Video Essays
Sep. 1st, 2020 11:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
singedsunWith time being as it is and my work from home routine into something that resembles actual routines from the before times, I've started getting really into watching longer form videos on YouTube. Previously, if a long form video hit I'd add it to a watch later playlist that never got watched later. But sitting in the home office by myself during the day is lonesome, especially when I'm busy so videos have won out over podcasts (even video podcasts).
A few weeks ago,sewn did a round-up of YouTubers and I've been wanting to do something similar but I thought for at least this post I'd narrow it down a little bit to a certain kind of video. In this instance, the video essayist. (Maybe there's a better word for that, I don't know.) In my case this started with like A guy I watched from time to time, but in the last few months I've added quite a few to that list. These aren't people who do sketches or vlogs or review type videos. These are the people who pick a topic and do long, in-depth videos on them sometimes to the tune of full feature length documentaries worth of time and effort. I think on average the people I watch are putting out 20-30 minutes worth of content every week. The topics range from movies/film to art or video games to philosophy. The one that spurred me to make this post today happens to be about the history of gay porn. Go figure.
I'll stick these behind a cut, but I linked the one from James Somerton above so if that at all caught your attention you could just go watch a really interesting hour and a half documentary about gay adult films without having to go anywhere. James does these really thoughtful pieces about gay media, I posted one a few weeks ago that he'd done about the history of queer coding in horror. He also recently did one about the queer coding of Disney villains. He doesn't have a lot of content on his channel and you might guess based on his subject matter, his videos often get copystriked or soft-blocked from YouTube despite fair use and fairly clean language given his focus on gay issues. I'm hoping his more recent content is indicative of more regular content but there's a dozen or so hours of video there to watch already.
I tried to leave some of the more popular creators like Lindsay Ellis, hbomberguy and PhilosophyTube, Contrapoints, ect. off this list. Not everyone here has impeccable narrative voice or super slick editing or sets. They're for the most part, smaller creators who I think could stand up against these longer-standing, better-known channels. But if you don't watch much YouTube there are definitely bigger channels out there worth looking up.
I'll start off with Nerdwriter because while he has a lot of followers, he only posts about once a month and he often tackles such a niche topic that I don't think his videos get the attention they should. His videos on YouTube aren't long either, they're not sweeping documentaries, they're extremely pointed commentary on a small topic. This most recent video is titled in a way that suggests a short video about the art of Caravaggio. And that's true, that is what it's about. But it's also about a specific piece "The Calling of St. Matthew" and it's about how masterful and distinct an impact Carvaggio's use of light had on art and the drive of the church in his day to drive followers that even created this art. Nerdwriter isn't making a movie here though, this isn't novel-worthy content. But what makes his videos so very good is his editing eye. The way an image flickers, or how he highlights or transitions a moment to make an impact. Another really great example of this is his video on Spielberg and sound design.
amandamaryanna doesn't just cover films on her channel, although this in-depth history of the film company A24 is definitely the one that finally got me to subscribe instead of just watching as she popped up on my recommended feed. Her content has shifted from her earlier videos on YT which were more vlog/lifestyle kind of videos. In the past several months her content has shifted to a more video essay style.
Leadhead videos are video game centered, with the occasional video that comes out of left field (like his video on the TV show King of the Hill which is never a thing I thought I'd watch someone talk about for 12 minutes, yet here were are). He narrates over video game footage on topics of art and comedy and filmic qualities he finds within a variety of games. There's a lot of back catalogue here to watch, and I've gone back quite deep since I started watching his stuff and have enjoyed most of them. Sometimes he goes back to the same game two or three times, finding new takes each time.
If you like horror movies, Ryan's videos are a good watch. He also has an extensive back catalogue of videos. I feel like while he only tackles (usually) a single movie per video, his videos are less about providing a simple review and more about the specific impact of that movie and what it brings to the genre. And by genre, I don't necessarily just mean horror movies as a whole, but the specific type of horror movie he might be talking about. He does talk about the movies with big spoilers which means it's a great supplemental material to watch after you've seen a movie if you want to learn about things you might not have picked up on. But if you're not a horror movie fan it's a great way to learn about a specific movie and it's plot without having to sit through it.
Curio is a trans, non-binary creator making videos about oh, just about everything. Video games, films and television, gender, comedy, you name it. I think they approach everything with a little bit of humour, often donning alternate personas as they take on different parts of their content. Sometimes they tackle a specific item, like one specific video game. Other times they take on a larger topic and put it in context with a variety of media, like their video on Comedy and Masculinity or Objectivity.
Yhara Zayd tackles film topics, but often in the realm of a larger conversation. This video tackles two specific Lifetime biopic movies comparing and contrasting these two and applying them in a larger context of biopic movies, and specifically the lack of interest by the channel or production teams to actually make something that is really saying anything of substance. She doesn't have very many videos on her channel, but she seems to be aiming for topics involving women and young adults in film.
ladyknightthebrave makes these HUGE videos about specific films or television and really takes a deep, deep dive in the topic. I think I've posted one of her videos before, but let me state it here and now that she's probably one of my favorite person making content on the platform right now. Her video on The Haunting of Hill House Netflix show took a long look at each episode and the whole of Mike Flanagan's movie history to really dissect what he's did with that show. In that video, she mentioned her favorite horror movies were the Happy Death Day movies, which was a strong recommendation to me to go and watch those movies (which I also love). I cannot recommend her videos and her bi-aesthic enough. If you only watch one other person on this list, make it her. She doesn't post often, about one essay a month so enjoy the hours of content you have available to you to watch now.
Jacob Gellar has a very unique take on video games. His videos often take on the context of other art forms within games like architecture, sound, anatomy and analyzes them in a variety of games to show why some are more impactful than others. This video on Fear of Depths had quite a few moments that just made me stare at my screen in awe because his writing and his cadence in conjunction with his editing are just striking. His last video about the future of writing about games talks about how video games are reviewed and how some of them are artful in their own right, outside of the context of the games they're talking about.
I feel like this list is both too many and not enough? There are others on my list but I haven't watched enough of their content to feel good about making a recommendation on them yet. I also do follow a lot more people who tackle both video games, and horror movies very specifically so I didn't want to do a whole post about only one kind of video essayist. Hopefully this is a good mix of long and short content from a variety of topics and you'll find someone, or at least some video here worth watching.
Let me know if you have other recommendations for me too. I know that the great YouTube algorithm has a bad habit of amplifying a certain kind of voice - leaning most often to young white men. I feel like I have a good mix of voices, but I'm always digging for more.
A few weeks ago,
sewn did a round-up of YouTubers and I've been wanting to do something similar but I thought for at least this post I'd narrow it down a little bit to a certain kind of video. In this instance, the video essayist. (Maybe there's a better word for that, I don't know.) In my case this started with like A guy I watched from time to time, but in the last few months I've added quite a few to that list. These aren't people who do sketches or vlogs or review type videos. These are the people who pick a topic and do long, in-depth videos on them sometimes to the tune of full feature length documentaries worth of time and effort. I think on average the people I watch are putting out 20-30 minutes worth of content every week. The topics range from movies/film to art or video games to philosophy. The one that spurred me to make this post today happens to be about the history of gay porn. Go figure. I'll stick these behind a cut, but I linked the one from James Somerton above so if that at all caught your attention you could just go watch a really interesting hour and a half documentary about gay adult films without having to go anywhere. James does these really thoughtful pieces about gay media, I posted one a few weeks ago that he'd done about the history of queer coding in horror. He also recently did one about the queer coding of Disney villains. He doesn't have a lot of content on his channel and you might guess based on his subject matter, his videos often get copystriked or soft-blocked from YouTube despite fair use and fairly clean language given his focus on gay issues. I'm hoping his more recent content is indicative of more regular content but there's a dozen or so hours of video there to watch already.
I tried to leave some of the more popular creators like Lindsay Ellis, hbomberguy and PhilosophyTube, Contrapoints, ect. off this list. Not everyone here has impeccable narrative voice or super slick editing or sets. They're for the most part, smaller creators who I think could stand up against these longer-standing, better-known channels. But if you don't watch much YouTube there are definitely bigger channels out there worth looking up.
I'll start off with Nerdwriter because while he has a lot of followers, he only posts about once a month and he often tackles such a niche topic that I don't think his videos get the attention they should. His videos on YouTube aren't long either, they're not sweeping documentaries, they're extremely pointed commentary on a small topic. This most recent video is titled in a way that suggests a short video about the art of Caravaggio. And that's true, that is what it's about. But it's also about a specific piece "The Calling of St. Matthew" and it's about how masterful and distinct an impact Carvaggio's use of light had on art and the drive of the church in his day to drive followers that even created this art. Nerdwriter isn't making a movie here though, this isn't novel-worthy content. But what makes his videos so very good is his editing eye. The way an image flickers, or how he highlights or transitions a moment to make an impact. Another really great example of this is his video on Spielberg and sound design.
amandamaryanna doesn't just cover films on her channel, although this in-depth history of the film company A24 is definitely the one that finally got me to subscribe instead of just watching as she popped up on my recommended feed. Her content has shifted from her earlier videos on YT which were more vlog/lifestyle kind of videos. In the past several months her content has shifted to a more video essay style.
Leadhead videos are video game centered, with the occasional video that comes out of left field (like his video on the TV show King of the Hill which is never a thing I thought I'd watch someone talk about for 12 minutes, yet here were are). He narrates over video game footage on topics of art and comedy and filmic qualities he finds within a variety of games. There's a lot of back catalogue here to watch, and I've gone back quite deep since I started watching his stuff and have enjoyed most of them. Sometimes he goes back to the same game two or three times, finding new takes each time.
If you like horror movies, Ryan's videos are a good watch. He also has an extensive back catalogue of videos. I feel like while he only tackles (usually) a single movie per video, his videos are less about providing a simple review and more about the specific impact of that movie and what it brings to the genre. And by genre, I don't necessarily just mean horror movies as a whole, but the specific type of horror movie he might be talking about. He does talk about the movies with big spoilers which means it's a great supplemental material to watch after you've seen a movie if you want to learn about things you might not have picked up on. But if you're not a horror movie fan it's a great way to learn about a specific movie and it's plot without having to sit through it.
Curio is a trans, non-binary creator making videos about oh, just about everything. Video games, films and television, gender, comedy, you name it. I think they approach everything with a little bit of humour, often donning alternate personas as they take on different parts of their content. Sometimes they tackle a specific item, like one specific video game. Other times they take on a larger topic and put it in context with a variety of media, like their video on Comedy and Masculinity or Objectivity.
Yhara Zayd tackles film topics, but often in the realm of a larger conversation. This video tackles two specific Lifetime biopic movies comparing and contrasting these two and applying them in a larger context of biopic movies, and specifically the lack of interest by the channel or production teams to actually make something that is really saying anything of substance. She doesn't have very many videos on her channel, but she seems to be aiming for topics involving women and young adults in film.
ladyknightthebrave makes these HUGE videos about specific films or television and really takes a deep, deep dive in the topic. I think I've posted one of her videos before, but let me state it here and now that she's probably one of my favorite person making content on the platform right now. Her video on The Haunting of Hill House Netflix show took a long look at each episode and the whole of Mike Flanagan's movie history to really dissect what he's did with that show. In that video, she mentioned her favorite horror movies were the Happy Death Day movies, which was a strong recommendation to me to go and watch those movies (which I also love). I cannot recommend her videos and her bi-aesthic enough. If you only watch one other person on this list, make it her. She doesn't post often, about one essay a month so enjoy the hours of content you have available to you to watch now.
Jacob Gellar has a very unique take on video games. His videos often take on the context of other art forms within games like architecture, sound, anatomy and analyzes them in a variety of games to show why some are more impactful than others. This video on Fear of Depths had quite a few moments that just made me stare at my screen in awe because his writing and his cadence in conjunction with his editing are just striking. His last video about the future of writing about games talks about how video games are reviewed and how some of them are artful in their own right, outside of the context of the games they're talking about.
I feel like this list is both too many and not enough? There are others on my list but I haven't watched enough of their content to feel good about making a recommendation on them yet. I also do follow a lot more people who tackle both video games, and horror movies very specifically so I didn't want to do a whole post about only one kind of video essayist. Hopefully this is a good mix of long and short content from a variety of topics and you'll find someone, or at least some video here worth watching.
Let me know if you have other recommendations for me too. I know that the great YouTube algorithm has a bad habit of amplifying a certain kind of voice - leaning most often to young white men. I feel like I have a good mix of voices, but I'm always digging for more.
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Date: 2020-09-02 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-09-04 06:42 am (UTC)