Category: Video Essays

Only two weeks between videos this time! Writing remains the hardest point of the process, but keeping video in mind to illustrate it at the same time is becoming habitual. The actual editing and voiceover recording come a lot easier, just working on improving sound design. Messing around with tonal sound effects, which means using music in the same key throughout. I’ve got no ear for it, so I drop a few tracks into DJ software and pick whichever match.
This one’s the shortest yet, but anything else would be waffling/padding. Next essay will  need more research before I start pulling my chaotic list of points together. I’m not putting a deadline on myself though; this isn’t a job.

This one took far longer than I thought it would. It also came out shorter than previous videos. They’ve all been getting shorter, in fact. Maybe I have less to say or the edit is getting tighter.
I recently finished reading Rick Rubin’s book “The Creative Act”, where he writes about cutting a work back as far as possible, seeing how much you can remove and still keep the essence of the work. That was definitely in mind when making the video. I’m not monetizing my videos, so hitting the 8-minuite mark to add mid-roll ads isn’t a concern. I say what I need to in order to make my point, not just in the voiceover, but the video that goes with it. I see a lot of essays that are text-first, with video clips just laid over the top that go on for 20-30 minutes. Maybe it’s because my attention span has worn away or the fact I HATE writing, but I just want to be concise. Big fan of using match cuts to make connections between movies, the “Dressed to Kil” to “Psycho” to “Fatal Attraction” one is probably the best example.
Next video will also be short, but that just fell out of my head in one sitting, rather than two months building a patchwork of deas into a coherent whole. As ever, I had visual ideas (and the thumbnail) ready to go and have to write something that’s essentially captions for when I’m trying to convey.
The two after that will be longer and take a while (lots of research), but I’m doing this for the process as much as the end result.

I had a basic idea for this essay for a long while back. Originally it was about the different forms sequels take, with a few examples of each. I’d even dug out the DVD’s to rip for footage, but as I wrote the thing, “The Matrix Resurrections” just took over. There’s so much going on with it, the other stuff just fell into the intro.

It’s something Rick Rubin mentions in the book I’m reading, “The Creative Act”, “The work reveals itself as you go”. I‘ve definitely realised this, as I hack away from scribbled notes and random concepts to bullet points and eventually a mostly-coherent essay. I hate writing and it takes weeks on end to come up with 1400 words, but they change as I go.

Even as I’m writing, the video part starts to take shape. The final edit of the text is on the timeline in Resolve, cutting and shifting lines of the voiceover. I could never just work in prose, the video illustrates what I’m trying to articulate so much more easily.

Next essay will be a way off. I’ve got the basic idea, but there’s a stack of movies to watch (plus a re-read of “Heart of Darkness”). We’ll see what it actually turns into.

In the meantime, it looks like I’ll be playing around with a poster idea in Photoshop.

I finally finished my second video essay, after another several months. Read and listened to it so many times the words lost all meaning, but the edit came together a lot easier this time.

Posted it and a my subscription feed had a video on the exact topic I’ve been planning for the next essay. Watched it and it turned out to be a compilation, missing the final movie in the series. 

Will probably still make mine, but take a break to to something a little simpler first. Maybe finally setting this site up.