A standard definition for a “video essay” is that it’s an art form that uses voiceovers, sources cited through meticulous research, clips, motion graphics, and so on to explain or explore an idea.
They’re structured like an academic essay but read aloud and with accompanying visuals, playing out like a documentary or a particularly entertaining college lecture.
After working on video essays for almost a decade, I’ve found that it’s creators’ in-depth explorations of topics that unite channels under the “video essay” umbrella. But exploring means many different things.
“Exploring” a topic could mean commentary, analysis, critique, in-depth research, or deep dives. Or it could be some combination of those methods, synthesized and reconfigured into new ideas and perspectives.
With this view, form and convention are less important. The umbrella widens to include a broader range of visual styles and techniques, encouraging new blood and novel experimentation.
Why Should You Listen To Me About Video Essays?
If you’re wondering who I am, my name is Shannon Strucci, and I write, film, and edit video essays. My best-known personal work is a video essay series on parasocial relationships that introduced many people to the term. I’ve also made a few dozen other video essays and reviews over the years, especially on horror topics.
I’ve also collaborated with hbomberguy on our Scanline series and helped edit his CTRL+ALT+DEL video. Additionally, I wrote a video essay about sound design in Miyazaki movies for Crunchyroll. I’m currently working on another video essay now. If you’d like updates on that, support me on Patreon.
How Do You Plan a Video Essay
The worst video essays rehash plot summaries, pick inane fights or steal ideas. They are fueled by personal vendettas, pedantic rants, inane culture war clickbait, or some other waste of time. A weak video essay uses a cookie-cutter aesthetic over a pull list of topics reflecting the most popular person to rip off at a given moment.
The best video essays either bring something new and novel into your life or offer you a fresh, reinvigorating lens through which you can view the familiar. The creator’s passion just jumps off of the screen.
It can convince you to spend hours locked in watching a video about something you didn’t realize you could even begin to care about. They also pull from wide-ranging life experiences and diverse artistic influences, not just from other video essays.
Steps For How To Make a Video Essay Before You Even Touch Your Keyboard
1) Find Your Motivation for Making a Video Essay
Making a video essay as a hobby and creative outlet is different from making one to get views. Audiences and algorithms are brutally fickle, so figure out what motivates you and then be honest with yourself about it.
If this is for your career, take the work seriously and give yourself a real chance at success. If it’s for self-expression, have fun with it and don’t be upset if you don’t immediately go viral. Making something representing an idea you felt compelled to repackage and share with the world is an inherently beautiful act regardless of profitability.
2) Enrich Your Damn Life
Give yourself experiences that aren’t just passive media consumption. All of my favorite artists have pulled from art and experiences unfamiliar to me because they aren’t just passive consumers recycling the same ubiquitous points of reference.
Push yourself to meet more people, check out art you wouldn’t normally bother with, work to develop new skills, and push out of your comfort zone to seek new experiences whenever you can. Your work will be much better for it.
4) Stay Safe Legally and Emotionally
Wherever you are, learn how local copyright law works. Steel your ego and spend some time learning to distinguish genuine criticism you should take to heart from trolls you should ignore from trolls you should actually worry about.
If even 1% of people are weirdos and you get a million views on a video that’s a lot of people. That’s ten thousand weirdos trying to figure out where you live, who you date, and how to find your family. Learn the basics of information security. Tighten up your social media. Hesitate before getting too personal in videos.
5) Beyond the Essay
The first secret to networking is not to be an asshole. The second secret is that if you only want to be friends with successful people, it means you’re already an asshole. Any success I’ve had making connections was either from genuine friendships or by people responding to my work and us developing mutual respect.
Be kind and seek to collaborate with and uplift your peers whenever you start a new creative journey.
How To Make a Video Essay When You’re Ready
1) Figure Out Your Style
A thoughtful, well-edited script and clean voiceover will matter more than buying state-of-the-art equipment. You may even be able to record at a library or rent a podcasting studio for cheap.
The basics of filmmaking are free to learn online and easy to learn through trial and error. Walter Murch’s In the Blink of an Eye is an incredible book on editing philosophy that I’d recommend to any aspiring video essayist, and Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist trilogy is another good primer for beginners.
Once you figure out the basics, figure out how you want to use them to express yourself and your ideas. What do you have to offer that nobody else does? Keep in mind that entertaining someone and educating them can often be at odds. It’s a whole lot of work to intertwine the two. Fortunately, it’s a fun challenge!
2) Find a Topic You Want To Write About
The world is vast and strange. With sufficient curiosity, you’ll never get sick of exploring what’s out there. If you’re reading this, you may already have plenty of ideas! And if you’ve sorted through your underlying motivation and what style you want to develop, those should give you a push in the right direction.
3) Research Like an Academic, Edit Like a Filmmaker
Neglecting research can come across as derivative and shallow, but solely focusing on it makes for a sterile, boring video. Layering creativity and polish over a structure of meticulous research (or just meticulous scriptwriting) often leads to the best results.
4) Outline Your Script
There are two potential ways to approach scriptwriting- one is to construct a skeleton for your video and build research and arguments in to flesh out the initial idea. The other is to let your outline grow organically with your research.
I recommend waiting to outline a script until you have the majority of your research done so that you have a more complete picture of what patterns and through lines emerge.
Let your work evolve. I’ve often tweaked videos in the final edit, rearranging sections of already-recorded voiceovers or cutting them entirely. All that matters is the final product, so don’t limit yourself early on.
5) When You Think You’re Done, Keep Going
While this can make it tricky to know when to quit, it’s better to over-prepare and dig too deep than make something shallow. It’s also a lot more fun!
Who Are The Best Video Essay Creators?
I’ve contributed to Sight and Sound’s “best video essays” lists for the past couple of years. The curators do a fantastic job, so those rankings would be my first recommendation to check out if you’re unfamiliar with video essays or looking for a wider variety to watch.
Below are four categories of videos I’d recommend checking out to inspire and motivate you on your way to making video essays! As a disclaimer, I know and/or have worked with some of the people below. Don’t consider this list unbiased.
1) Traditional Documentaries
Adam Curtis, Werner Herzog, and Joshua Oppenheimer are traditional documentarians that I’d recommend. Orson Welles’ F for Fake and the video essay covering it by Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos of Every Frame a Painting makes for a great double feature as well!
2) Exemplary Video Essayists
My biggest influences when I started making video essays were RedLetterMedia and the aforementioned Every Frame a Painting. As far as people whose video I watch as soon as they drop, Dan Olson and Super Eyepatch Wolf come to mind.
Ro Ramdin’s videos are witty, well-researched, and gorgeously shot. PSJulie is my favorite lower-budget video essayist channel as well.
And here, rapid-fire, a bunch of other essayists to check out: Contrapoints, D’Angelo Wallace, Errant Signal, Innuendo Studios, Jack Saint, Jacob Gellar and Jenny Nicholson. Maggie Mae Fish is wonderful.
Noah Caldwell-Gervais just put out a Q&A video explaining his process! Patrick H Willems, Philosophy Tube, Pinely, Sarah Z, Sarah Zedig, Shaun, and What’s So Great About That? are all worth you time.
3) Thinking Outside the Box
Some less traditionally video essay-style channels I’d recommend in terms of presentation and delivery style are Adam Ragusea, Faline San, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, Matthew Colville, MKBHD, Tasting History, and You Suck at Cooking.
Eddy Burback and Ryan Trahan are two big-name YouTubers whose creativity and ambition I find inspiring.
4) REALLY Thinking Outside the Box
I’ve found a lot of inspiration in places pretty far removed from video essays. This includes experimental filmmakers like Maya Deren and Norman McLaren, silent filmmakers like Buster Keaton, and experimental/alternative artists who work through YouTube- Ellie Spectacular, Conner O’Malley, and Nick Lutsko are all fantastic.
With the caveat that a lot of their material can lean too heavily on callous and offensive humor, Cold Ones also has the most inventive editing gags I’ve ever seen.
The most important thing to remember is you’ll never know what you could make if you don’t make it. Even if you never post your essay, you’re gonna learn a ton in the process that you’ll carry with you. Next time, you can make something even better.
