindsay Ellis (born 1984/1985) is an American author, film critic, video essayist, and former YouTuber. Her debut novel, ''Axiom's End'', published in July 2020, became a The New York Times Best Seller list, ''New York Times'' Best Seller. Educ ...

) who was inspired by Zhou and Ramos's work. Websites like ''StudioBinder'', ''

MUBI Mubi (; stylized as MUBI; The Auteurs before 2010) is a global curated film streaming platform, production company and film distributor. Mubi produces and theatrically distributes films by emerging and established filmmakers, which are exclusivel ...

'', and ''

Fandor Fandor is a film streaming service, dedicated to independent films, documentaries, international titles, and classics, and is a division of the American entertainment company, Cinedigm. Relaunched in 2021, Fandor offers thousands of films, rang ...

'' also have contributing writers providing their own video essays. One such contributor, Kevin B. Lee, helped assert video essays' status as a legitimate form of film criticism as Chief Video Essayist for Fandor from 2011-2016. Other video essayists include

Korean-American Korean Americans are Americans of Korean ancestry (mostly from South Korea). In 2015, the Korean-American community constituted about 0.56% of the United States population, or about 1.82 million people, and was the fifth-largest Asian Americans ...

filmmaker Filmmaking (film production) is the process by which a motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, starting with an initial story, idea, or commission. It then continues through screenwriting, castin ...

Kogonada Kogonada (sometimes styled :: kogonada) is a South Korean-born American filmmaker. He is known for his video essays that analyze the content, form, and structure of various films and television series. The essays frequently use narration and edi ...

, British

film scholar Film studies is an academic discipline that deals with various theoretical, historical, and critical approaches to cinema as an art form and a medium. It is sometimes subsumed within media studies and is often compared to television studies. Fi ...

Catherine Grant, Canadian cultural commentator J.J. McCullough, and French media researcher Chloé Galibert-Laîné. In 2017,

Sight & Sound ''Sight and Sound'' (also spelled ''Sight & Sound'') is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI). It conducts the well-known, once-a-decade ''Sight and Sound'' Poll of the Greatest Films of All Time, ongoing ...

, the magazine published by the British Film Institute (BFI), started an annual polls of the best video essays of the year. The 2021 poll reported that 38% of the essayists whose work received a nomination are female (which implies an increase of the 5% from the previous year), and that predominantly the video essays are in English (95%). In 2020, curator Cydnii Wilde Harris, along with Will DiGravio and Kevin B. Lee, collaboratively curated ''The Black Lives Matter Video Essay Playlist'', highlighting the medium's activist potential. Because the video essay format is digestible yet often emotionally impactful and can be created without requiring expensive equipment, it has served as a crucial tool for filmmakers and community organizers who have been marginalized from mainstream film criticism and media production.

Criticism

Some have argued that essays from YouTube personalities, while well-produced, can be gussied-up

opinion pieces An opinion piece is an article, usually published in a newspaper or magazine, that mainly reflects the author's opinion about a subject. Opinion pieces are featured in many periodicals. Editorials Opinion pieces may take the form of an editorial ...

and the analysis of said videos can be taken as fact by the viewer due to their convincing academic deliveries.

Studies

In 2014,

MediaCommons MediaCommons is an in-development all-electronic scholarly publishing network in media studies, being created in partnership with the Institute for the Future of the Book and with the support of New York University and the National Endowment for ...

and

Cinema Journal The ''Journal of Cinema and Media Studies'' (formerly ''Cinema Journal'' and ''The Journal of the Society of Cinematologists'') is the official academic journal of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (formerly the Society for Cinema Studies). ...

, the official publication of the

Society for Cinema Studies The Society for Cinema and Media Studies (formerly the Society for Cinema Studies) is an organization of professors and scholars. Its home office is at the University of Oklahoma, but it has members throughout the world. SCMS holds an annual confer ...

, joined to create '' n/nowiki>Transition'', the first journal devoted exclusively to

peer reviewed Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...

publication of videographic scholarly work. The journal is designed not only as a means to present selected videographic work, but to create a context for understanding it – and validating it – as a new mode of scholarly writing for the discipline of cinema and media studies and related fields. Since 2015 under a grant from the

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

, and under the auspices of Middlebury’s Digital Liberal Arts Summer Institute, Professors

Jason Mittell Jason Mittell is a professor of American studies and film and media culture at Middlebury College whose research interests include the history of television, media, culture, and new media. He is author of three books, ''Genre and Television'' (2 ...

, Christian Keathley and Catherine Grant have organized a two-week workshop with the aim to explore a range of approaches by using moving images as a critical language and to expand the expressive possibilities available to innovative humanist scholars. Every year the workshop is attended by 15 scholars working in film and media studies or a related field, whose objects of study involve audio-visual media, especially film, television, and other new digital media forms. In 2018, ''Tecmerin: Revista de Ensayos Audiovisuales'' began as another peer-reviewed academic publication exclusively dedicated to videographic criticism. The same year Will DiGravio launched the Video Essay Podcast, featuring interviews with prominent video essayists. In 2021 the research project ''Video Essay. Futures of Audiovisual Research and Teaching'' funded by the

Swiss National Science Foundation The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF, German: ''Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung'', SNF; French: ''Fonds national suisse de la recherche scientifique'', FNS; Italian: ''Fondo nazionale svizzero ...

started, led by media scholar and video essayist Johannes Binotto, with Chloé Galibert-Laîné, Oswald Iten, and Jialu Zhu as main researchers.

References

External links