film essay channels

Screen Rant

10 best youtube channels for film video essays, according to reddit.

After watching a movie, one of the best things a fan can do is sit by and watch a video analysis by reviewers like Lindsay Ellis and Possum Reviews.

With Wakanda Forever closing off Phase Four on November 11, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is preparing for an introduction to its fifth phase, and many fans are excited to see what the franchise has to offer. Yet, many are also questioning how all these new Phase 4 characters connect to each other, with the multiverse looming as the main arc. After all, most Marvel movies are now somewhat disconnected.

Thankfully, there is a vast host of YouTube reviewers and analysts who are dedicated to explaining the intricacies of movies and anything fans might have missed. Most of these YouTube video essays are made by some key YouTubers who do an excellent job getting fans caught up in the worlds of Hollywood.

YourMovieSucksDOTorg

Some reviewers do a great job of taking apart popular movies to show why they're excellent. The film YouTuber YourMovieSucksDOTorg is best at showcasing just why fans may dislike certain movies. While that might be inherently more negative, it can still be enjoyable.

"His Toy Story 3 review blew my mind. I knew I hated it but he kind of showed me why," says a now-deleted Reddit user. While he addresses both beloved and critically panned movies, the panned movies tend to be the videos that draw the most love from audiences. Sometimes fans just need to know why a plot feels weak or repetitive.

Possum Reviews

Another YouTuber who tends to focus on movies that received overwhelmingly poor receptions, Possum Reviews has grown a large fanbase by putting his attention on reviewing "garbage" movies, as his possum icon indicates. "I really love watching Possum Reviews even though his reviews of blatantly bad movies are really cynical," says Redditor Owijs .

Most of his reviews tend to be funny, which helps to keep the content engaging even when the actual film he reviews is appallingly bad. While he sometimes addresses beloved movies, it's the mediocre ones that draw the most eyes.

While most moviegoers don't think about soundtracks, the YouTuber Sideways goes into detail on just how the best soundtracks in movies interact with each film and create an environment. Tackling both musical and nonmusical movies, the channel does an extraordinary job of teaching fans about sound in films.

"Genuinely such interesting analysis of music in shows/movies from a very funny, intelligent guy who always sounds like he’s having the best time talking about whatever he’s talking about," states Reddit user ameboleyn . His excitement, even when addressing movies like Cats , is palpable and keeps viewers as engaged as he is.

Red Letter Media

A YouTube channel focused on friends reviewing movies that are both good and bad, RedLetterMedia has picked up many fans through the years, and for good reason. With the channel often known for its dry humor, Redditor TylerKnowy described it as "a mix of comedy and insight."

The channel has different shows with each addressing several topics. From Re:View 's more positive view of film to the often maligning Half in the Bag , the channel has something for everyone — as long as everyone likes their sense of humor. Of course, given that they often tackle movies that divide critics and audiences , they can be contentious.

With videos ranging from 10 minutes to over an hour long, the YouTube channel FilmJoy has things for everyone to enjoy. Of course, while the channel offers several shows, most of the channel's supporters tend to find themselves more engaged by the Movies with Mikey show.

"Intelligent, funny and extremely heartfelt. His whole approach is to discuss beloved films and why they're so special," says Reddit user johnspost . Instead of focusing on cynicism and encouraging fans to dislike certain movies, it brings about positivity, which is somewhat rare among YouTubers.

This Guy Edits

While many film critics focus on acting, character development, plot, or setting, the YouTuber This Guy Edits focuses on the editing in film and how it affects each movie. Instead of critiquing individual movies, the channel educates the public to help them consider editing in their own review of films.

"I find myself analyzing cuts and sound design way more after watching This Guy Edits," shared Reddit user InuitOverit . Considering how many movies are edited after their initial release , it's got a wide array of content to sift through, which means fans have a lot to learn from a true professional.

Lindsay Ellis

A film critic who used her YouTube channel to launch a book of her own, Lindsay Ellis recently left the YouTube scene, but her remaining backlog of content is still fascinating to look through. "Her videos are really funny while also being very interesting," commented Redditor bman9919 .

Often, Ellis considered topics that most fans failed to consider and showcased just why she took that perspective. She focused on a wide array of issues, including animation, the influence of the filmmakers on each film, and even why the greatest movie musicals are no longer particularly popular.

Like Stories Of Old

The YouTuber Like Stories of Old is a critic who likes to go into depth with each video, which is why it's so rare to see content for his channel under 20 minutes long. It's also why he only tends to release videos irregularly, often with a month or more between releases.

"His voice and delivery is so unique and soothing... it's pretty remarkable how well constructed each piece is," says Redditor stumpcity . The channel addresses wide-ranging issues in Hollywood, like the Hero's Journey, entire genres in film, and archetypes within the industry. He offers a fascinating in-depth look at whatever topics he chooses, and it's why he's a beloved critic.

Every Frame A Painting

While there are many visually stunning movies that can awe viewers, the YouTuber Every Frame A Painting takes apart movies to show fans exactly why they come to love the looks and aesthetic of movies. It also takes a look at how to improve those very aesthetic through editing.

"They were mainly about filmmaking techniques, editing, shot composition, blocking, etc., instead of plot/story/theme like the majority seem to be," says Reddit user scoutcjustice . While unfortunately Every Frame A Painting has stopped producing videos, fans still have a lot to learn from the content the channel already produced, as the majority continues to be relevant today.

Thomas Flight

Often addressing topics like director preferences and the impact of particular films, the YouTuber Thomas Flight could give a masterclass in film criticism, as most fans would agree. "Thomas Flight does a really good job at highlighting technical details and is also great at explaining the historical reference points for many directors," posits Reddit user redditaccount001 .

With essays about editing, genres, and sound quality in movies, fans may come for the analysis of their favorite film and leave with a new appreciation for dynamic styles in film. The channel's in-depth analysis explains why each upload comes somewhat inconsistently, but the content is quality enough that fans hardly mind.

Next: 10 Best "Let's Play" YouTubers For Fans To Watch

The Best Video Essay Channels, Ranked

Cinephiles and film buffs owe it to themselves to check out these YouTube channels which brilliantly analyze and explain movies using video essays.

If you’re a die-hard movie fan, you don’t have to be a hardcore collector to know that you can find a lot of your special features free on YouTube – from movie trailers and top-ten lists to reaction videos and cast-and-crew interviews. But the crème de la crème for any budding cinephile is YouTube ’s subculture of video essayists.

The best of these content creators, particularly those focused on dissecting and analyzing film and television, give viewers a lot of food for thought, making them consider things they hadn’t before, even when it comes to movies they have watched 100 times. There is an embarrassment of content out there, but this article seeks to separate the wheat from the chaff – we are recommending only the channels with the best, most refreshing, and most original analysis. If you're a film lover or budding buff, you owe it to yourself to check out these great video essay channels.

What’s So Great About That?

UK creator and pop-culture academic Grace Lee makes video essays examining themes and form in both horror and animated media; she has an affinity for the deeper, more unexpected thoughts evoked by her favorite genres. Whereas many content creators are quippy or sarcastic, Lee’s voiceover narrative approach is one of measured thoughtfulness.

Related: Explained: How Twin Peaks Changed Television

While her output as What's So Great About That? is not as large as some other creators on this list, that is far from a bad thing as Lee seems to focus more on quality than quantity. Each video discusses fairly narrow topics within a given property – examples include the “treachery of language” in the work of David Lynch or the concept of the “unnatural” in the original Evil Dead film.

You might mistake Canadian vlogger Sarah Z (pronounced “Zed”) for your best friend. She sits on the couch with a cup of coffee and speaks directly to you, a monologuist spending hours on end about all of her opinions, from toxic fandoms to true-crime documentaries.

But these monologues are not the boring, meaningless yarns that you might expect. Rather, Sarah’s channel is an ever-deepening trove of incisive and engaging media analysis encased in a shell of light and fluffy entertainment. The whole thing is driven by Sarah’s palpable excitement and enthusiasm for the topics she is covering, and a penchant for long, detailed videos that are extensively researched. Some videos will even stretch far beyond the one-hour mark, including a 90-minute video on geek culture and a full two hours on Dear Evan Hansen .

Another Canadian creator steps up to the plate in the form of Sage Hyden , a fantasy novelist whose essay channel Just Write seems particularly preoccupied with film’s place in the cultural conversation. In particular, Hyden is fascinated with the messages that movies send us, what they are trying to communicate (consciously or subconsciously), and how they shape our perceptions and prejudices.

For topics that can sometimes land on the serious side, Hyden’s tone and writing style are conversational and often funny, and his insights are fairly eye-opening. Topics include Willy Wonka and its relationship to misconceptions about poverty, the importance of the original Mulan film, and the cinematic lineage of the modern murder mystery Knives Out .

If you consider yourself an outsider or find yourself disagreeing with most of your friends on their favorite movies, you might find a mutual kinship with creator Yhara Zayd , whose videos examine film and television through lenses both personal and political. Zayd’s is not the kind of detached analysis you can expect from many YouTubers; rather, though she is very well-researched, she is also full of unapologetic hot takes, and her videos are brimming with the caustic personality of a modern-day Pauline Kael.

Related: These Are the Best Marilyn Monroe Movies

In some ways, Zayd has crafted the perfect synergy between the highly-opinionated critic and the relentless deconstructionist, enthusiastically dissecting and questioning the images and media we regularly consume. She also has a distinct knack for self-awareness, gazing inward as she gazes outward, a quality which separates her content from that of many of her peers. Zayd covers such divergent subjects as the commodification of the great Marilyn Monroe, reflections of housing discrimination in 1980s horror films , and the under-appreciated legacy of Not Another Teen Movie .

For something a little less personal but no less fascinating, it is worth checking out the prolific Susannah McCullough and her channel The Take . McCullough and her extraordinary team make what are probably the best “Explained” videos you’ll be able to find, along with character breakdowns, deconstructions of tropes, and the lessons movies can teach us. They’ve got videos that deconstruct and explain Donnie Darko , The Sopranos , Get Out , and many, many more. They’ve also nerded out with full series on different franchises, including detailed character analyses in shows such as Friends and Breaking Bad .

The writing is smart but accessible, and the arguments are utterly convincing. The videos themselves are breezily edited and full of poppy visuals. The channel also covers many, many genres and types of movies, so you are sure to find something on a movie or TV show you love. The Take offers incisive film analysis in a context that is fun and completely unpretentious.

Maggie Mae Fish

Decadent, performance-driven vlogs like ContraPoints and Philosophy Tube are all the rage these days, and film buffs finally have their own version in the form of Maggie Mae Fish . Ms. Fish is a singular, idiosyncratic voice who pivots wildly from dedicated film scholar to sketch-comedy caricature and back again. She typically sits center-frame in a variety of ornately designed sets, dressed in colorful outfits, while she patiently spoons out detailed, thoughtful analysis over the course of long videos.

For any video-essay enthusiast, Fish is the real deal – wickedly entertaining, subversive, accessible, and always thought-provoking. Her recent two-video series on Twin Peaks is catnip for any fans seeking a new perspective on the show – and an excellent dressing-down of Twin Perfect’s infamous 4.5-hour breakdown. She also deconstructs auteur theory through the works of David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick, and spends two hours discussing Loki ’s debt to Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker .

Lindsay Ellis

When it comes to distinct personalities, no vlogger quite matches the likes of the controversial but brilliant Lindsay Ellis . She is a brand unto herself, with an over-the-top, self-deprecating style that can only be described as a hopped-up, sleep-deprived, but no less informed, Adam Curtis. She is often seen drinking wine in her videos, breaking down popular media like Disney movies, musical adaptations, and The Lord of the Rings franchise.

Ellis is one of the originals of the medium, and her work is so singular that her influence has likely extended to all the other creators who occupy this list. Some of her most brilliant work includes “The Whole Plate,” a nine-video series that completely deconstructs the first Transformers film through the lenses of gender, sexuality, and film studies. Her most iconic work includes 40-minute videos ranting about the film adaptations of Rent and The Phantom of the Opera . Due to recent Internet events, she has stopped making videos on YouTube, but her existing videos are still there for all to see and are absolutely worth checking out.

Every Frame A Painting

Sometimes the most obvious answer is still the best one. Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou’s gorgeous video series Every Frame A Painting is still the benchmark against which all other video essayists are judged. You’ve probably seen their video on Edgar Wright and visual comedy, or the one on silence in the films of Martin Scorsese. The channel has been defunct for several years now, but the content still feels as fresh and original as it did when it was first published.

The topics covered are narrow and unexpected, but they all work extraordinarily well. The writing is tight and evocative, and Zhou’s voice is unforgettably soothing and inviting. The editing is also crisp and beautiful. Ramos and Zhou have become so renowned for their work that they were even invited to contribute to David Fincher’s Voir , a video essay project for Netflix.

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The Best Movie Analysis YouTubers

Film buffs, here are the best film analysis YouTube channels. From video essays to commentaries on filmmaking techniques, these popular YouTube movie channels discuss screenplays, fan theories, and everything in between. What are the best film analysis channels on YouTube? 

When ranking the best movie analysis YouTubers, Every Frame a Painting is definitely at the top. Whether he is analyzing how Jackie Chan does action comedy or how David Fincher frames his shots, Every Frame's Tony Zhou consistently posts quality content on cinema. Other good YouTube movie analysis channels include Now You See It, FoundFlix, New Rockstars, The Film Theorists, and ScreenPrism.  

Vote up the best movie commentary channels on YouTube, and add your favorite film analysis YouTube channels missing from this list. 

Every Frame a Painting

Lessons from the Screenplay

Collative Learning

The Cinema Cartography

The Film Theorists

Redlettermedia.

StudioBinder

Now You See It

Like Stories of Old

MUST SEE FILMS

The Royal Ocean Film Society

New Rockstars

ScreenPrism

Books2Movies

Ryan hollinger.

Storytellers

Jack's Movie Reviews

Real Dimensional Pictures

Disney Analysis

The Film Essay

TheFlickFloggers

Reflections on Film

Frank Film Freaks

Honest Analysis

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• Watchworthy

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7 Film Essay Channels on YouTube You Should Be Watching 8 min read

The internet is one of the best learning tools of the modern era. Information is at our fingertips and learning something new has never been easier. There has, perhaps, never been an easier time to learn more about film too as film reviewers, critics, and filmmakers are now able to share their views with the masses with great ease. YouTube has become a great place to pick up on information quickly and in an entertaining way. Video essays have become wildly popular as a means of sharing perspectives on film, television, games, art, and more. The beauty of video essays is in their ability to reach not only people who have an existing interest in the topic but also those who may not be familiar with the topic. They are a great window into the topic of discussion and people have come to understand the video essay format as an interesting and entertaining way of opening our eyes to something new. Video essays work especially well for dissecting films and for those who are skilled in analysing film to share their views. They are incredibly accessible for both passionate film fans as well as casual viewers. Several channels which specialise in film essays have popped up recently due to the popularity of the genre. During our last livestream, we received requests for our recommendations on film essay channels, thus we’ve decided to scour the internet for the most informative and entertaining channels that you should be watching right now.

Accented Cinema

If Sinema.SG were to revitalise our YouTube channel , we would like to think it would look something similar to Accented Cinema for the topics covered. The channel have become hugely popular for their Asian and International film analysis videos. Although their videos on Hollywood movies get the most views, that does not stop them from also talking about Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and even Thai cinema. Most recently they announced that they are researching for a video on Indian cinema and are accepting suggestions for films to put on their watchlist.

The channel has bridged Asian cinema to mainstream western audiences and is a great watch for those who want to expand their horizons. They cover popular Asian films, anime, and more obscure films. Their analysis is accessible and injects an entertaining amount of humour to appeal to even those who are not already interested in Asian cinema. Check out this channel and you may be pleasantly surprised!

Nerdwriter1

Nerdwriter is one of the most well-known film essay channels on YouTube and has been around for ten years. Run by a former editor at MSNBC and host at Discovery Channel, Evan Puschak has amassed a dedicated following on YouTube for his in-depth critiques and ability to dissect films and their techniques. He comments on both the technical aspects of filmmaking as well as the artistic aspects such as storytelling. His video essays are not limited to film, however, as he also talks about art, politics, philosophy, and even other YouTubers.

Nerdwriter’s style is defined by curiosity — you will notice him posing several open-ended questions throughout his videos and even his video titles are often phrased like questions. Rather than handing you the answers, he guides you with his own personal observations and inferences. Although he often gets grouped together with other informative channels like Vsauce and Kurzgesagt , Nerdwriter is not so much of an informative channel that creates videos exploring facts around a topic. Rather, Nerdwriter tends to be more philosophical and focuses on the journey of exploring the answers to the questions he poses in his videos rather than the answers themself.

Karsten Runquist

Karsten Runquist is one of the newer channels on this list and only began creating video essays about four years ago but was met with great success almost right away. Karsten’s videos are more personal and weigh in heavily on his personal views. His style is also a lot more casual and his humour makes his already interesting essays even more entertaining.

His channel ventures a lot more into animation than the other channels on this list, which is a great way to demonstrate how animation is just as much of an art in filmmaking as live-action. His essay on Studio Ghibli’s first 3-D film , Earwig and the Witch , was a great resource when I was writing my own analysis of the film. Yes, he does feature Asian cinema, such as in his video on Korean cinema where he discusses modern classics such as Parasite and Train to Busan . Aside from video essays he also does monthly round-ups of films he saw.

Every Frame A Painting

Some film essay channels look at film in general, but Every Frame A Painting focuses on something very specific — visuals. The channel was created by editor Tony Zhou and animator Taylor Ramos, who were motivated by an issue they both faced — having to “ discuss visual ideas with non-visual people ”. A good portion of their video essays shed a spotlight on Asian directors and actors, including Jackie Chan, Akira Kurosawa, Satoshi Kon, Bong Joon-Ho, and more.

They closed the channel in 2017 and have not been active for a few years. Nonetheless, the channel still boasts a catalogue of almost 30 well-crafted essays which new viewers can take their time to peruse through. Zhou’s article in the Medium discussing the closure of the channel also provides a great insight into how the duo took apart the films that they analysed as well as the challenges in creating film essays on YouTube.

Lessons From the Screenplay

Lessons From the Screenplay is another channel that specialises in one aspect of film. As the name suggests, they look at screenplays or scripts. A movie’s script can reveal to us a lot about the film’s intention, and how its characters and narrative is crafted. As the channel’s creator Michael Tucker says: “ I believe that a more informed audience raises the bar for storytelling. That examining the techniques used to tell great stories makes your own writing better and your appreciation for the stories deeper. ”

By demonstrating how the written script translates into moving images, Lessons From The Screenplay can be a great tool for writers. However, the channel can also provide even casual film watchers a deeper appreciation of film and a better understanding of how to pick up on a film’s message.

Sideways only uploads once every few months, but boy are their videos worth the wait. Their channel focuses on music in film, something which many moviegoers would overlook. They talk about how music can be used effectively as part of a film’s storytelling — how music can change the emotion of a scene, subtly hint at something in ways that the visuals cannot, or be budget wasted on what essentially becomes background noise.

They are also well-versed in music history and theory and able to break down music theory for viewers who do not have a music background. They discuss a lot of musical movies and help give audiences the vocabulary to articulate why certain musicals do not feel as effective as others. In watching Sideways’ essays, one can learn how music in film has a greater impact than we realise.

Cinema Therapy

Many of us love watching cinema as an escape from reality, but Cinema Therapy shows us just how real our favourite films can get. The channel has an extremely unique approach — they break down the psychology of characters and themes in films. Their videos are hosted by licensed therapist Johnathan Decker and filmmaker Alan Seawright, who each provide a perspective on the films from their area of expertise.

Mental health awareness has grown a great deal during the last few years and Cinema Therapy has explored topics such as relationships, coping with trauma, gaslighting, bullying, and much more using films as examples. Their videos tend to be a little longer than your average film essay and they lean closer towards a podcast style as the two hosts bounce off each other like friends having a conversation.

Honourable mention:

This channel does not have that many videos in its library but this video essay on Treasure Planet is easily one of the best video essays on YouTube.

Treasure Planet is one of Disney’s most underrated gems and is a film that I personally will always have a soft spot for (as you can tell from my writer’s bio). It was a passion project that turned into one of Disney’s most complex, well-written, and technologically ground-breaking films ever made. This film essay explains why Treasure Planet was cursed to be a commercial flop and all the reasons why you should still check out the film. It is a long video but it is incredibly well-researched. With each point that is raised, the essay demonstrates how phenomenal Treasure Planet is and all the more how disheartening it is that Disney did not put their faith in the film.

If you love talking about film, especially Singaporean and Asian film, check out our live show Red Hot Red Dot! We have a new topic every week and we have the opportunity to include our audience as part of the live discussion. We stream live on Facebook and Twitch so make sure you tune in and make your voice heard!

Banner image credit: Nordwood

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10 YouTube Channels to Analyze and Understand Film

Whether you're a filmmaker or just interested in filmmaking, these YouTube channels will help you with film analysis.

Whether you're a budding filmmaker or just interested in the craft of filmmaking, these YouTube channels will help you analyze and understand film.

Instead of focussing on trivial criticisms, they unravel the mysteries of why a movie does or doesn't work, to give you a better appreciation the craft.

So, sit back, relax, and prepare to learn everything you need to know about film and filmmaking.

1. Lessons From the Screenplay

Michael Tucker and the team behind Lessons From the Screenplay offer insightful analysis on what makes a well-written movie. They do such a good job that there are tales of studio executives referencing these videos during blockbuster productions.

Each video takes a quote or "lesson" from screenwriting textbooks and applies it to popular films. Michael's calm narration and clear graphics make it easy to understand, and you come out of it applying what you learned to everything else you watch.

2. Patrick (H) Willems

This walking, talking, IMDb machine loves movies and wants you to love them too. Patrick started his YouTube career making short comedy films before turning his hand to video essays as well.

Now, he combines the two, making some of the most dynamic and entertaining movie analysis videos you're likely to find on YouTube. Patrick's in-depth investigations, unfettered praise, or ingenious rewrites range from 15 to 40 minutes long, but the longest ones are often the best.

3. Lindsay Ellis

How would you like a deep-dive excursion into the different schools of film theory? Auteur, feminist, genre, etc. It sounds a little heavy, but Lindsay makes it fun by looking at each theory through the lens of Michael Bay's Transformers franchise.

Besides that, Lindsay adds an academic slant to video essays by explaining the historical, political, and social context behind enormous blockbuster movies. Learn how The Hobbit hobbled New Zealand's film industry or discover the turbulent production behind certain Disney classics.

4. Now You See It

Now You See It highlights patterns and trends across different movies, explaining the meaning behind them and why they're so effective. The fast-paced narration packs a lot of information into short videos, which you come away from with a totally fresh perspective.

Each video presents a new idea, supported by logical arguments, quotes, or evidential footage. You might learn about the meaning of stripes in film, physical injuries to characters, dutch angle framing, or even drinking milk on camera.

And you'll never look any of those things the same way again.

5. Just Write

As you may have guessed from the name, Just Write focuses on the writing techniques used in film and TV. The writer, Sage Hyden, manages to pinpoint exactly what does and doesn't work in popular media, taking a good look at why that might be the case.

Some of his best videos focus on Game of Thrones, offering both praise and criticism, depending on the season at hand. But Just Write also highlights the power of puns, satire, or effective action by referencing everything from Arrested Development to Westworld.

6. The Royal Ocean Film Society

The Royal Ocean Film Society takes a look at industry trends and the effects they have on films or marketing. It's a great resource if you're interested in how CGI animation works , what goes into poster designs, or the even emergence of clickbait trailers.

One of the best videos from The Royal Ocean Film Society explores the influential animation of Richard Williams, arguing that movement is more important in animation than realism.

The animation on display is so captivating it's impossible to disagree.

7. Wisecrack

For a philosophical analysis of your favorite films, TV shows, and video games, look no further than Wisecrack. This insightful YouTube channel puts media under the microscope to discover what it's trying to say. Then Wisecrack dissects that subtextual message in relation to famous philosophers.

Sometimes Wisecrack highlights the inherent contradictions within a film. Other times it debunks "deep" messages as little more than dumb rhetoric. But the best videos show how a great story is heightened by the philosophy underpinning its ideas.

8. KaptainKristian

KaptainKristian unveils the secrets behind your favorite filmmakers, TV shows, movies, and even production companies. Sleek animations and astonishing facts make these videos a joy to watch as you learn more about what goes into the production of a film.

Did you know there are more special effects shots in The Social Network than there are in Godzilla? Probably not. That's because David Fincher is a master of subtlety, and KaptainKristian explains exactly how he does it.

9. Nando v Movies

Have you ever watched a bad movie thinking you could have written it better yourself? Well, that's what Nando v Movies is all about. This channel is overflowing with alternate versions of all the biggest cinematic disappointments, from Ant-Man to X-Men.

Nando v Movies carefully walks you through each act of his rewrites, using existing footage to fill in the gaps. It's amazing how a few small changes can transform a terrible misfire into a surefire success.

I'm still sad that we'll never get to watch his Justice League rewrite.

10. Every Frame a Painting

This is the YouTube channel that started it all. A lot of the other YouTubers on this list credit Every Frame a Painting as their inspiration for getting started. This channel includes the best movie breakdowns on the web, but sadly they stopped making new videos in 2017.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't give them a watch. Every Frame a Painting dissects classic movies from Kurosawa, Spielberg, and the Coen brothers, explaining exactly what makes these masterpieces so special.

A particular favorite video of mine reveals why Jackie Chan's action-comedy fight sequences are so engaging. And why they get butchered by American productions.

Don't Let YouTube Ads Slow You Down

Every serious movie fan should subscribe to these YouTube channels. Each one of them has so much to teach you about filmmaking, whether it's the secret to crafting emotional character arcs or the magic behind Jackie Chan's fight sequences.

And with all these new channels to watch, you'll be spending a lot of time watching YouTube. But for each awesome video you'll see, you'll have to sit through a couple of YouTube adverts as well.

Thankfully, there is a way of removing the ads from YouTube, but you'll have to pay for the privilege. So, is YouTube Premium worth the money? Read our detailed look at YouTube Premium to find out.

28 of the Best YouTube Channels for Storytellers

Published by justin on october 22, 2017 october 22, 2017.

UPDATE: This was originally a 23 channel list, but since then I’ve added 5 more. You may want to bookmark this page, since I’ll probably keep adding more channels over time.

I have a new binge-watching habit. But it’s not on Netflix.

No, it’s weirder than that: it’s YouTube video essays.

If you haven’t spent much time in this sector of YouTube, here’s how a video essay usually works: an expert (or a superfan) uses a mix of video, animation, infographics, academia, and humor to explain a complicated subject in simple terms. Think of them as mini-lectures, delivered in a bite-sized format you’ll actually want to finish.

While there’s usually just one voice or presenter onscreen, these channels are often made possible by a small team of collaborative researchers, editors, designers, and animators. (And, if they get popular enough, sponsors.) So, in essence, each video essay is a (usually) brief episode in a loosely-related series on a topic, made either by one artist or by a branded team with a shared vision.

I’ll show you some of what I think are the best YouTube channels for storytellers in a moment. But first, let’s tackle one basic question:

What Does It Take to Make a Great Video Essay?

YouTube is full of video essays on every subject imaginable, from history and science to music, writing, video games, film, and more. From the channels I’ve explored over the past year, I’ve identified five traits that help the best video essays reliably rise above the rest:

• A clear and well-supported premise in each essay
• A consistent voice and tone across all videos
• Simple yet effective visuals
• EITHER a compelling narrative OR a satisfying setup and payoff
• I can easily explain what I just learned to someone else

Each of the following channels excels in at least one of these areas, and often in all five. They’re also fantastic examples of how to structure a headline hook that attracts attention and then holds it throughout the length of the video.

The result?

Not only will these channels teach you something you didn’t know, but they’ll do it in a way you’re more likely to connect with, enjoy, remember, and want to share with others.

With that, let’s take a(n alphabetical) look at…

Austin McConnell

Channel Focus: Half weird pop culture, half media analysis.

Why Do I Dig It? Laid-back delivery, low-key comedy timing, and detailed dives into media I wouldn’t have explored otherwise — like the underground world of China’s bootleg Star Wars comics.

Beyond the Frame

Channel Focus: Explaining the pros and cons of TV and film language.

Why Do I Dig It? Every video feels like a short film school lesson.

Channel Focus: Politics, history, and weird quirks of math and science.

Why Do I Dig It? He’s a poster boy for how to make data interesting.

Coffee Break

Channel Focus: Deconstructing modern life and digital trends.

Why Do I Dig It? Great quick examples of how to frame and support an argument.

Every Frame a Painting

Channel Focus: Deep dives into the styles and trends that shaped the history of film.

Why Do I Dig It? Every video is like a slightly longer film school lesson.

Extra Credits

Channel Focus: It varies. I found them through their fantastic series of historical explainer videos, but they also explore video games, psychology, and more.

Why Do I Dig It? Two reasons. First, they make history lively by structuring their videos as narratives about their subjects’ needs and desires. Second, their innovative use of universally cute icons to represent various historical figures has an unusual effect: it humanizes everyone equally, which allows the audience to invest themselves emotionally in all sides.

Films & Stuff

Channel Focus: Examines what makes a scene, moment, or entire film work… or why it goes wrong.

Why Do I Dig It? Uses popular films to examine the power of specific storytelling tropes.

Half as Interesting

Channel Focus: Weird and obscure trivia about history and geography.

Why Do I Dig It? Quirky content, briefly well-explained.

Hello Future Me

Channel Focus: Analyzes writing and storytelling from a structural perspective: what’s the best way to convey information, and how do cultural tropes affect the way we process stories?

Why Do I Dig It? VERY instructive without being dismissive; uses a wide array of examples from popular culture to show recurring examples of writing techniques and variations. Less of a “one size fits all” guide, and more of a “menu of solutions” approach. (Plus, a solid sense of humor.)

Ideas at Play

Channel Focus: Close looks at the intangible aspects of storytelling, like editing, soundtracks, laugh tracks, and other aesthetic choices that change how we process the onscreen information.

Why Do I Dig It? Clear explanations plus high-quality production values.

In Deep Geek

Channel Focus: Deep deconstructions of Game of Thrones , Westworld , and more.

Why Do I Dig It? Anyone who tells a story will benefit from considering its construction with the same degree of detail that Robert, the host of this channel, applies to the minutiae of what makes stories like Game of Thrones tick. His narrative analysis works more like a scientific inquiry: he’ll ask a question or pose a theory, and then evaluate it from all sides before coming to a conclusion. (Bonus: Robert’s conversational tone and pace are incredibly soothing to listen to.)

Jenna Moreci

Channel Focus: “Tough love” writing advice from a self-published author.

Why Do I Dig It? Jenna’s blunt, sarcastic style is filled with useful advice that aspiring writers need to hear. (Bonus: Check out my quick Q&A with Jenna here .)

Jenny Nicholson

Channel Focus: Deconstructing the downside of your favorite pop culture tropes.

Why Do I Dig It? Jenny’s no-budget aesthetic and disarming delivery is deceptively sharp and consistently dry, and her analysis of why most films are broken is deadly accurate.

Channel Focus: Weird facts and sports trivia, brought to life by (purposely) bad infographics.

Why Do I Dig It? Every video Jon creates is a work of 8-bit art with a nugget about the truth of the human condition buried inside.

Channel Focus: Analyzing films and TV to find out why some stories work and some don’t.

Why Do I Dig It? Channel creator Sage Hyden digs deep into story structure to explain how the format of our media affects the kinds of stories we tell. For example, this video will change the way you think about animated movies.

kaptainkristian

Channel Focus: High-level overviews of huge pop culture topics.

Why Do I Dig It? These are perfect “introduction to ___” videos for anyone who’s always wondered “what’s the deal with ___?”

Karsten Runquist

Channel Focus: Analyzing story structure in film and TV.

Why Do I Dig It? Runquist exposes narrative tricks hiding in plain sight — like during the first few minutes of Stranger Things — in such a way that you suddenly feel like you knew them all along.

Channel Focus: Explaining how life works, both literally and figuratively.

Why Do I Dig It? Possibly the best union of animation and narration on YouTube. Plus, they make super-complex subjects infinitely easier to understand.

Lessons from the Screenplay

Channel Focus: Comparing finished films to their screenplays to find the building blocks that help good scripts become great movies.

Why Do I Dig It? Each video explains a core storytelling technique through visual examples that make what could be dry theories into easily-remembered demonstrations.

Lindsay Ellis

Channel Focus: Cynically exploding the problematic tropes of pop culture.

Why Do I Dig It?   Every video is like a dyspeptic film school lesson.

Channel Focus: Explaining how video games work via examples of good and bad game design.

Why Do I Dig It? When you’re playing a video game, you rarely have time to stop and appreciate how it was built. Every video Mark adds to his Game Maker’s Toolkit series helps you appreciate the multiple systems and creators at work behind the interactive experiences we often take for granted.

Movies with Mikey (on Chainsawsuit)

Channel Focus: Irony-drenched movie analysis that’s almost as long as the movies themselves.

Why Do I Dig It? Deep, smart, wry deconstructions that pull no punches.

Patrick (H) Willems

Channel Focus: Functional film analysis, sometimes on a shot-by-shot basis.

Why Do I Dig It? Willems is an aspiring director who treats every essay like it’s his own short film.

The School of Life

Channel Focus: Love, relationships, and identity.

Why Do I Dig It? Blunt advice, delivered by often beautiful and always emotionally evocative animation.

Terrible Writing Advice

Channel Focus: Storytelling flaws, cheap stereotypes, overused ideas, and bad writing habits.

Why Do I Dig It? The writing “advice” is good, but the details embedded in the animations are even better.

Channel Focus: The oddities of science, math, and statistics.

Why Do I Dig It? Simple explanations of scientific laws and theories, often with easy-to-remember examples.

Channel Focus: Vox Media’s subset of videos that focus on the art, science, and business of pop music.

Why Do I Dig It? Part history lesson and part musicology course, host Estelle Caswell explains how musical trends work using anecdotes and visual aids.

Channel Focus: Pop culture meets philosophy.

Why Do I Dig It? In addition to being one of the highest-quality video essay channels on YouTube, every Wisecrack video analyzes a piece of pop culture from multiple angles — artistically, sociologically, philosophically, and more.

Two Quick Caveats About This List

I study a lot of film and media, so my list of the best YouTube channels is obviously biased in that direction. Also, I’m frustrated to note that my list is mostly made up of white guys, which highlights of the apparent lack of diversity in the video essay field. I’d like to expand this list in both directions, and you can help me out.

So, if you (or someone you dig) are doing great video essays on other topics or from other perspectives, I’d love to see what you’re working on. Tweet me or leave a comment below so others can see what you’re up to!

Want More Posts About Storytelling?

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You may also enjoy…

What Makes Game of Thrones So Addictive?

How Jordan Peele Changed Get Out from Script to Screen

NunyaBiznuss · February 17, 2022 at 3:48 pm

The list is incomplete without Mrballen

malarkodi · June 14, 2019 at 12:20 pm

Hi, I am eager to become a storyteller in both in Tamil and English languages. Kindly guide me to start working on my passion.

Thank you, Best Regards,

Aishwarya Tiwari · November 27, 2018 at 5:14 am

I think that was a pretty researched and exhaustive list. Just a minor suggestion, you should have mentioned the facf that the list will comprise video essayists that discuss films and related spheres extensively, it’d have been better :) Regardless, thanks for creating this list. Means a lot. Can’t wait to devour the various channels that are now new additions to my subscriptions. Love from India!

15 Best Ideas To Create Viral Videos On YouTube · May 7, 2019 at 8:04 am

[…] And in this way, you can attract the attention of so many people. In a word, become the most interesting storyteller on YouTube. […]

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The best video essays of 2021

Introspection and the act of watching emerged as recurring themes across a year in which video makers responded to the realities of a continuing pandemic. Our poll of 30 video essayists, academics, critics and filmmakers highlights 120 recommendations.

18 January 2022

By  Ariel Avissar , Cydnii Wilde Harris , Grace Lee

After ‘Year of the Virus 2: 2 Metres 2 Vaccines’, it’s no surprise that we’re presenting yet another poll inevitably marked by isolation and fatigue.

There have been numerous developments and projects of note, continuing the previous year’ s theme of collaboration. There’s been the forming of Video Essay: Futures of Audiovisual Research and Teaching , an academic research project led by Johannes Binotto at Lucerne University in collaboration with the University of Zurich, which has produced some fascinating work this year; the One Villainous Scene collaboration, for which Nando v Movies gathered 230 essayists on YouTube to explore their favourite villains; the TV Dictionary collection, for which 20 essayists followed Ariel Avissar’s open invitation to dabble in videographic ruminations on television series; and two more volumes of the Essay Library Anthology, ‘micro-essay compilations’ by members of the Essay Library Discord community, touching on the very relevant themes of ‘time’  and ‘death’ .

This year also saw the return of several big names, such as Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou (the team behind Every Frame a Painting ) in their contributions to Netflix’s Voir series, and Mike Rugnetta (former host of Idea Channel ), who began uploading essays to a personal account .

But even amid these excellent projects, not only have video makers continued to struggle within the realities of a continuing pandemic, even poll voters have been down from previous years, suggesting that many of us have struggled with not only finding the time to make but also finding the time to watch video essays this year.

That being said, many of the videos that have been made and watched seem to have turned their attention towards the very act of watching, a trend that’s perhaps unsurprising given the amount of time we’ve all been afforded with ourselves this year. Left to our own devices, it’s only a matter of time before we begin to look inward, and thus introspection marks a clear theme in this year’s most talked-about videos. This result may be even more inevitable than any undercurrent of fatigue or isolation, as what would a group of video essay enthusiasts love more than essays about essays and videos about videos.

There’s no shame in a little indulgence this year.

Trends and numbers

Of the 30 contributors to the poll this year (down from 42 last year), 20 are male, 9 are female and 1 is non-binary. Two thirds of them are based in Europe, one third in the USA . They are video essayists, academics, critics and filmmakers. They submitted a total of 178 votes, for 122 unique entries that span online video essays, essay films, documentaries, installations, television series and Twitter threads. These works were made – or published – this past year, by both established essayists and newcomers to the field; they range from 20 seconds to 6 hours in length, with the average length above 22 minutes (5 minutes longer than last year’s average).

Practices of Viewing , “a video essay series on new media and their many old histories” by Johannes Binotto, was the top-mentioned item, receiving a total of 13 mentions (of either the series as a whole or several individual entries). Also of note were: the collaborative TV Dictionary collection, which received 7 mentions (of either the project as a whole or of various individual entries); Screening Room: On Digital Film Festivals by Jessica McGoff (6 mentions); and What Isn’t a Video Essay? by Grace Lee (5 mentions). As previously stated, most of these are devoted to an exploration of the subject of video essays or videographic criticism and of various practices of consuming, engaging with and reacting to media images. This trend also extends to Max Tohline’s A Supercut of Supercuts (4 mentions), Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin’s Videography 1978 (4 mentions), and several other entries featured on the poll.

Of the essayists whose work is featured, 38% are female (up from 33% last year, and 24% the year prior) and 50% are male (down from 53% last year, and 68% the year prior), with the remaining 12% made by mixed-gender teams or non-binary essayists.

The videos are overwhelmingly presented in English (95%) and are predominantly from the US (36%) and the UK (22%), followed by 23 other countries (mostly in Europe), marking a gradual rise in the number of countries featured in the poll. The dominant focus in terms of medium, though somewhat less so than in previous years, remains film (63% of videos), with television a more significant – though still distant – second (13% — up from 5% last year). 23 of the videos (or 19%) were published in various online academic journals, primarily [in]Transition (10 entries) and Tecmerin (5 entries).

Besides voting for their favourite video essays of the year, contributors were also given the option to suggest video essayists to be featured on our new ‘Emerging voices’ section, which seeks to spotlight new makers of note, whose work this year was significant or impactful, and who are well worth keeping an eye on in the following years.

Emerging voices

This year has been one not just of self reflection, but of discovery. In light of all the discoveries we’ve been making, we wanted to use this year’s poll to spotlight new voices who have emerged this year. We asked our peers to submit individual essayists that they believed had truly struck out anew this year, be that through debuting their first works, or by significantly expanding their own profiles.

One journey many of us can relate to is that of finding our voice throughout our academic progression. Many of our emerging voices are students whose works originally developed as academic assignments. Emily Su Bin Ko, from the University of Massachusetts, was one such creator. For her latest piece, the pointed videographic exploration Citizen Kane: Transcending Bazin’s Dichotomy , she was singled out by both Barbara Zecchi and Adrian Martin as having demonstrated her analytical talent, an engaging style and a thought-provoking voice.

Another was Niki Radman from the University of Glasgow, who made her debut this year with the video essay eye/contact , and was noted by Ian Garwood. The piece explores the work of Barry Jenkins through a critical supercut, and demonstrates an exciting mastery of the form and an ability to poetically communicate her ideas.

Matthew Smolenski from the University of Warwick was suggested by Katie Bird as another newcomer of note for their video essay Here, There and Everywhere: Movement in the Beatles’s Fiction Filmography , which deftly addresses movement and sound on screen through the context of the Beatles’ filmography.

Myrna Moretti from Northwestern University was also praised by Katie Bird. Her work, Friends from TV on the Internet , made for the Desktop Documentary Seminar at SCMS 2021, manages to be both lighthearted and poignant as it explores fandom, nostalgia, and climate anxiety.

Not all submissions received were discovered through traditionally academic spaces. Some were video essayists who have been accruing greater audiences on YouTube. Maia, known as Broey Deschanel , was put forth by Dan Schindel for her well-researched and thoughtful analysis of pop culture subjects. Her works on Sofia Coppola and Love Island were mentioned specifically, and while she has been working steadily since 2018, her work of this past year has been exceptional.

Yhara Zayd was also recognised by Dan Schindel for the uniqueness of her topics and the finesse of her analyses. Since 2019, she’s been creating thoughtful and original critiques on everything from Skins US to Reefer Madness (1936), and an acknowledgement of her work is well-deserved.

Corinth Boone is a cartoonist, animator, and now video essayist, with the debut of her piece, So I Decided to Watch All the Lupin III Movies . She was specifically hailed by Shannon Strucci for her wit, editing skills, and the well-researched manner of the work.

Finally, Sophie from Mars was suggested by Grace Lee. While she has been successfully analysing media and culture for many years now, Sophie was specifically heralded for the achievements of their work of the last year, the skilful honing of their visual style, and an affecting personal point of view.

Growth is a term that is wholly dependent on context. Thus, the creators selected for this emerging voices section represent the diversity of the videographic community itself, and we’re pleased to share each of their stories.

All the votes

Film theorist, curator and occasional video essayist, Charles University in Prague and Národní filmový archiv

Screening Room: On Digital Film Festivals by Jessica McGoff

Throughout the pandemic, I have become fascinated with the idea of extending the screen-mediated experience of the world beyond the actual computer or smartphone interface. Chloé Galibert-Laîné already explored this notion in 2020’s Forensickness ; this year, Jessica McGoff utilised the ‘desktop cinema without the desktop’ approach to reflect on attending digital film exhibitions within the spatial monoculture of her apartment. A paper-made quasi-cinematic dispositif crushed by an intervention of a fluffy cat is only one of the many playful experiments McGoff stages to invent new ways in which we can exploit the limitations of the pandemic against the grain.

The Elephant Man’s Sound, Tracked by Liz Greene

One of the great potentialities of videographic criticism is giving insight into the research process in all of its stages and facets. Yet, rarely do videographic essays delve into such meticulous depth as Greene’s investigation of her ongoing encounters with The Elephant Man’s soundtrack. One minor detail – a strangely cleaned-up line of dialogue – serves as a MacGuffin that sparks a journey across often obscure or intimate research artefacts and software interfaces. The essay highlights the alignment between research and post-production as material processes whose gaps, fissures, and excesses tell their own stories.

The Thinking Machine #48: Videography 1978 by Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin

Examination of continuities and discontinuities between analogue and digital images is another area where videographic criticism thrives. Besides the works of Johannes Binotto, whom I mentioned in previous polls and who continues this line of work in the Practices of Viewing series, a moving autobiographical essay on films as material artefacts was created by López and Martin. Videography 1978 offers a fresh look on the ‘unattainable object’ issue, highlighting, for example, the non-identity of analogue and digital frames. The essay testifies that despite the (often justified) criticism, cinephilia as a mode of watching and analysing films remains relevant.

Mediated Auscultation by Emilija Talijan

Out of this year’s essays published in [in]Transition, Talijan’s exploration of the relationship between cinema and the stethoscope resonated most closely with me. I generally appreciate when videographic works reach toward a broader context of audiovisual culture, particularly of its very origins, and Mediated Auscultation finds the proper equilibrium between structured argumentation and formal experimentation. The stethoscope’s technological possibilities deconstruct the audiovisual unity of film back into a multiplicity of deranged, often impenetrable images and sounds, with a nerve-racking heartbeat rhythm always hovering around.

Train Again by Peter Tscherkassky

Once again, my list would not be complete without at least one experimental found footage film. Tscherkassky’s treatise on the ever-present bond between trains and cinema overflows with allusions to early cinema and the avant-garde, yet achieves to marry the old with the always already new. The Austrian artist’s vintage analogue deformations join forces with digital pixelation to show the train-image for what it is – a constantly trembling and crumbling entity on the verge of destruction and rebirth.

Ariel Avissar

Video essayist and media scholar at Tel Aviv University

Viewing the world outside from the comfort/prison of her room, McGoff offers a perceptive meditation on contemporary ways of seeing that is as irreverent as it is reverent. Quintessential viewing for the pandemic era. Make this a double feature with McGoff’s My Mulholland from last year, which likewise investigates the superimposition of online and offline experience.

I am Sitting in a Room, Listening to Mank by Cormac Donnelly

Sitting in a different room, Donnelly offers a sonic counterpoint to McGoff’s, offering a fascinating examination of the sonic soundscapes that envelop us all as we sit, in our own rooms, watching and listening (though perhaps not listening as attentively as we ought to). Make this a double feature with Donnelly’s Sonic Chronicle Post Sound from last year, which investigates (diegetic) sonic soundscapes.

Practices of Viewing by Johannes Binotto

Like McGoff and Donnelly, Binotto’s fascination is with the way we interact with images and sounds, and this phenomenal series, consisting of five entries to date, is a must-watch for anyone interested in the way technology mediates images and sounds, and the possibilities it opens up for interfering with and complicating its own mediation. My personal favourite is the one on screenshots , but it’s dealer’s choice, really. Make that last one a double feature with Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin’s Videography 1978 , Binotto’s explicit source of inspiration, which also explores technologies of viewing – and their pre-digital antecedents.

Irani Bag by Maryam Tafakory

Made as part of the Monographs  series of essays on Asian cinema commissioned by the Asian Film Archive last year, which is finally available online now, Tafakory’s soulful and mesmerising video employs excerpts from 24 Iranian films to interrogate the ways in which a handbag can serve as a surrogate for bodily contact, enabling the performers to “touch without touching”. Make this a double feature with Tafakory’s longer essay film follow-up, the upcoming Nazarbazi ; it is a meditation on the subject (and absence) of touch in Iranian cinema that is powerful, reflective and, yes, touching.

A History of the World According to Getty Images by Richard Misek

Misek offers a thoughtful and ever-timely exploration of the ways in which commercial archives mediate – and commodify – our access to the past, and offers a mode of resistance in the form of a direct intervention. Be on the lookout for it when it comes out sometime next year; in the meantime, whet your appetite with this shorter, early iteration of the project titled Captured Images , which can serve as a sort of trailer for the longer film – and also stands on its own.

Mad Men ’s ‘Babylon’  by Ariane Hudelet

Hudelet patiently and diligently traces multiple intertextual threads offered by a song featured on an early episode of Mad Men, presenting the kind of thorough, insightful and enjoyable analysis that I, for one, would love to see dedicated to more works of television in videographic form. On that note, make this a double feature with Occitane Lacurie’s Prendre conscience / perdre connaissance , a fascinating desktop examination of intertextual relations between Westworld and Last Year at Marienbad.

A Supercut of Supercuts: Aesthetics, Histories, Databases by Max Tohline

And finally, Tohline’s epic, feature-length reflection on the supercut is a comprehensively impressive (or impressively comprehensive?) investigation of one of the digital age’s most viral videographic genres. Over its 130 minutes, Tohline examines the supercut’s aesthetics, structures and effects; its complex and multiple contexts and histories; and its relation to technology and ideology, as a simulation of database logic. The analysis is coherent and persuasive, and the diverse perspectives are highly informative and enriching. No need for a double feature on this one (though I dare you not to look up any of the numerous supercuts sampled in the video).

Johannes Binotto

Lecturer in media and cultural studies, video bricolageur, leading videoessayresearch.org

I feel absolutely unable to have an overview of what work has been done in the field throughout this year. Instead the video essays on my list are all works that I came across not because I was searching for them but purely by accident, strangely in-between, and when I least expected them. Each of them hit me sideways so much that I still don’t want to recover from what they did to me.

How to Perform Teaching During a Pandemic Spring Session, 2020: GENDER STUDIES , Rain & Cats Cut by Dayna McLeod

I was watching Dayna McLeod’s haunting take on Lynch’s Wild at Heart when I came across this other piece that perhaps many would not even consider a video essay. McLeod performs the performance of someone who has to perform gender studies (and its interest in performance) under the circumstances of COVID remote teaching and being constantly interrupted. This is really wild, unpredictable, intellectual, clever, very funny, but – and this gets me the most — so extremely touching in its acknowledging one’s own awkwardness and vulnerability. We always joke about the things that hurt us most.

3 x Shapes of Home by Elisabeth Brun

What would seem as a purely conceptual and abstract research on how to investigate landscapes through different film practices turns out to be like a poem by Whitman, encompassing the most intimate and the most universal. A film in which the sudden freeze of an image and the humming of the filmmaker cuts me so much I start to cry. A crab gently poking at the camera is a sight I will keep dreaming of.

RETOURNE - TOI (Reading Ovid’s ‘Orpheus & Eurydice’ in Portrait of a Lady on Fire) by Catherine Grant

I thought I already knew this video but when seeing it during a workshop I was shocked by how much it affected me. It left me overwhelmed yet at the same time made me want to work myself in exactly this state of overload. I guess I heard the Althusserian interpellation in the title. And it is fitting that I had to return to this video to find out its unique power since it is about the hypnosis of repetition, both on narrative and formal level.

The Conversation is the Confessional by Max Tohline

I probably should have picked Max’s incredible jumbo jet of a video essay on the supercut, but this one means a lot to me because it is among many things also a personal present. Seeing a collection of video essays students of mine made on The Conversation, Max not only fell in love with them but wanted to join our group by contributing his own thoughtful, sensitive, and complex analysis of the religious under- under overtones in this film. Like a confession of its own. What a gift!

The Archival In-Between by Evelyn Kreutzer and Noga Stiassny

I don’t know how to talk about this one because it attempts what must remain impossible, approaching the unapproachable. It uses archival material that I am not sure anyone should ever use again but of which I am also convinced that it must be seen. The video’s impossibility seems to me the impossibility of the archive per se Foucault wrote about. So how then even to begin to make this video? It gives no answer but begins and remains beginning. Like the crackling noise on the soundtrack: a needle in the empty grooves of a record before the music starts.

Vertigo - Making Space. A 3D Video Essay by David Bucheli

Who hasn’t fantasised of seeing Vertigo in 3-D? David’s video fulfils the dream but does so by rendering it a disturbing nightmare. There are moments when the 3-D-effect works as one would think it is supposed to, giving us Scotty and Madeleine as seemingly graspable bodies but even more fascinating are those moments when the images we see on left and right eye no longer align but completely diverge, fall apart, splitting your consciousnesses in half. The longer I watch the more I fear this video will damage my brain irrevocably.

TV Dictionary —  On Becoming a God in Central Florida by Clair Richards

This was a triple surprise. A video on a series I had never heard of before by an essayist I hadn’t known before focusing on a term I never cared about before. Watching admiring the scene it picks and how it dances together with the text I ask myself: What is the strength of a video essay? For me it’s not tech-savviness nor the amount of material or concepts it works with. I think it’s rather the willingness to make yourself be seen doing something you haven’t yet nor ever will have mastered. It’s not a confidence thing.

Assistant professor, communication, University of Texas at El Paso

The Elephant Man ’s Sound, Tracked by Liz Greene

Greene’s video leads the viewer through a unique historical investigation of initial discovery, possibility, and lingering questions in a way that allows the viewer to feel how answers to a production’s history are many, and regularly conflicting. Unlike most historical presentations that simply point at the ‘evidence’, Greene allows us to literally ‘search’ and ‘flip the pages’ alongside. Greene focuses on equivocation, back tracking, and talking around, and what is largely left unsaid in many of the interviews. This project cuts around auteurism, without being a critique and articulates Splet amongst a larger set of industrial and and national forces.

Long Take, Pop Song by Ian Garwood

Nothing brought me more joy this year than this little pop diddy composed by Garwood and sung by Anna Miles ear-worming its way into my daily thoughts. Beyond the catchiness of the tune that directs this video on the important of pop music in a scene from Before Sunrise, Garwood brings in a pop aesthetic to the video with the use of animated and freeze frames, turning the conceit of the Before Trilogy into a comic book that takes place within the span of a pop song. It is a delight and a treat to see criticism have fun.

From now on, I won’t be able to watch Jeanne Dielman without also seeing McGoff’s own sink. This moment where a small scene of washing dishes floats about McGoff’s sink (the lines of the tiles almost matching) last only 6 seconds, but the gesture speaks to the intimacy and vulnerability of McGoff’s style. Her now signature approach to desktop, combined anew with the casual recordings of daily life (the record, the cat, the windows, the screens, the screens, the screens) offers a critical and personal glimpse into something that felt/feels all too familiar over the past years.

The TV Dictionary project by Ariel Avissar and various

Ariel Avissar’s TV Dictionary project was enormously generative for my own thinking about what diverse and creative experiments could be produced out of a simple prompt. I was inspired to create my own lists of terms and shows I would apply them to, and though I never made one, this speculative edit was a thrill. There’s too many videos to celebrate. But Libertad Gills and Juan Llamas Rodriguez tapped into the layering of their terms ‘ experience ‘ and ‘ comfort ’: how their shows feel to viewers and what is felt between characters in a moment or shared series of moments.

Beyond inspirational, and field changing, nothing made me want to throw in the towel on making more than seeing Binotto’s playful, critical, and incisive video series Practices of Viewing. Each one challenged our ways of ‘seeing’ and making, each one carefully bringing in new techniques to test the boundaries and possibilities of videographic form. But whatever trepidation I felt, was always overshadowed by the openness and curiosity that grounded each of Binotto’s experiments and his welcomeness as a videographic maker joyfully throwing out these gambits for the rest of us to up our games. But, MASK did me in.

Mourning with Minari by Kevin B. Lee

I’ll need to sit and rewatch Lee’s video essay many more times before I’ll have words good enough to match his evocative “gathering of images” of grieving through making, of holding space, and of breathing this memorial into being. By walking us through Minari, Lee leaves room for the questions trauma and white supremacist violence has left in its wake. By showing what has been made invisible, Lee similarly works through what it means to “manage the politics of presence” in the film and in US visual culture writ large, not to see these images as ‘empty’ but as open

De la femme by Caterina Cucinotta and Jesús Ramé López.

Stitching and Cutting, Stitching and Cutting, Stitching and Cutting! The repetition and overlap of the manual labor of production (seamstresses and editors) woven together with the metaphorical and literal fabrics of the film: its costumes and film strips. A gorgeous meditation on the gendered craft work of Hollywood production using both scraps of fabric and trims of film: materials on display and also what is not meant to be seen. The multi-screen side-by-side creates simple unexpected patterns and delightful sonic parallels to the sewing machine and the editor’s splicing. With these workers we get close in, slow down, and reconfigure.

Steven E. de Souza

It’s a Christmas movie. Bylines: @nytimes @LosAngelesTimes @EmpireMagazine @FadeInMagazine @SightSoundMagazine

Listening to Toy Story by Andrew Saladino (The Royal Ocean Film Society)

The almost purest representation of a literal ‘moving picture’, animation’s inevitable accommodation of sound would seem an afterthought hardly worth a thought, its early scores dismissed even by its applicants as ‘mickey mousing’. A century on, any imagined deficiencies of bandwidth inherent in the medium compared to live action demands sound loom even larger in its duty to inform and enhance a narrative.

Here’s Why Movie Dialogue Has Gotten More Difficult to Understand (And Three Ways to Fix It) by Ben Pearson (Slashfilm)

After nodding my head sagely at Andrew Saladino’s essay how diligently animation endeavors to add depth, clarity and content to its simulacrum of reality, I’m now shaking it in dismay at Pearson’s analysis of live action’s race in the opposite direction, coupled with minor relief that it’s not just me, I don’t actually need a hearing aid.

The Coolest Stunt You’ve Never Heard Of by Adam Tinius (Entertain The Elk)

It’s the rare filmmaker who didn’t start down the storytelling path in childhood, in backyards populated by cops n’ robbers, cowboys, pirates, and — most of all — imagination. Sometimes less is more, and we were right all along: simply pretending may be the best trick of all.

Golden Ratio in Cinema by Walter Murch

Mind Blown.

The Aesthetics of Evil by Lewis Michael Bond and Luiza Liz Bond (The Cinema Cartography)

Where would we be without our villains? (I know where I’d be, still teaching ESL at John F. Kennedy Junior High School in Willingboro, New Jersey — Go, Gryphons!) But in a world of increasingly grey tones, with black and white cowboy hats and their corresponding matching horses long dispatched to Boot Hill, how do we signal Villainy before it even opens its mouth? Here, Luiza Liz Bond and Lewis Michael Bond crack the color code; let the Pantone chips fall where they may.

Queen’s Gambit : What Makes a Story Cinematic? by Adam Tinius (Entertain The Elk)

People sitting silently in chairs glaring daggers at each other over seven hours of film will be edge of the seat suspense, said no one ever.

Scott Frank: Hold my beer vodka.

Voir, episode 6: Profane and Profound by Walter Chaw (on Netflix )

Just in time for its 40th anniversary, Walter Chaw spares no superlatives in his pedestaling of 1982’s 48 HRS . as a watershed work of not only genre, but as a seminal, crucial and long overdue vivisection of contemporary society. In an essay flaying metatextual layers aside, he shows us the racism that’s the apex tentpole of the American power structure, and unpacks this archetypical ‘buddy comedy’ as a poisoned chalice of popcorn, its bitter taste sweetened by heaping doses of comedy.

Who am I to disagree?

Will DiGravio

Host, The Video Essay Podcast ; creator, ‘ Notes on Videographic Criticism ’

These seven videos/projects/films, for me, epitomise the greatness of this form: they provide a new way of seeing and engaging with familiar images, sounds, and mediums. Each taught me how to be a better watcher, listener, and reader. They inspired me, and I look forward to returning to them time and time again in the years to come.

A Fish with the Movie Camera: Lucrecia Martel’s Pescados as Metacinema by Barbara Zecchi

All Light, Everywhere by Theo Anthony

What is Neo-Snyderism? by Ariel Avissar

The Rise of Film TikTok by kikikrazed aka Queline Meadows

Citizen Kane : Transcending Bazin’s Dichotomy by Emily Su Bin Ko

Maggie Mae Fish

Actor, writer, film video essayist

The Day Rue ‘Became’ Black by Yhara Zayd

I love all of Yhara’s work, but this video in particular touches on a moment I remember in real-time — the backlash against a canonically young Black girl in the Hunger Games books, who when brought to life in the films illuminated the stunted imagination and racism in YA  audiences.

Bo Burnham’s Inside and ‘White Liberal Performative Art’  by F.D.  Signifier

F.D. Signifier is one of the most cuttingly insightful media critiques, and his work on Bo Burnham’s quarantine ‘masterpiece’ hits into why this type of art can ring hollow or shallow for as many people as it resonates with.

Rac(ism) & Horror by Khadija Mbowe

Khadija is funny, snarky, our ‘Millennial Auntie’ and in this video becomes a film professor to give an overview of the intersection of Blackness and the horror genre. It would be at home in any university course on the subject, but Khadija goes full out swapping costumes and sets to give as much entertainment as insightful analysis of a broad and deeply important topic.

Thomas Flight

Video essayist and filmmaker

What Isn’t a Video Essay? by Grace Lee (What’s So Great About That?)

The video essay is a notoriously hard genre to define. Grace Lee expertly uses the form to examine itself and avoids easy or cliché answers, appealing instead to our subjective intuition.

What Distinguishes the Great Existential Films? by Tom van der Linden (Like Stories of Old)

2021 came as a year of personal video essays. Blending a reading of real-world spaces and film, Tom explores his love of existential cinema through his love of empty churches.

The Game That Won’t Let You See All of It by Jacob Geller

Geller looks at how a video game, several films, and a TV show use their structure to examine the passage of time.

Midsommar ’s Audiovisual Tricks by Spikima Movies

Sometimes video essays serve a very practical purpose. Ari Aster’s Midsommar got under my skin, and I wanted to know why. But I was too unsettled to dive deeply enough into Midsommar’s world to figure out why for myself. Fortunately, Spikima does the dirty work of thoroughly answering that question in this essay. Does knowing a film’s tricks make it less horrifying?

How Movies Helped Me Process My Mother’s Death by Adam Tinius (Entertain The Elk)

Adam Tinius, from Entertain The Elk, offers a deeply personal and emotional examination of how losing his mother to cancer compared to representations of death and grief in film.

EraserNomad by Liz Greene

Greene discovers an implausible but compelling visual link between Nomadland and Eraserhead. There’s a strange echo in how Jack Nance and Francis McDormand navigate these spaces. Perhaps their characters are haunted by a similar ghost.

Ian Garwood

Senior lecturer in film and television studies, University of Glasgow

Not that anyone will be checking back, but my list this year features only names who I have not picked for previous polls.

Marion Cotillard Doesn’t Exist (And This Is the Proof) by Elena G. Vilela

Not that anyone will be checking back, but my list this year features only names who I have not picked for previous polls. I love the ‘Truman Show’ conceit of this video, which is superbly realised through dead-pan narration and an incredibly astute selection of clips.

This is an exhaustive, yet consistently enlightening and accessible, treatise on the supercut. Three years in the making, Max Tohline’s feature-length essay identifies a dizzying array of precursors to the internet-era supercut, as well as pinpointing its aesthetic and ideological effects.

This is a fascinating essay that makes an imaginative and persuasive association between the technology of cinema and the stethoscope. Its philosophical analysis of cinematic listening is pursued through a wonderful selection of clips.

Practices of Viewing: Muted by Johannes Binotto

On the one hand, Johannes Binotto’s Practice of Viewing could be seen as something of a video essayist’s manual, each entry itemising a technique associated with video essay-making processes. However, there is nothing textbook about the way these techniques are discussed: the address is passionate and wide-ranging, offering enlightenment on why these processes fascinate, rather than a ‘how to’ instruction. I’ve chosen this particular entry as it aligns with my interest in sound. It also provides an ending that resonates uncannily with the preoccupations of Mediated Auscultation – so watch them as a double bill.

[Safe] and The Neon Demon in Dialogue by Oswald Iten

Like Binotto’s work, Oswald Iten’s three-part experimental mash-up of [Safe] and The Neon Demon is accessible through videoessayresearch.org , a research website that should be bookmarked by anyone interested in the development of videographic criticism. Each of the videos combines the films according to a different founding principle, providing captivating evidence for Jason Mittell’s claim that formal parameters lead to content discoveries.

TV Dictionary —  Bron/Broen ( II ) by Barbara Zecchi

Ariel Avissar’s curation of the TV Dictionary  series was a highlight of the year, one in which I was happy to indulge as both creator and viewer. I’m really interested in the range of approaches adopted to address the same brief: to encapsulate a TV series in one word. Barbara Zecchi chooses a distinctive path by allowing a scene to play out at length first, before introducing her chosen word, and then letting the scene resume, now understood in the light of that word. I won’t spoil the surprise by revealing the pivotal word (but it made me laugh)!

Picturing the Collective: Seven Days in May by Libertad Gills

One technique showcased in the TV Dictionary series was to let a scene play out with minimal, yet still integral, textual commentary. Libertad Gills, who added an entry on Derry Girls to the collection, adopts a similarly minimalist approach to her use of captions in this video, which runs through a sequence from Affonso Uchoa’s Seven Days in May. The result is an explanatory scene analysis that displays the lightest of touches.

Tomas Genevičius

Art critic, kritikosatlasas.com

Josephine Massarella: One Woman Walking by Stephen Broomer

The Moment of Recognition: Phantom Lady and Sorry, Wrong Number by Patrick Keating

Silence in The Passionate Friends by Oswald Iten

The Thinking Machine #50: Nicholas Ray — Notes on Style by Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin

Practices of Viewing: F. FWD by Johannes Binotto

Catherine Grant

Screen media-maker and publisher of scholarly video essays, and a former professor of screen studies (Website: https://catherinegrant.org )

Her first video essay and a superbly engaging work on Gen Z’s latest hub for film appreciation by the video essay’s MVP in 2021, which Queline followed up with another excellent study, The Two Worlds of Wolfwalkers . If these two huge achievements weren’t enough, Queline was also instrumental in the wonderful Essay Library Collaboration Project. Join the Essay Library Discord and check it out. And listen to Will DiGravio’s great conversation with her at the Video Essay Podcast ..

We were very lucky, at [in]Transition, the peer-reviewed video-essay journal I co-edit, to be able to publish some marvellous entries by new makers in this emergent scholarly field. Of the three I am highlighting here, one of the strongest in scholarly terms was this work that explored how one form of media (the stethoscope) might reveal something about another (cinema), and in so doing revisited some essential questions of cinema’s medium specificity in a supremely original way.

TERROR NULLIUS Unmixed by Caitlin Lynch

Given the ubiquity of global remix culture, Caitlin Lynch’s highly original proposal for a videographic research methodology designed to tackle this culture deserves a lifetime achievement award! What an amazingly useful concept ‘unmixing’ is, especially when it comes to deeply political work, like that by Australian collective Soda_Jerk. I can only agree with peer-reviewer Jaimie Baron who wrote that TERROR NULLIUS Unmixed shows that ‘the activities of remixing and unmixing, alternating in a potentially never-ending cycle, may constitute a productive strategy for grappling with our mediated traces of history, to which a definitive and closed meaning can never be attached.’

Stories of Haunted Houses: Female Subjects and Domestic Spaces in Contemporary Gothic Films and TV Series by Chiara Grizzaffi and Giulia Scomazzon

My personal favourite video essay on television and film, published in 2021, was co-authored by a new maker (Giulia Scomazzon) and by someone who is better known so far for her brilliant writing on video essays, my [in]Transition co-editor Chiara Grizzaffi (author of the great book I film attraverso i film. Dal «testo introvabile» ai «video essay»). Their collaboration produced a substantial and satisfying work, with affect like no other — a perfect combination of poetic, personal and scholarly approaches to contemporary female gothic films and tv series.

Outside the Lines by Dayna McLeod

One of the most exciting developments of 2021 was the turn to video essays made by established found footage and experimental film artists. Dayna McLeod is an internationally known Montreal based performance artist and video artist whose work often touches on topics of feminism, queer identity, and sexuality. In her first ever online video essays — on Lynch’s Wild at Heart — she shakes up the videographic universe with a wonderful fusion of personal-essay-filmmaking in a film critical vein. I really love what Dayna achieves in the incredibly concise and powerful frame of Outside the Lines.

Stephen Broomer is an internationally renowned experimental filmmaker, film preservationist, and scholar of Canadian cinema. His new turn to video essays in 2021 was both brilliant and prolific, resulting in two new series of high quality work: Art & Trash , which premiered in February 2021 with a twelve-episode first series of video essays on underground, avant-garde, psychotronic and outsider media, which his essay on Josephine Massarella inaugurated; and Detours, an equally rich new videographic series on the bruised soul of film noir . 2021 was an incredibly productive year from a remarkable filmmaker. I can’t wait for more.

TV Dictionary —  Derry Girls by Libertad Gills

My final vote in the poll (as I will retire after a long but happy stint as participant in it this year) goes to yet another young filmmaker, long interested in found footage, who is now making online video essays. Libertad Gills made my very favourite video essay, to date, in Ariel Avissar’s wonderful collaborative project TV Dictionary . Her work gets at the heart of what’s so brilliant about Derry Girls, which is no mean feat in three and half minutes, and reminds us, along the way, what a work of genius the series is.

Chiara Grizzaffi

Postdoctoral Fellow at IULM University. Co-editor of [in]Transition

Montegelato by Davide Rapp (watch trailer )

Screen Glare by Enrico Camporesi, Stefano Miraglia

Rites of THE PASSAGE by Catherine Grant & Deborah Martin

The Thinking Machine #49: The Burning House by Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin

A Woman’s Place: Home in Cinema by Louise Radinger Field

Practices of Viewing: Screenshots by Johannes Binotto

How Good Filmmaking Brings a Script to Life by Michael Tucker (Lessons From the Screenplay)

Cydnii Wilde Harris

Film scholar and video essayist

I’ve always loved a good homework assignment, and I’ve particularly enjoyed seeing everyone’s responses to Ariel’s prompt. Every one I’ve seen has been a standout. I particularly really enjoyed those that used the video essay medium to play with form and tone, and really capture the essence of their chosen tv shows. But one that stuck with me in particular was Ariel’s own on Seinfeld : A real punch of text, editing, laugh tracks, and humor for the tv show about nothing. A’s all around.

Johannes’s Practices series has been such a marvel throughout the year. With every new entry, I’m confronted with his genius, and it’s been really inspiring to bear witness. Muted in particular really resonated with me. The whole series feels like an interrogation of film history, media present, while somehow remaining deeply meditative and personal. Johannes’s work, without fail, always leaves me feeling invigorated, about what I’ve just seen, and what I could possibly do.

Rio Bravo Diary by Will DiGravio

Watching the Rio Bravo Diary unfold all year has been such a treat. I didn’t grow up with any real affinity for the western, so to read Will’s essays about what this film in particular meant to him growing up and coming of age really helped me reappraise this specific film. His transparency has been really revelatory to see, and I really appreciate how he’s invited us all to get to know him a little better through this year-long project. Further, the consistency and discipline of dealing with a single text for a full 365 is such an interesting experiment in the first place.

It is so, so cool to see someone top themselves so consistently. The things Jessica accomplishes here, the introspection, the way she was able to tackle the issue of accessibility while also broadening the topic, the interplay between film, the internet, and the various windows surrounding us all from literal glass panes to phone, tablet, tv, and theater screens. I don’t think I’ve ever wished a video essay would keep going while also being so impressed by how perfectly it ends. It’s just so dynamic in every sense of the word, and incredibly well done.

let’s talk about sexless media | feminism, christianity, violence, etc by wit and folly

This is a video essay that somehow managed to synthesise an online conversation with such care and context that I can’t help but share it with friends. What they accomplish is one of my favourite forms of video essays on YouTube. It’s informative, well researched, yet personable and accessible. Their argument flows really nicely, and the citations do a lot to back up the personal statements made. It also really nicely laid out something that maybe I had felt about a recent media trend, but hadn’t yet been able to articulate myself. If I had to answer the question of sex scenes in films, I would simply point to this video essay as my answer.

Gab the Goat (ft. Yhara Zayd): A Celebration of Gabrielle Union & An F-U to Colorism and Tokenism by Melina Pendulum

I’m so happy I waited to submit, because these are two of my favourite video essayists discussing one of my favourite actresses (I’m also happy because it means I get to nominate them both under a single entry). I think sometimes we have a knee jerk reaction to group projects, and I think this video essay is a perfect example of how to combine two distinct voices and visions into a single project. The exploration into Union’s career is long overdue and so deserved. I think what struck me most was how strong the voice was. They make no apologies for their stance, and really challenge Hollywood to not just reflect but act. They really manage to ask some tough questions of not just the Hollywood system, but those that benefit from it. It’s theory with praxis and it’s all deliciously powerful.

Oswald Iten

Film scholar, video essayist, animator, PhD researcher

‘The Lighthouse’ (2021) by Leonardo Govoni, Cristina López Caballer, Mehran Abdollahi

Amuse-œil by Eric Faden

Barbara Stanwyck Rides Again by Shannon Harris, Catherine Russell

Sound and Silence in Gravity: Fidelity vs Intelligibility by Jordan Schonig

Special Mention: A Supercut of Supercuts by Max Tohline.

Miklós Kiss

Associate professor in audiovisual arts and cognition at University of Groningen, NL / co-author of Film Studies in Motion: From Audiovisual Essay to Academic Research Video

A wonderfully rich follow-up of Visual Disturbances (on my S&S best of list of 2019) on the analytical urge of ‘interrogating’ filmic images, obsessing on a rather invisible 1.14-second-long shot from Citizen Kane, and on those ‘small gifts for the eye’ that subtly but abundantly appear in Playtime. Like I said earlier: Faden’s care for quality is admirable and inspiring.

Mike Figgis on Timecode and Split-Screen Cinema by Leigh Singer

The COVID pandemic has normalised a once special technique of split screen, forcing its ‘cubist psychology’ on us while locked in our homes with only virtual split-windows to the world. Singer’s interview with Mike Figgis, director of the quadruple split screen film Timecode, is a highly informative, superbly comprehensive, and abundantly illustrated walkthrough of the (cinematic) history and effect of the technique.

Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse, but as an ethnographic documentary exploring the life of lighthouse keepers in the early 20th century, directed by Robert Flaherty. An ‘ethnographic screwmeneutics’ project by the students of my Videographic Criticism course at the University of Groningen.

A massive (two hours!) video on supercuts, covering every possible angle on the technique, thereby forcing all the other supercut-researchers to find another subject of study.

Keating, with his signature analytical thoroughness, walks us through his audiovisual thinking process, distinguishing between camera movements delivering characters’ ‘revelation’ and ‘recognition’.

VR supercut diorama, the first of its kind, piecing together 180 films, TV series and commercials of the Monte Gelato waterfalls (near Rome) in 3D and with spatialised audio. Great idea, incredible effort, and superb implementation. Cinephile goosebumps are guaranteed!

Jaap Kooijman

Associate professor in media studies, University of Amsterdam, organiser ASCA videographic criticism seminar

The Black and White Coffee Set by Barbara Zecchi

Barbara Zecchi’s The Black and White Coffee Set is brilliant in its simplicity. The focus on one prop (he black-and-white coffee set in Ana Muylaert’s Que horas ela volta?) and the way the design of the audiovisual essay aesthetically repeats it, effectively work together to show the narrative importance of a seemingly mundane object. While its playfulness makes the audiovisual essay enjoyable to watch, its more ‘serious’ argument about Brazilian class and race relations remains clear throughout.

Staring Back by Sara Delshad

Although Staring Back works perfectly well as a study of auteurism, convincingly showing a signature style of filmmaker Chris Marker, Sara Delshad’s audiovisual essay stands out for me in the way it forces the viewer to become aware of their own subject position. The audiovisual essay highlights the human and non-human animal subjects staring back at the camera and, in extension, at the viewer. Those moments when the subjects answer the viewer’s gaze evokes a feeling – at least in me – of being caught staring. Delshad cleverly uses slow motion and freeze frame to enhance this sensation.

Sonic Chronicle, Post Sound by Cormac Donnelly

Some audiovisual essays really teach you something new. In Sonic Chronicle, Post Sound, Cormac Donnelly applies R. Murray Schafer’s definition of the soundscape to sonically analyze the newsrooms scenes in Zodiac, The Post, and All the President’s Men. Donnelly uses both sonic and visual techniques to make sound tangible, enabling those with untrained ears, like myself, not only to pay attention to, but also make sense of sound.

Evelyn Kreutzer

Postdoctoral researcher, Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf

Practices of Viewing: Mask by Johannes Binotto

I always attempt to curate my suggestions for the annual best video essays lists in a way that represents the breadth of video-essayistic output. Binotto’s Practices of Viewing series reflects sophisticated, in-depth, and yet very accessible and informative introductions to film-analytical concepts that are very suitable for both teaching purposes and film-scholarly thinking more broadly. I like Mask in particular because it evokes multiple layers of cinematic framing and spectatorship that seems to speak intuitively to our current moment of increasingly ‘masked’ experiences of the world.

Silence and Words: Voice-over and Trauma in Coixet & Campion by Barbara Zecchi

Barbara Zecchi’s video essay is a powerful, deeply affective video on cinematic sound, specifically the transcendence of internal and external sound (experience and narration). As a sound scholar, I always look and listen for videos like these.

The Typewriter (Supercut) by Ariel Avissar

Ariel Avissar’s video is less an academic video essay than it is an impressive, entertaining, and insightful supercut of a single object/motif across numerous media sources that is simple in its conceptual premise but very sophisticated in its execution and certainly provocative of critical reflexion.

TV Dictionary —  Marcella by Barbara Zecchi

Like the entire TV Dictionary  series (curated by Ariel Avissar), Barbara Zecchi’s video on Marcella turns the seemingly narrow pairing of a dictionary entry to a TV series into a multi-faceted, scholarly evocative, and visually stunning exercise. I like the whole series but so far this entry has been my favorite.

Video essayist

I don’t know what I was doing this year, but apparently it wasn’t watching a whole lot of videos, so no ‘hidden gems’ from me this year. But these three entertaining and engaging videos, while popular in terms of views, may have slipped through the more academic net. So enjoy!

Space Jam 2 is a Lie by John Walsh (Super Eyepatch Wolf)

I’m a sucker for some fiction, and Super Eyepatch Wolf sure knows how to have fun with the video essay format, making some of the most creative uses of the form. This video was a stand out for me this year.

The Battle of SHARKS ! By CGP  Grey

A charming story of the battle between art and city council planning permission, I don’t know if I’ve ever finished a video feeling more giddy and delighted. Review from my mum: “That video is worth more than every other video on YouTube put together, and deserves an award.”

CO - VID s: the 90’s neoliberal fantasia as experienced by daria morgendorffer, millennial by Ian Danskin (Innuendo Studios)

A wonderful defense of a defense of millennial teens, and an account of millennial nostalgia, which I am already nostalgic for. Ahh 28th Jan 2021, when I was still so full of hope for the year ahead. Ian Danskin continues to make exceptionally engaging videos from a deeply personal perspective that perfectly balances anecdote and academia.

Kevin B. Lee

Video essayist and educator; @alsolikelife

Three Minutes: A Lengthening by Bianca Stigter (watch trailer )

Three minutes of home movie footage taken in 1938 are explored through an impressive array of videographic techniques to create a vast and deeply moving contemplation on lives lost and history regained.

Also: ‘One Thousand and One Attempts to Be an Ocean’ by Wang Yuyan (watch trailer ), whose epileptic temporality goes in the polar opposite direction to achieve its own revelatory experience of the extreme online present.

Home When You Return by Carl Elsaesser (see details )

Stretching and blurring the boundaries of video essay, experimental film and home movie, traces of a 1950s homemade melodrama by amateur filmmaker Joan Thurber Baldwin intermingle with a mournful homage to the author’s grandmother and her vacated home. A powerful mélange of cinematic and domestic spaces, past and present.

Also: Screening Room: On Digital Film Festivals , by Jessica McGoff

Launched this year, this series currently consists of five video essays, each concerning a different method through which viewing is mediated (muting, screenshot, pausing, fast forwarding, masking). With an arresting combination of playfulness and obsessiveness, Binotto re-performs and reflects upon the techniques that govern spectatorship.

Also: Amuse-oeil by Eric Faden

What Isn’t a Video Essay? By Grace Lee (What’s So Great About That?)

YouTube video essays have generally bloated into hours-long vlogfests to maximize monetization algorithms, but here is a rigorously crafted tour de force that rewards rewatching for the many memeic details it contains. It breathlessly performs a mind engaging the internet on its own terms, utilizing the temporal and audiovisual affordances of always-on networked life to reflect thoughtfully back upon itself.

Also: The Scholarly Video Essay by Ian Garwood. Garwood demurs from calling this a video essay, but they certainly demonstrate how pre-recorded lectures can evolve from a lowly COVD -era necessity into an arresting videographic form in its own right.

This was released just around last year’s poll; since then it’s become a go-to reference for film dinosaurs like me to make sense of how film culture can thrive among a new generation and its preferred platforms.

Also, this .

Transitional Moments in Cinematic Virtual Reality by Sarah Atkinson

A critical and revealing interrogation of the gender (en)coding of virtual reality as it has been presented in cinema, implicitly calling for a more inclusive re-coding of these mediums not only as a means for entertainment but for social co-presence.

Also: Michael Ironside and I by Marian Mayland (watch trailer )

The Best Simpsons Episode is About Losing Everything You Love by Jacob Geller

As also evidenced in his The Game That Won’t Let You See All of It , Geller is able to narrate the YouTube video essay and its pop culture preoccupations into areas of uncommon sensitivity and existential poignancy.

Also: Mad Men’s Babylon: Mapping out a Musical Metaphor by Ariane Hudelet

Adrian Martin

Film critic and audiovisual essayist

Satirical pastiches are good when they are accurate, and this one is so accurate it manages to satirise several things at once, from nerd-fan culture to the Kogonada craze.

Prendre conscience / perdre connaissance by Occitane Lacurie

The smart conjunction of Last Year at Marienbad and Westworld via a quote from surrealist cinephile Robert Benayoun – I could hardly ask for anything more.

Most audiovisual essays depend on some level of prior film analysis, but not so many are actually very good at really achieving an analysis above the most obvious and basic undergraduate level. Keating is an excellent analyst and he turns his insights into finely constructed montage pieces, like this one.

A lot of so-called remix culture simply, from Adam Curtis downward, simply celebrates the brute fact of being able to sample and throw things together — often quite incoherently. Lynch’s superb work takes a patient strategy of unmixing to comment on those genuine remix masters, the Soda_Jerk team.

Vedette — For Laura Mulvey by Catherine Grant

Catherine Grant’s dispositifs of audiovisual comparison, often with an inscribed text component, can look deceptively simple. This one revealingly lines up words from Laura Mulvey’s recent work with breathtaking passages of two classic Max Ophüls films.

Dialogue III : CAROL / JESSE by Oswald Iten

This is the culminating and best work in Iten’s series interweaving Todd Haynes’ Safe and Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon. More than a matter of demonstrating the banal influence of one film or filmmaker on another, this audiovisual essay achieves a dreamy, hallucinatory intensity and texture.

Secrets of Ghosts by Johanna Vaude

If you’re going to re-imagine a pre-existing film in a new and creative montage, really push it to something extreme. Vaude, among the most masterful of all practitioners in this field, works her special magic on Mulholland Drive, part of her series of ongoing commissions from Arte’s BLOW UP  program.

Daniel Mcilwraith

Video essayist and video editor

in process… | james benning at neugerriemschneider by Erika Balsom

The Representation of Rape on Screen by Lucie Emch

Alan O’L eary

Associate professor of film and media in digital contexts at Aarhus University. His manifesto for a parametric videographic criticism was published this year in NECSUS .

Nuit Debout/Up At Night by Nelson Makengo (watch trailer )

Congolese artist-filmmaker Nelson Makengo spreads his portrait of Kinshasa, a city beset by power cuts, across three screens punctuated with bare lightbulbs and the dancing beams of torches, the whole underpinned by an evocative sound world of generator noises, off-screen conversations and voices from the radio. Some participants at the ethnographic film festival where I saw Up At Night complained they found the three-screen format distracting, but it is precisely the reflexive use of multiscreen—sometimes showing identical images, sometimes different, and sometimes nothing—that places Up At Night in the essay film tradition and lifts it clear of documentary or auto-ethnography.

Obliged to placate a UK funding system structurally suspicious of academic and artistic enquiry, Screenworks , the journal of practice research in screen media, insists on a detailed setting out of research questions and social impact for each of its video publications. Elisabeth Brun duly complies in the statement accompanying her intimate and spectacular 3 x Shapes of Home, but the film contains all the elements it needs to explain itself. I love how it’s unsatisfied with, and unafraid to compromise, its own beauty, and how the playful voiceover interacts dynamically with content and form. It’s a sensual and conceptual treat.

Ian Garwood has used tweets as ‘research outputs’ in a novel way as part of his Indy Vinyl project (see his 2020 article in NECSUS ) but Will DiGravio has actually deployed the structural affordances of Twitter in his year-long analysis of Rio Bravo. In 365 daily tweets, DiGravio methodically posted 22-second clips from Hawk’s film prefaced by an observation or reaction in 280 characters. This is ‘video/essay’ as iterative performance rather than reporting of analysis and I like to think of it in the tradition of Barthes’ S/Z, where scientific method is pushed to absurdist (and intensely personal) ends.

The Television Will Not Be Summarized by Elizabeth Alsop

Elizabeth Alsop is concerned in this video essay with an ‘exhibitionism’ that resists and exceeds plot summary in shows like The Leftovers, Hannibal and Twin Peaks: The Return. Alsop talks in her [in]Transition creator statement of confronting the methodological challenge of dramatizing (rather than summarizing) spectacular televisual phenomena without merely appropriating their rhetorical force. I admire how she meets this challenge with wit and economy (and without voiceover) through a combination of sound and cryptic imagery, multiscreen and onscreen text. The framing sections effectively stage the meditative experience of the extended extracts that form the central bulk of the video essay.

OUT OF PLACE (Or, Lost in NOMADLAND ) by Catherine Grant

Apparently, Catherine Grant has asked not to be mentioned in this year’s poll, but it would be strange to omit our leading role model in ‘filmmaking research’ (Grant’s preferred term). Anyway, I have chosen an epigraphic video I don’t particularly like. Grant’s treatment of onscreen text is exemplary, as ever, but the quote from Sarah Ahmed is coercive and folksy, while the juxtaposition of quirky music and looped images of Frances McDormand risks whimsy. The point for me, though, is that this sketch forms part of a broader practice that is always more than the sum of its video parts.

He Almost Forgets That There Is a Maker of the World by Ben Spatz, N. Eda Erçin, Caroline Gatt and Agnieszka Mendel

In this essay, onscreen text is used to annotate a 30-minute single-take recording of researcher-performers using speech, song and body to interact with books and each other to investigate some meanings of Jewishness. This ‘illuminated video’, as maker Ben Spatz dubs it, is an expression of what Spatz refers to in a series of writings as ‘the video way of thinking’ (see 2018 article of that name and the 2020 book ‘ Making a Laboratory ’). What I particularly value here is the idea and practice of essay-making as an experimental situation rather than as the mere documentation or reporting of research.

Julian Palmer

YouTube video essayist, The Discarded Image

A trip into the video essay metaverse, but done in a unique and funny style that makes potentially academic content propulsively entertaining.

Using a combination of self-shot footage (mostly churches) and some of the great existential films from Bergman, Schrader, Tarkovsky, Malkick, etc, LSOO explores why he’s drawn to religious art and architecture, without being overtly religious himself, which I can relate to.

The Invisible Horror of The Shining by Kristian T. Williams (kaptainkristian)

After being away from the scene for two years, it was great to see the return of Kristian’s trademark slick style. He takes arguably the most talked to death film of all time, and makes it fresh.

Why Is Bo Burnham’s Inside like That? by Thomas Flight

Clearly inspired by Bo Burnham’s groundbreaking achievement, Flight applies many similar techniques—with numerous camera set-ups and video essay styles—to explore that work in a wholly original way.

The Transformation of Anthony Hopkins by Luís Azevedo (Little White Lies)

A touching and creative tribute to the legendary actor. Azevedo has Hopkins in dialogue with himself, creating an emotional journey through his many roles.

I’m sure we all use movies to guide us through the toughest times. And this emotionally raw video uses them as a way to remember a loved one, and deal with a devastating loss.

Jemma Saunders

Audio-visual PhD student at the University of Birmingham

Epigraph —  Grand Budapest Hotel by Owen Mason-Hill

Concise videographic epigraph that explores and pleasingly manipulates colour, maintaining an Anderson aesthetic throughout.

Documentary as a Genre of Fiction by Oscar Mealia

A complex reflection on documentary storytelling that focuses on Orson Welles’ F for Fake and includes a performative element from the creator. Rich in its academic grounding and playful in execution.

Audiovisual Film Criticism and Cosmopolitanism ( AKA The Haunting of the Headful Academics) by Ian Garwood

A video essay that ate other video essays. This really resonated with me, not only for its acknowledgement and incorporation of the Zoom space we have inhabited for much of the last two years, but for the important questions it poses about how we choose our material as essayists.

I just find this joyous to watch: beautifully paced and a brilliant example of how the supercut can reveal as well as revere.

This is a powerful and haunting piece of work. In slowing down, repeating, and zooming in to archival footage, it forces the viewer to confront and re-engage with what may seem familiar images of the Holocaust.

BBC Inside Cinema series

Many of these bite-size explorations are essentially well-crafted compilations with voiceovers rather than more experimental or academically essayistic pieces, but I learn something every time I watch one. There’s an eclectic range of topics, from uncanny spaces and nuns on film; to examinations of the macguffin and credit sequences.

An Investigation of Colour in Black Mirror by Matt Cook

I’m a firm believer that any video essay should make the most of the form and this is a strong example of an undergraduate doing just that through employing various audio-visual techniques to develop his argument. It’s great to hear a regional accent too!

Daniel Schindel

Associate editor, Hyperallergic

ACTION BUTTON REVIEWS Tokimeki Memorial by Tim Rogers (Action Button)

Tim Rogers transitioned from being a leader within New Games Journalism to producing some of the most in-depth video reviews about video games and how they create meaning. This epic six-hour essay goes in-depth on a little-known Japanese romance game, including summaries of two playthroughs of it. In line with the rest of Rogers’s work, it is not merely about this game, but about a sprawling, branching series of fascinating tangents around interpersonal relationships and how interactive art can engage them.

Why Don’t the Cops Fight Each Other? by Grayson Earle

A terrific example of found commentary in pop culture. The designers of Grand Theft Auto V likely didn’t intend to make a statement on the ‘Blue Wall of Silence’, but by programming police officers not to attack one another, no matter what, they unwittingly replicated real-world dynamics. Earle turns his tinkering with the game’s code into an intriguing investigation into media message-making.

Identity: A Trans Coming Out Story by Abigail Thorn (Philosophy Tube)

This is the least ‘essay-like’ work on my ballot, but Abigail Thorn is pushing the creative envelope so much within the field of popular YouTubers that I feel she deserves mention. One thing I love about Philosophy Tube is how Thorn finds a way to incorporate the concepts she discusses into the forms of the videos themselves. Here, she makes clear the performative nature of gender by having a cis male portray the closeted, male-presenting version of herself. The moment when that actor steps aside and Thorn comes out (sorry) is one of my favourite in any video this year.

The way that Binotto scrutinises the structures and conventions of digital modes of viewing through the lens of analog interfaces is consistently engrossing. It’s always a treat each time a new instalment in this series pops up.

There had to be something here acknowledging the pandemic, and McGoff’s literate and deeply considered rumination on the experience of a virtual film festival spoke more to my supremely odd times as a cinephile under lockdown than anything else I’ve seen on the matter.

The History of the Atlanta Falcons by Jon Bois, Alex Rubenstein, Joe Ali

Jon Bois might just be my favourite documentarian working today, and I have a strong suspicion that soon a lot more internet videos are going to be taking cues from his work. This multipart look at the trials and tribulations of the Falcons is a longform study of failure in all its myriad forms. In the hands of Bois and his collaborators, we see in this team a devastating series of near-misses, could-have-beens, and lost opportunities. Sports narratives often focus on snatching victory from the jaws of defeat; who knew the opposite could be so engrossing?

My only complaint about Grace Lee is that she doesn’t upload more often! Especially since in her recent work she’s demonstrated an incredible visual sensibility, casually packing tons of information — jokes, easter eggs, and more — into every shot. This video is near and dear to my heart because it speaks to my own struggles to define video essays, and my gnawing feeling that sometimes we might be getting too permissive with the term, or alternatively too restrictive. Few essayists explore this kind of ambivalence as well as Lee.

Shannon Strucci

Video essayist,  StrucciMovies

how i would defeat the immortal snail by Faline San

Faline San’s videos are typically anecdotes about her life or explanations of her thought process regarding bizarre niche topics. They caught my attention due to her quick pacing, engaging storytelling, her finely-tuned (and very funny) editing style, and her self-deprecating sense of humor. how i would defeat the immortal snail is a great example of this – it’s essentially a ten minute rant about a Reddit thought experiment , but it’s very funny and complex. This is especially impressive considering she is still a teenager, and I look forward to seeing what work she produces in the future!

The Bizarre World of Fake Psychics, Faith Healers, and Mediums by John Walsh (Super Eyepatch Wolf)

John’s essays are always funny and thought-provoking and he had some more avant-garde videos this year that pushed video essays as a medium (specifically his Space Jam and Dell nightmare videos, which I’d also recommend) but his fake psychics video stood out to me as something with the potential to help save a viewer from being taken advantage of, which is tremendously valuable. It’s dense with research and history and comes from both a place of anger and empathy. It’s a fantastic video.

Scout Tafoya

Johannes had a hell of a year. This whole series is superb.

Tenderness — Rio Bravo Diary by Will DiGravio

De la femme by Caterina Cucinotta and Jesús Ramé López

Reimagining Blackness and Architecture ( MOMA ) by Russell Yaffe, Rafael Salazar Moreno ( RAVA  Films)

Great series.

Our Focus by Kevin B. Lee

Max Tohline

Independent media scholar and video essayist

Flight of the Navigator | VFX Cool by Alan Melikdjanian (Captain Disillusion)

Captain Disillusion’s videos debunking viral hoaxes or misinformation about visual effects wizardry have been top-tier YouTube content for years, but nothing could have prepared me for this ravishing deconstruction of the technical magic in the cult-classic Flight of the Navigator. I don’t have euphoric superlatives extreme enough for how I felt watching this video the first time — not only does C.D. use VFX to analyze VFX (probably the final boss of videographic criticism); his attention, research, wit, obsession, and good old fashioned formal analysis blow everything else out of the water.

Though it has stiff competition from Faden, Keating, Mittell, and others, Mediated Auscultation is my favorite peer-reviewed essay of the year. Like many film scholars, I’ve never given enough attention to sound — precisely because sound never struck me as being essentially ‘cinematic’. But Talijan shows that cinema’s promise of immersive sensing from a distance applies as much to sound as image. The icing on the cake is that while plenty of video essays are ‘meditative’, few have made the tone demonstrate the argument as Talijan does here, with the audio putting me in a near- ASMR  haze.

I never realized it was possible to deploy a parody of a video essay (in this case a classic on neorealism from kogonada) in the service of an argument that is not only NOT a joke, but possibly richer than that of the original. Whereas kogonada merely illustrated a reasonably conventional understanding of the difference between de Sica’s style and classical Hollywood style, Avissar completely overturned my narrow-minded received takes on Snyder by offering me a different mode of attention. Even if an ambiguity remains as to what Snyder’s style ‘means’, I’ll never pigeonhole him the same way again.

No Face Is an Incel by CJ the X

Generally I’d exclude wall-to-wall-talking-head channels from a list of great video essays, but CJ the X is in the middle of an annus mirabilis. So, for those who don’t have the 2.5 hours for CJ ’s urgent cry-of-the-soul Burnham/Bezos essay , here’s an intoxicating 100-mile-an-hour sprint of an essay that performs a Žižekian looking-awry on Spirited Away that might not be dressed up in academic finery, but has a more nimble intellect than many who’ve put up with the steamroller of peer review.

As we enter the eighth or ninth wave of rumination on what ‘counts’ as a video essay and how to think videographically, Johannes Binotto has become the undisputed master of reflection on the everyday practices of viewing that form the foundation of what video essayists do. Watching his ongoing Practices of Viewing series (in particular the one on the screenshot, but also others on pausing, fast-forwarding, muting), I felt like I’d found Arne Saknussemm’s name scratched into the cave wall— a fellow traveler.

eye / contact by Niki Radman

This essay takes its time and a good deal of text setting up its argument, but when it finally unveils its purely visual denouement — a 3x3 grid of images that jaw-droppingly links one note of Barry Jenkins’s formal language with his whole symphony of themes surrounding identity — I felt like I was gonna turn into drops.

Inside: Are Video Games Art? by Arttective

The tip of the YouTube iceberg conceals a Sierpinski triangle of icebergs beneath it — so many that it’s mathematically remarkable that any individual essay ever made it to my eyes at all. Had I not met Arttective on the Essay Library Discord server, I wouldn’t have seen this gem, which uses the rewind and skip keys on YouTube to inject some tantalizing interactivity into the grammar of the video essay. But I’m so glad I did: the experience is engrossing. If anyone out there solves the puzzle in this video, please let me know the answer!

David Verdeure

Creator, collector and curator of video essays under the nom de video Filmscalpel

The pandemic proves fertile ground for video essays. Changing film distribution models mean movies are available sooner to audiovisual critics. In-person and live events have been replaced with pre-taped materials, creating another vein of visuals for video essay makers to tap into. We’re often confined to our personal visual echo chambers that are filled with screens that confound as much as they clarify. And that we’re forced to spend more time in close quarters may also contribute to the unmistakable trend that video essays are getting longer. In 2021 audiovisual strategies that are common to the video essay popped up everywhere. In academia and the arts. In news broadcasts and film festivals. In talk shows and on TikTok. These are just a few remarkable examples.

In his feature-length video Tohline gives an overview of the history, the aesthetics and the modus operandi of the supercut. He examines the tension between its dueling impulses of (fannish) desire and serious analysis, and he proposes strategies to increase the form’s critical impact. But most important is how Tohline regards the supercut not as a mere editing technique but as the material expression of a specific and novel way of thinking. We try to make sense of the world by ordering it into either archives or databases, and the supercut is the poster child for that database mode.

Just when you think the whole supercut model has been mapped, along comes an innovative application of this strategy. Davide Rapp combines clips of the Monte Gelato waterfalls near Rome into a 28-minute VR collage. Scores of rectangular film and television scenes together form a full circle, recasting the role of the spectator from immobile viewer in a theater seat to participatory flaneur. Montegelato is an immersive three-dimensional palimpsest that puts the viewer at the center of this nexus of cinematic storytelling: a location that inspired filmmakers working across different genres, in different times and with very different means.

Gyres 1-3 by Ellie Ga (watch excerpt )

American artist Ellie Ga’s single channel video installation Gyres 1-3 is another example of how to put an inventive spin on a classic videographic strategy. This is a desktop video essay of sorts, with the desktop being a light table onto which she arranges and rearranges transparent photographs. Her essayistic voice over narration is triggered by the succession of (often) archetypal images that serve as lodestars for the video’s loose narrative structure. But unlike the more traditional virtual desktop, Ellie Ga’s physical handling of the transparent slides adds a tactile and more personal touch to the process.

Under the White Mask: The Film That Haesaerts Could Have Made by Matthias De Groof (watch trailer )

In 1958 Paul Haesaerts made Under the Black Mask, a documentary on Congolese art. That Belgian film was formally inventive but it also perpetuated racist stereotypes. Scholar and filmmaker Matthias De Groof remixed Haesaerts’ film into a scathing critique of colonialism. He combined the footage of mute masks with an impassioned voice over by slam poet Maravilha Munto. In Haesaerts’ version, art hid atrocities. Aestheticism was used as a mask for the ugly face of colonialism to hide behind. This powerful remix tears off that mask: it uses exactly the same artistic means but reclaims their critical potential.

Cinema Turns: Catalan Creative Documentary by Celia Sainz

In this beautifully paced and expertly constructed video essay Celia Sainz focuses on a quartet of documentary films made in Catalonia over the past two decades by female filmmakers. She does not seek to ascribe a collective national identity or ideological agenda to these works but looks for shared artistic (cinematographic and narrative) strategies. Like the creative documentaries it studies, this video essay uses time and tone to drive home its points. The assured audiovisual approach and well-judged rhythm of this piece are part and parcel to its intellectual and affective impact.

Lucie Emch’s video essay deals with the troublesome on-screen representation of rape. She starts off in a conventional way but then brings music videos into the mix. The video essay really hits its stride when it mashes up Jenny Wilson’s RAPIN * music video (from 2018) with Ida Lupino’s film Outrage (from 1950).

This fine piece was published by Tecmerin. That online journal deserves to be lauded for its persistent efforts to bring to the fore the work of video essay makers who are not native English speakers, and for the fact it reviews and publishes pieces in many different languages.

Barbara Zecchi

Professor and director of the film studies programme, University of Massachusetts Amherst

The most intelligent video-essay I’ve seen on sound (or rather, on lack of sound) in cinema. Brilliant!

With over 40 works to date, Ariel Avissar’s intelligent project has certainly accomplished its expected goal of increasing the video essay’s interest in television products. It has also achieved a less expected result: it strengthened a community of video essayists who have engaged playfully in this almost addictive collaborative endeavor.

Film Thought 1. Will the Plausible: On FIVE CARD STUD by Will DiGravio

Skillfully produced (superb storytelling and rhythm), this video-essay takes full advantage of the form’s possibilities by centering in a simple perceptive observation. A little gem which marks the beginning of a promising new series by Will DiGravio

Cinephilia translated into an audiovisual essay at its best. A deeply personal and emotional account of Adrian Martin’s love for film and for film analysis becomes one of the best pieces I can think of on a rigorous and theoretical reflection on the video-graphic essay as a form.

Public Controversy and Film Censorship. The release of All Quiet on Western Front (1930) in Berlin by Manuel Palacio y Ana Mejón

I saw this video-essay for the first time when Ana Mejón presented it at the video-graphic webinar organized by the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in September. I was immediately impressed. It’s a superbly crafted video-essay that condenses thorough and serious work of scholarly research.

A powerful and chilling work that did not go unnoticed at the Adelio Ferrero Festival, Italy. I look forward to the multi-modal project that will be published in the upcoming issue of Research in Film and History together with this video-essay.

It’s so smart and funny, and, as Jason Mittell said, it “speaks to many of us.”

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Other things to explore

The best video essays of 2023.

By Queline Meadows

The best films of 2023 – all the votes

Martin scorsese on winning sight and sound’s best films of 2023 poll with killers of the flower moon.

The YouTube Channels Every Movie-Lover Should Watch

There are thousands of slickly-edited essays out there – here are the few creators that have established themselves as the best

Thanks to the advent of the internet, anyone and everyone can offer their opinion on everything. There are videos out there comparing the fries from every fast food joint available in the Western hemisphere, assiduous think-pieces on why the Earth must be flat , and even attentive tier-lists on which Pokémon look the most delicious (the answer, of course, is Miltank).

Moreover, over the last decade or so, the sub-genre of ‘video essays’ relating to film and TV has exploded in popularity – thousands of creators have put forward slickly-edited commentaries on nearly every IP available. However, due to the unfettered nature of the world wide web , it’s difficult to know which of these essayists are actually worthwhile and which are just peddling idiocy. Thankfully, there are a few out there that have cut through the noise and have established themselves with their fresh insights and clever takes – here are some of the best video essay channels available.

RELATED: Fallout 76 Reversing Player Bans if They Write An Essay

Every Frame a Painting

“Hi I’m Tony, and you’re watching Every Frame a Painting …” Consistently insightful, joyously celebratory, and wonderfully crafted, Every Frame a Painting was a trailblazer of the video essay community, becoming one of the first channels in the genre to reach one million subscribers .

The main impetus behind their work was to examine “how to discuss visual ideas with non-visual people” – is it possible to educate casual viewers on how filmmakers use visuals for dramatic effect? Touching on the works of Buster Keaton, Akira Kurosawa, Edgar Wright, Robin Williams, and even chairs, the videos went into diverse depths to catch viewers up on how every frame of film could be a painting .

Although dormant now (the duo behind the videos have said that they wanted to quit while they were ahead and not just cycle out entries ad infinitum), Every Frame a Painting ’s existing catalogue serves as a prescient reminder of how great video essays can be.

 Lindsey Ellis

The internet’s resident ‘Nostalgia Chic’, no one interrogates celebrated institutions of the pop culture like Lindsey Ellis. Finding her start with Channel Awesome in 2008 before branching out on her own in 2014, Ellis’ essays usually centre on her re-examining beloved IPs, like the works of Disney and Stephenie Meyer, and seeing how these revered films hold up – are they rightfully beloved, or just hidden behind the intoxicating cloud of nostalgia?

Now also a New York Times best-selling author, Ellis has carved out a niche through vivisecting fan favorite films, exploring their contexts, production, reception and message. In terms of depth of research, really no one tops Ellis.

KaptainKristian 

KaptainKristian produces video essays with a twist – he not only explores the visuals that define some epochal films but adapts the very format of his videos to reflect them. Half-animation, half-commentary , a KaptainKristian video takes “show don’t tell” to the next level, both explaining and illustrating why a film is so visually iconic.

Indeed, the channel has touched on some subject matters beyond film, such as Dr Seuss’ rhythmic rhyme scheme or colors and costumes of the original X-Men comic book , tying all his offerings together through a daunting dedication to both form and content. If a viewer wanted to ‘feel’ a subject and not just understand it, they can’t go wrong with KaptainKristian .

Lessons from the Screenplay

Some of the most successful video essay channels find success by carving out a niche for themselves, offering viewers a focused look at a particular aspect of the form. For Lessons from the Screenplay , this focus is obvious. Every new video from the channel breaks down a celebrated script, scouring its pages for tips and tricks – this channel is more than just a celebration of film, it’s almost a how-to guide for aspiring screenwriters.

Often using seminal books on screenwriting like John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story as a lens to examine the films, Lessons from the Screenplay has looked at some of the form’s most celebrated scripts to provide guidance to viewers. Aaron Sorkin , Jordan Peele, the Cohen Brothers – all these screenwriters and more have had their work broken down and analyzed by the channel and had the lessons passed on to avid fans – this is a channel that elucidates and educates.

Folding Ideas

The spiritual amalgamation of Lindsey Ellis and Lessons from the Screenplay, Folding Ideas explores big pop-culture ideas through a particular lens: editing. Written and performed by experienced editor Dan Olsen, the channel breaks down what some films do well and what others do so, so poorly ( his video on Suicide Squad  feels more like an intelligent knife-fight than a video essay).

Originally fronted by an origami puppet (hence the name) but now featuring Olsen front and centre, Folding Ideas is a detailed foray into an often-overlooked side of filmmaking. Touching on beautiful disasters like The Book of Henry, The Snowman and even the forced relatability of YouTube food channels, Folding Ideas may be niche in focus, but it’s wide in appeal.

MORE: Skyrim Fan Submitted Their School Essays in Dovah Language

The 45 Best Filmmaking YouTube Channels of 2023

• How to Make a YouTube Video
• How Do You Make a Video on YouTube
• How to Add Subtitles
• How to Make Money on YouTube
• How to Make A YouTube Channel That Stands Out
• How To Make An Intro For Your YouTube Video
• Best Filmmaking YouTube Channels
• Best Camera for YouTube Videos
• Guide to the YouTube Audio Library
• Make a YouTube Web Series
• Creative YouTube Video Ideas
• When Was YouTube Created

I ndie filmmakers on YouTube hand out their expertise like candy. It’s cheaper than film school, and it’s awesome. But the number of channels that exist can feel daunting. So we’ve sifted through a ton and come up with a list of the best filmmaking YouTube channels by category, to better fit your interest. Let’s dive in.

• Storytelling & Filmmaking Channels
• Video Production & Gear Channels
• Post Production Channels
• Screenwriting Channels

STORYTELLING

& filmmaking channels, tips from indie filmmakers on youtube, 1.  film riot.

With almost 1.5 million subscribers, Film Riot is the leading resource for filmmakers at any level. The comedic tone combined with invaluable information makes this a go-to.

Visual storytelling by Film Riot

2.  studiobinder.

How could we not put StudioBinder on the list? I can’t help but be super proud of our channel because it covers...well...everything. From David Fincher's directing style to a free Filmmaking Techniques masterclass , it’s an impressive filmmaking resource. 

StudioBinder's video essay on Quentin Tarantino   •   Subscribe on YouTube

3.  every frame a painting.

While this channel saw its end in 2016, it boasts a ton of video essays that demonstrate the importance of a shot to drive the narrative . It’s perfect for directors looking for inspiration or just to boost their creativity.

Hone your craft with this unique, highly informative channel

4.  now you see it.

Learn some narrative building tips, and how to tell a better story. The channel has no shortage of fun film analyses from the movies you know and love.  

Now You See It  •  Video essays abound

5.  filmmaker iq.

This filmmaking YouTube channel belongs on the list because of the way it delivers its content. It educates its audience on different film techniques by setting them in the context of film history . It’s a channel devoted to helping filmmakers learn the basics.

Watch how Hollywood creates impossible worlds

6.  indie film hustle.

Hacking the film industry, one video at a time. The channel delivers on cinematography techniques , camera reviews, and even screenwriting tips .

Get your hustle on and learn it all

7.  cinemark.

A channel to keep you in the loop with the actors you love. Interviews take over the channel and it's a great resource to learn acting and filmmaking tips right from the horse’s mouth.

Cinemark's dual focus: informative and entertaining

8.  premium beat.

A royalty-free music website with a YouTube channel that focuses on tutorials from motion graphics , video production, to even editing . 

Free stock music, editing tips, and more

Video production channels, hands on learning and gear review, 9. philip bloom.

One of the “bigger” indie filmmakers on the scene. He has a pretty crazy following, which makes sense considering the quality of his content. He uses his everyday life to video and review what’s around him, which makes for a pretty inspirational channel.

Philip Bloom's combo camera tutorial

10. peter mckinnon.

With almost 6 million subscribers, is he even indie anymore? Either way, it’s no wonder his channel has blown up. He delivers some unique low budget hacks on successful shooting. He also has a ton of knowledge in the post production arena.  

Peter McKinnon's channel is informative and entertaining

11. indy mogul.

Awesome for the indie filmmakers on YouTube. With over 1200 tutorials devoted to making you a better filmmaker, you’ll have plenty to sift through just from this one channel. 

Watch Indy Mogul

12. wolfcrow.

Great filmmaking YouTube channel for DPs. Cinematography videos from films you love. Learn camera angles and camera movement to become a better cinematographer .

Watch Wolfcrow

13. ycimaging.

Ran by Chrystopher Rhodes, who seems to get better with each video, this filmmaking YouTube channel does a great job with its actionable content.

Watch YCImaging YouTube channel

14. dslrguide.

This channel is awesome for any level filmmaker. Its goal is help you become a better filmmaker, plain and simple. Their tips range from how to make your videos look more cinematic, to how to make a music video on a budget.  

Tips, tutorials, and advice from real filmmakers

15. parker walbeck.

Learn how to shoot better transitions with this indie filmmaker. His channel boasts a ton of insightful videography techniques to rev up your skill set.

Parker Walbeck's YouTube Channel: Transition tutorials and much more

Kai’s unabashed opinions and professional experience in the field make his channel a leading resource for gear addicts. You’ll discover the latest camera lenses , drones, cameras, and more. 

Kai W's YouTube Channel: Hands on and "how-to's" 

17. dslr video shooter.

This channel boasts best gear reviews and provides solid tutorials to level-up your videos. 

Caleb Pike teaches camera techniques

18. tom antos.

Tom’s channel provides advice for the gear head, and those who want to learn more about cameras, and which kind to use for what. From more advanced videos to novice, this channel is definitely a solid source of information.

Indie filmmaker talking indie setups

19. d4darious.

Indie filmmaker shares tips on cinematography, directing, and sometimes even screenwriting. With over 400k followers, his channel is building fast, and if you watch some of his tutorials, it's no wonder.

Low budget filmmaking tips and advice

20. aputure.

A YouTube channel (and blog) that is dedicated to video and film lighting . The channel boasts some pretty cool content like how to light character intros to aging characters with light. Check it out below. 

Learn lighting with Aputure

21. the slanted lens.

This is a fun one. Jay P. Morgan teaches lighting, photo and videography techniques with a sense of humor and includes regular gear reviews.

Check out the Slanted Lens

22. filmmakers academy.

This channel deserves a mention somewhere on this list. Even though they don't have hundreds and thousands of subscribers, the channel has strong content. Their educational videos provide filmmakers at any level with practical craft-oriented knowledge.

Learn filmmaking and get access the Hurlblog

23. dave dugdale.

A great filmmaking YouTube channel for gear lovers. Dave educates his subscribers on camera gear , while also keeping it interesting and informative for the newbie. Check him out below. 

Dugdale digs in to everything camera related

24. deity microphones.

This filmmaking YouTube channel is the ultimate go-to for all things audio. Tutorials for setting up mics or any type of audio recorder are well done and provide substantial information for your next project. 

A Deity Microphones tutorial

25. cookieoptics tv.

This is great because you learn directly from the best cinematographers . World-renowned DP’s share their experiences through direct interviews. 

Learn cinematic techniques from the pros

26. potato jet.

Less about tutorials and “how-to’s” with more of a focus on camera reviews. Latest cameras, camera tech, all reviewed to help you make better decisions for your next project. 

Watch this video from Potato Jet

27. shutterstock.

A YouTube channel for filmmakers and all video creatives. From graphic design to lighting sets, this channel gives provides plenty of tutorials to meet your deadlines.

Learn new techniques

28. grip tips.

A ton of tips and how-to’s on how to light a set.

Join Dave Donaldson and gain basic, invaluable knowledge on gaffer / PA / grip /lighting related topics.

Everything grip

29. neumann films.

This filmmaking YouTube channel has an awesome cinematic look. And what’s even better is that each video tells us how they achieved that look. There is a focus on frame rates and color grading . And if you’re into gaining real technical knowledge, you can even pay for some of their more in-depth content. 

Incredible tutorials on NF

30. the film look.

A channel devoted to helping the aspiring filmmaker give their films that “film look,” while consistently providing substantial tips on cinematography while on a budget.

The filmmaker's utility pouch by The Film Look

Post production, best channels for video editors, 31.  cinecom.

A film YouTube channel that encompasses video editing and video production. Premiere Pro and After Effects tutorials for days and a ton of tips on how to get the most out of your gear. 

All the editing tips you'll ever need

32.  frame.io.

This filmmaking YouTube channel (and blog), is a robust resource for all things video and editing. It an incredible resource even for the video professional, a leader in video collaboration and review. 

Learn useful editing techniques with Frame.io

33.  justin odisho.

Justin Odisho puts out content nearly every single day. He’s wild and we love it. He has some of the best videos exploring Premiere Pro and After Effects, and how to use common transitions that appear in popular videos today.

Justin Odisho's post-pro tutorials set the bar

34.  kaptainkristian.

This film YouTube channel provides a ton of video essays on animation , VFX , comics, and filmmaking.

Video essays focus on post, but have something for everyone

35.  sonduck films.

This YouTube channel avoids the fluff. They get right to the point and save you time. They post weekly tutorials on filmmaking, photography, graphic design, and motion graphics. 

Learn mo graphs with Sonduck

36.  rocketstock.

A filmmaking YouTube channel with After Effects templates for video editors and other filmmakers. 

Tutorials and free templates for your editing needs

37.  this guy edits.

Industry editor who has cut for James Cameron, Joseph-Gordon Levitt, and James Franco.

The channel gives both creative and technical editing techniques . 

From a working editor's mouth

38.  film freak (zach ramelan).

Some indie filmmakers on YouTube go it alone, but Zach Ramelan’s content is so good, he’s a contributor to multiple blogs. His personal channel is a combination of editing tips, DIY tricks, and more.

Learn some DIY tricks from Zach Ramelan's channel

Related posts.

• Best Music Video Trends →
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• Best Filmmaking Blogs for Video Creatives →

screenwriting

On craft and inspiration, 39. lessons from the screenplay.

Definitely my top 3 filmmaking YouTube channels out there. Michael Tucker’s video essays, dissecting the scripts from some of your favorite films, is both educational and inspiring. He also launched a podcast and a blog. 

Check out LFTS's video essays

40. film courage.

Another favorite of mine comes from Karen Worden. This channel provides some pretty inspiring content. Karen interviews professional working writers in the industry and dives into craft but also their experiences as a writer. Insightful and inspirational. I found my current writing instructor through Film Courage. It’s worth a watch.

Find writing classes and tips on Film Courage

41. the writers guild foundation.

Keeping you updated on what’s going on in the foundation and in and around Hollywood. Helpful for the working writer and also those trying to eventually gain membership. 

Stay in the loop with the WGA channel

42.  the script lab.

This filmmaking YouTube channel delivers on weekly content from interviews with writers, film educators, and other filmmakers. 

Learn about sequences with The Script Lab

43. robert mckee.

If you’re McKee fan, or have read his popular “Story,” chances are you’re already familiar with this channel. A famous screenwriting lecturer, McKee brings that content to YouTube. 

Learn story from Robert McKee

44. fast screenplay.

Content driven through a step-by-step screenwriting system from the producer’s perspective. Definitely worth a look. 

Get prompts and tips from FAST Screenplay

45. selling your screenplay.

A small channel that’s content primarily consists of interviews. Working writers in the industry give insight into how to sell the screenplay.

Listen to interviews with upcoming screenwriters

New channels and resources seem to emerge everyday, if you have a channel you love, that we missed, add them in the comments below.

Best Filmmaking Blogs

Aside from YouTube channels,  blogs are also a great resource for the aspiring filmmaker. Some of these YouTubers have accompanying blogs, but there are also some freshies! Check them out below. 

Up Next: Best Filmmaking Blogs →  

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Pass the Time With Purpose: 5 Essential Film Essays

Talking about movies is one of our favorite pastimes, maybe even more than the movies themselves. It’s irresistible to critique someone’s work, point out flaws, and relive some of the key moments. But, for filmmakers, talking about movies isn’t just fun—it’s essential.

As all of us well know, nothing in a film happens by accident (ok, almost nothing). So, when we notice that a film looks, feel, or sounds a certain way, then there’s a great chance it’s worth talking about. Outside of making a film yourself, examining other filmmakers’ works is probably the quickest way to learn the craft.

Most of us have a little extra time on our hands these days. So, instead of falling into the abyss of the endless scroll or rewatching the entirety of The Office for the sixth time, we wanted to take an opportunity to provide you with some valuable alternatives. 

Here are 5 essential film essays for you to learn from, plus a few channels to explore.

Thomas Flight | Chernobyl – A Masterclass in Perspective

In case you missed what may be one of the best miniseries of all time, we highly recommend stopping everything to watch Chernobyl . Then, watch Thomas Flight’s incredible examination of how to tell a story through a character’s eyes. The lessons to learn here are essential for effective storytelling, and he uses key examples of how to do it and how not to do it (sorry, Mark Wahlberg).

Nerdwriter | Mandy: The Art of Film Grain

“Time has no meaning anymore. Every aesthetic of the past is a pallet of the future.” That’s a pretty bold statement, but in this video from Nerdwriter, they do a pretty good job of backing it up. Now, there’s a lot to talk about with Mandy , but this examination of film grain is a great way to dive into how we connect with things, how aesthetics can play a role in filmmaking, and why it matters at all.

The Discarded Image | Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood | Tarantino at his Most Meta

This great essay from our friends at The Discarded Image has more “I never thought of that” moments than we can count. The video uses Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood as a launching point to explore Quentin Tarantino’s career, and how he uses our preconceived notions to subvert our expectations. There are some mind-blowing moments here, including how Tarantino casts actors based on our pop-culture awareness of them. Crazy stuff.

Hurlbut Academy | Parasite | The Look Of… 

Parasite is destined to be a “film school” film, and for good reason. Director Bong Joon-ho’s instant classic is one of the most intentional movies we’ve ever seen. Literally every decision was made to tell a story, either consciously or unconsciously, and in this essay from the Hurlbut Academy, they explore the visual decisions behind its production. They break down everything from camera choice to set creation, and how they all worked together to make a masterpiece.

Anna Catley | Die Hard: A Christmas Movie

There aren’t a whole lot of lessons to learn from this one, but this essay from Anna Catley settles the timeless debate: Is Die Hard a Christmas movie? With her characteristic humor and wit, she breaks down her argument while also reminding us why we love to talk about movies in the first place—because it’s fun. Do we really need a better reason than that?

Channels to Follow for more Film Essays

These are just a few recent examples of film essays for you to check out, but there are countless others. And, just like the classic films they explore, they’re pretty timeless as well. We can always learn lessons from the masters, which makes these channels worth revisiting time and time again. Here’s a short list of some essential video essay channels:

• Every Frame a Painting
• Thomas Flight
• The Discarded Image
• Hurlbut Academy
• Lindsay Ellis
• Anna Catley
• We Need to Talk About Film
• Lessons from the Screenplay

Still have some extra time on your hands? Check out our recommendations on 10 Movies Directed by Women You Should Watch .

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The best video essays of 2023

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Share All sharing options for: The best video essays of 2023

Looking at the year’s notable video essays, many grapple with issues at the heart of contemporary media itself. There are dissections of video-playing tools, exposés of how corporations restrict access, contrasts between tropes and reality, and thorough investigations of trends in plagiarism and/or fabrication. As the essay landscape refines, it seems to peer inward as much as out.

On the making of this list: I’ve been trying to stay up to date on video essays for a while, and have been contributing to lists and/or voting in polls about the best videos made each year since 2018. Over this time, doing these kinds of roundups has gotten exponentially more difficult. As YouTube has grown to become a mega-business hosting powerful creators (part of the general trend of social media video sites becoming the new primary forum for cultural influence), I’ve seen essayists I once thought of as niche accrue follower counts in the millions. It’s been surreal. For this year’s list, I tried to shake things up by keeping the essayists who have appeared in previous editions to a minimum, along with the usual considerations about incorporating a diversity of creator backgrounds and video style. Once again, the videos are presented simply in order of publishing date.

[Also, I’m going to preface this with a mega mea culpa: It was absolute malpractice of me to not include Platformer Toolkit by Game Maker’s Toolkit in the best video essays of 2022 list . I don’t have a good excuse, either; I just straight up missed the essay at the time it came out, and then overlooked it during my catch-up phase at the end of the year. But an essay about game design that instructs you on its ideas by letting you actively engage with them through interactivity feels like a breakthrough in the form.]

Practices of Viewing by Johannes Binotto

Johannes Binotto is a Swiss researcher and lecturer who has been adding to his “Practices of Viewing” series for several years now, and every installment preceding 2023’s videos, “Ending” and “Description,” is well worth checking out. With each essay, Binotto examines a specific element of the media viewing interface, and how they affect an audience’s engagement with it. Some subjects, like fast-forwarding, pausing, or muting, may seem like obvious touchstones, while others, like sleep, are more out-there approaches to the conversation.

A History of the World According to Getty Images by Richard Misek

This technically debuted last year, making the rounds at film festivals, but it was made available online this past spring, so I’m including it here. A History of the World According to Getty Images is a great example of a work embedding its own ethos into its construction. Misek, another academic, is scrutinizing how for-profit companies (specifically Getty Images) mediate information that’s supposed to be available for all. In practice, a great deal of visual material that’s technically in the public domain can only be accessed in decent quality by paying an archive like Getty. Misek circumvents this by paying the fee to use select footage in this essay and then making this essay itself available for anyone to cite and clip from, putting that footage out into the world for real.

The Faces of Black Conservatism by F.D Signifier

I feel that video essays that consist mainly of the creator talking directly into a camera stretch the definition of the term – to me, the best cinematic and argumentative potential of the form lies in the power of editing. F.D Signifier’s contrast between fictional depictions of Black conservatives and the reality of how they appear across media exemplifies is what sets him apart in this genre: not just the depth of his thought (though it is considerable), but also the playful ways in which he presents the objects of his discussion. The running gag here in which he films himself holding hairstyling tools over the heads of various people on his screen had me laughing harder with each appearance.

Games That Don’t Fake the Space by Jacob Geller/Why We Can’t Stop Mapping Elden Ring by Ren or Raven

I don’t actually think this is the best essay Jacob Geller released this year (that would be either “Games that Aren’t Games” or “How Can We Bear to Throw Anything Away?” ), but it pairs so incredibly well with Renata Price’s essay (an impressive video debut building on her experience as a games critic) that it felt more appropriate to present them as a double feature. Both videos are sharp examinations of the ways that video games conjure physical space. Geller illuminates the shortcuts and tricks games often employ through examples of ones that, as the title suggests, don’t use such devices, while Price analyzes the impulses beneath what one could call the “cartographic instinct” in open-world games.

Why Do Brands Keep Doing These Crazy Influencer Trips?? by Mina Le

It’s been encouraging in recent years to see Le grow more confident in her mixing of media in her videos on fashion and film/television. You might remember the controversy around Shein granting influencers a limited hangout in a clothing factory this past summer. Le contextualizes this story by delving into the wider, supremely odd world of sponsored tours. If you watch this on your phone, the transitions between Le speaking to the camera and the clips of TikToks and other videos and photos flow together in a manner not unlike how one would scroll a social media feed, creating queasy resonance between message and medium.

Feeling Cynical About Barbie by Broey Deschanel / The Plastic Feminism of Barbie by Verilybitchie

I present these two videos not as a contrarian attack on Barbie (a film I enjoyed), but to highlight the important role of considered critical voices that dissent against prevailing opinions. Both Maia Wyman and Verity Ritchie unpack the issues with a heavily corporate product attempting to capitalize on feminist sentiment. Ritchie emphasizes the history of Barbie the brand and how the movie fits into it, while Wyman reads more into the specifics of the film’s plot. Together these videos do a good job of elaborating on legendary critic Amy Taubin’s Barbie reaction : “It’s about a fucking doll !’”

TikTok Gave Me Autism: The Politics of Self Diagnosis by Alexander Avila

There’s a lot of social media discourse over who can and can’t — and should or shouldn’t — claim the label of “autistic.” As someone who’s struggled with both the logistics and appropriateness of sussing out whether I’m on the spectrum, this video hit me hard. There are parts that feel like they veer so far into philosophical query that they threaten to obfuscate rather than elucidate the subject, but the essay as a whole is undeniably compelling. Avila’s own confessed stake in the question of self-diagnosis is itself affecting. This is the most searingly personal video on this list, uniting self-inquiry with rigorous research.

Chaste/Unchaste by Maryam Tafakory

This years shortest entry is a deceptively simple interrogation of the concept of “chastity” as defined by Iranian censorship standards. Takafory is a veteran of the academic essay scene, and I’m delighted by the opportunity to present her work to a wider audience. The video’s text is minimal, and its visuals are simply a montage of clips from Iranian films, but the implicit question of propriety grips the viewer with each cut.

Journey to Epcot Center: A Symphonic History by Defunctland

This is the most boundary-pushing essay on this year’s list. Completely lacking commentary, it instead emphasizes visuals and reenactment in telling the story of how Disney’s Epcot park went from concept to realization over the decades. Kevin Perjurer also provides a detailed set of notes that are meant to be read along with watching the video, further demanding one’s full attention. This is a direct acknowledgement of how we use the internet, the windowed experience of browsing and watching videos. I don’t think everything works; many of the reenactments, while impressively professional, feel somewhat redundant. But I’d prefer a creator take big swings that result in a few flaws rather than play it safe, and I hope both Perjurer and others continue in such an experimental vein.

Plagiarism and You(Tube) by Hbomberguy

Harry Brewis is popular enough that he doesn’t need any boost, but even in the very brief period since this video’s release as of the time of writing, Plagiarism and You(Tube) has made seismic impact on the YouTuber scene . Does it need to be almost four hours long? Maybe not. Yet the sheer volume of evidence it pulls together to support various accusations of plagiarism does seem vital. The main focus of the piece, James Somerton, went into lockdown over the fairly comprehensive evidence presented against him (and has since attempted to apologize ). I’m seeing conversations flourish around the endemic problem of plagiarism on the internet and what is to be done about it, and a surge of creators recognizing and calling out others who have taken their work without credit. There’s a deeper issue at play here, which is that the growth of YouTube entertainment has come with a truly daunting mountain of crap content that nonetheless attracts views (and thus dollars).

On the subject of low quality standards on YouTube, beyond plagiarism, Todd in the Shadows’ recent exhaustive effort to fact-check various false claims Somerton has made in his work is a useful supplement to this video.

Polygon’s Best of the Year 2023

• The 50 best video games of 2023
• The 50 best movies of 2023
• The 50 best TV shows of 2023
• The best sci-fi and fantasy books of 2023
• The best anime of 2023
• The best tabletop RPGs we played in 2023
• The best board games we played in 2023
• The best Blu-rays and 4K UHD releases of 2023
• The best new tabletop RPG books of 2023
• The best video game books of 2023
• The best comics of 2023
• What the Polygon staff bought and loved in 2023
• The best documentaries of 2023
• 10 great indie games you might have missed in 2023
• The 10 best action scenes of 2023
• The best TV episodes of 2023
• The 5 best concert movies of 2023
• Best horror movies of 2023, ranked by scariness
• The 10 best Netflix originals of 2023

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