film analysis video essay

What is a Video Essay? The Art of the Video Analysis Essay

I n the era of the internet and Youtube, the video essay has become an increasingly popular means of expressing ideas and concepts. However, there is a bit of an enigma behind the construction of the video essay largely due to the vagueness of the term.

What defines a video analysis essay? What is a video essay supposed to be about? In this article, we’ll take a look at the foundation of these videos and the various ways writers and editors use them creatively. Let’s dive in.

Watch: Our Best Film Video Essays of the Year

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What is a video essay?

First, let’s define video essay.

There is narrative film, documentary film, short films, and then there is the video essay. What is its role within the realm of visual media? Let’s begin with the video essay definition. 

VIDEO ESSAY DEFINITION

A video essay is a video that analyzes a specific topic, theme, person or thesis. Because video essays are a rather new form, they can be difficult to define, but recognizable nonetheless. To put it simply, they are essays in video form that aim to persuade, educate, or critique. 

These essays have become increasingly popular within the era of Youtube and with many creatives writing video essays on topics such as politics, music, film, and pop culture. 

What is a video essay used for?

• To persuade an audience of a thesis
• To educate on a specific subject
• To analyze and/or critique 

What is a video essay based on?

Establish a thesis.

Video analysis essays lack distinguished boundaries since there are countless topics a video essayist can tackle. Most essays, however, begin with a thesis. 

How Christopher Nolan Elevates the Movie Montage  •  Video Analysis Essays

Good essays often have a point to make. This point, or thesis, should be at the heart of every video analysis essay and is what binds the video together. 

Related Posts

• Stanley Kubrick Directing Style Explained →
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• How to Write a Voice Over Montage in a Script →

interviews in video essay

Utilize interviews.

A key determinant for the structure of an essay is the source of the ideas. A common source for this are interviews from experts in the field. These interviews can be cut and rearranged to support a thesis. 

Roger Deakins on "Learning to Light"  •  Video Analysis Essays

Utilizing first hand interviews is a great way to utilize ethos into the rhetoric of a video. However, it can be limiting since you are given a limited amount to work with. Voice over scripts, however, can give you the room to say anything. 

How to create the best video essays on Youtube

Write voice over scripts.

Voice over (VO) scripts allow video essayists to write out exactly what they want to say. This is one of the most common ways to structure a video analysis essay since it gives more freedom to the writer. It is also a great technique to use when taking on large topics.

In this video, it would have been difficult to explain every type of camera lens by cutting sound bites from interviews of filmmakers. A voice over script, on the other hand, allowed us to communicate information directly when and where we wanted to.

Ultimate Guide to Camera Lenses  •  Video essay examples

Some of the most famous video essayists like Every Frame a Painting and Nerdwriter1 utilize voice over to capitalize on their strength in writing video analysis essays. However, if you’re more of an editor than a writer, the next type of essay will be more up your alley. 

Video analysis essay without a script

Edit a supercut.

Rather than leaning on interview sound bites or voice over, the supercut video depends more on editing. You might be thinking “What is a video essay without writing?” The beauty of the video essay is that the writing can be done throughout the editing. Supercuts create arguments or themes visually through specific sequences. 

Another one of the great video essay channels, Screen Junkies, put together a supercut of the last decade in cinema. The video could be called a portrait of the last decade in cinema.

2010 - 2019: A Decade In Film  •  Best videos on Youtube

This video is rather general as it visually establishes the theme of art during a general time period. Other essays can be much more specific. 

Critical essays

Video essays are a uniquely effective means of creating an argument. This is especially true in critical essays. This type of video critiques the facets of a specific topic. 

In this video, by one of the best video essay channels, Every Frame a Painting, the topic of the film score is analyzed and critiqued — specifically temp film score.

Every Frame a Painting Marvel Symphonic Universe  •  Essay examples

Of course, not all essays critique the work of artists. Persuasion of an opinion is only one way to use the video form. Another popular use is to educate. 

• The Different Types of Camera Lenses →
• Write and Create Professionally Formatted Screenplays →
• How to Create Unforgettable Film Moments with Music →

Video analysis essay

Visual analysis.

One of the biggest advantages that video analysis essays have over traditional, written essays is the use of visuals. The use of visuals has allowed video essayists to display the subject or work that they are analyzing. It has also allowed them to be more specific with what they are analyzing. Writing video essays entails structuring both words and visuals. 

Take this video on There Will Be Blood for example. In a traditional, written essay, the writer would have had to first explain what occurs in the film then make their analysis and repeat.

This can be extremely inefficient and redundant. By analyzing the scene through a video, the points and lessons are much more clear and efficient. 

There Will Be Blood  •   Subscribe on YouTube

Through these video analysis essays, the scene of a film becomes support for a claim rather than the topic of the essay. 

Dissect an artist

Essays that focus on analysis do not always focus on a work of art. Oftentimes, they focus on the artist themself. In this type of essay, a thesis is typically made about an artist’s style or approach. The work of that artist is then used to support this thesis.

Nerdwriter1, one of the best video essays on Youtube, creates this type to analyze filmmakers, actors, photographers or in this case, iconic painters. 

Caravaggio: Master Of Light  •  Best video essays on YouTube

In the world of film, the artist video analysis essay tends to cover auteur filmmakers. Auteur filmmakers tend to have distinct styles and repetitive techniques that many filmmakers learn from and use in their own work. 

Stanley Kubrick is perhaps the most notable example. In this video, we analyze Kubrick’s best films and the techniques he uses that make so many of us drawn to his films. 

Why We're Obsessed with Stanley Kubrick Movies  •  Video essay examples

Critical essays and analytical essays choose to focus on a piece of work or an artist. Essays that aim to educate, however, draw on various sources to teach technique and the purpose behind those techniques. 

What is a video essay written about?

Historical analysis.

Another popular type of essay is historical analysis. Video analysis essays are a great medium to analyze the history of a specific topic. They are an opportunity for essayists to share their research as well as their opinion on history. 

Our video on aspect ratio , for example, analyzes how aspect ratios began in cinema and how they continue to evolve. We also make and support the claim that the 2:1 aspect ratio is becoming increasingly popular among filmmakers. 

Why More Directors are Switching to 18:9  •  Video analysis essay

Analyzing the work of great artists inherently yields a lesson to be learned. Some essays teach more directly.

• Types of Camera Movements in Film Explained →
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Writing video essays about technique

Teach technique.

Educational essays designed to teach are typically more direct. They tend to be more valuable for those looking to create art rather than solely analyze it.

In this video, we explain every type of camera movement and the storytelling value of each. Educational essays must be based on research, evidence, and facts rather than opinion.

Ultimate Guide to Camera Movement  •  Best video essays on YouTube

As you can see, there are many reasons why the video essay has become an increasingly popular means of communicating information. Its ability to use both sound and picture makes it efficient and effective. It also draws on the language of filmmaking to express ideas through editing. But it also gives writers the creative freedom they love. 

Writing video essays is a new art form that many channels have set high standards for. What is a video essay supposed to be about? That’s up to you. 

Organize Post Production Workflow

The quality of an essay largely depends on the quality of the edit. If editing is not your strong suit, check out our next article. We dive into tips and techniques that will help you organize your Post-Production workflow to edit like a pro. 

Up Next: Post Production →

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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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Film Analysis

Guide to Writing Film Analysis Video Essays

Jan 31, 2024

Avinash Prabhakaran

Film analysis is a captivating field that allows you to delve deeper into the world of cinema, explore its intricacies, and share your insights with a broader audience. One exciting way to do this is by creating video essays on film analysis. 

Video essays combine the power of visual storytelling with the art of critical analysis, offering a unique and engaging medium to express your thoughts about movies. 

In this blog post, we'll guide you through the process of learning to write video essays on film analysis.

Choose Your Niche

Before diving into video essay creation, choosing a niche or a specific aspect of film analysis that interests you is essential. 

Whether it's exploring the works of a particular director, dissecting film techniques, or discussing themes and symbolism, defining your niche will help you focus your efforts and develop expertise in that area.

Build Your Film Knowledge

A strong film theory and history foundation is crucial for writing insightful video essays. Start by watching a wide range of films, from classic to contemporary, and pay attention to different genres, styles, and cultural contexts. 

Familiarize yourself with key concepts in film analysis, such as cinematography, editing, sound design, and narrative structure. Reading books and scholarly articles and watching online courses on film analysis can also deepen your understanding.

Develop Your Analytical Skills

Analytical skills are at the core of any successful film analysis. Learn how to dissect a movie scene by scene, identifying key elements like framing, lighting, camera movement, and symbolism. 

Take notes during your film viewings and practice writing detailed analyses of scenes or entire movies. Additionally, engage in discussions with other film enthusiasts, which can help refine your critical thinking and analytical abilities.

Study Existing Video Essays

Watch existing video essays on film analysis to get a sense of the medium and its possibilities. Platforms like YouTube and Vimeo are treasure troves of video essays created by passionate film enthusiasts and professionals. 

Pay attention to their style, structure, and content. Consider what works and what doesn't in these videos, and take inspiration from them as you develop your style.

Acquire Video Editing Skills

Since video essays are a visual medium, you'll need to learn the basics of video editing. Software like Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, or even free options like DaVinci Resolve can help you edit your video essays effectively. 

Familiarize yourself with editing techniques like cutting, pacing, and adding visual elements (such as clips from the films you're analyzing or images related to your topic) to enhance your narrative.

Scripting Your Video Essay

A well-structured script is the backbone of any video essay. Start by outlining your essay, including an introduction, main points, and a conclusion. Ensure your script is engaging and well-organized, and practice your narration to ensure a clear and compelling delivery.

Visuals and Illustrations

Video essays rely heavily on visuals to support your analysis. Incorporate clips from the movies you're discussing, relevant images, and graphics to reinforce your points. Ensure that your visuals are of high quality and complement your script.

Voiceover and Audio

A professional-quality voiceover is essential for a video essay. Invest in a good microphone and practice your narration until it sounds clear and confident. 

Pay attention to the pacing and tone of your voice, as it significantly impacts the overall quality of your video essay. Choose appropriate background music and sound effects to enhance the viewing experience.

Editing and Post-Production

Once you've recorded your voiceover and gathered all your visuals, it's time to edit your video essay. 

Fine-tune the pacing, transitions, and audiovisual elements to create a cohesive and engaging narrative. Don't rush this step; take your time to perfect your video.

Sharing Your Video Essay

After completing your video essay, share it on platforms like YouTube or Vimeo to reach a wider audience. Promote it on social media, film-related forums, and websites dedicated to video essays. 

Engage with your viewers by responding to comments and seeking feedback to improve your future work.

Creating video essays on film analysis is a rewarding endeavor that allows you to combine your passion for cinema with your analytical and storytelling skills. 

By following the steps outlined in this guide and continuously refining your craft, you can develop your unique voice in film analysis and contribute to the discourse surrounding cinema. 

So, pick up your camera, start watching films, and embark on your journey to becoming a proficient video essayist in film analysis. Happy filmmaking!

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How to Write a Film Analysis Essay: Examples, Outline, & Tips

A film analysis essay might be the most exciting assignment you have ever had! After all, who doesn’t love watching movies? You have your favorite movies, maybe something you watched years ago, perhaps a classic, or a documentary. Or your professor might assign a film for you to make a critical review. Regardless, you are totally up for watching a movie for a film analysis essay.

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However, once you have watched the movie, facing the act of writing might knock the wind out of your sails because you might be wondering how to write a film analysis essay. In summary, writing movie analysis is not as difficult as it might seem, and Custom-writing.org experts will prove this. This guide will help you choose a topic for your movie analysis, make an outline, and write the text.️ Film analysis examples are added as a bonus! Just keep reading our advice on how to get started.

❓ What Is a Film Analysis Essay?

• 🚦 Film Analysis Types

📽️ Movie Analysis Format

✍️ how to write a film analysis, 🎦 film analysis template, 🎬 film analysis essay topics.

• 📄 Essay Examples

🔗 References

To put it simply, film analysis implies watching a movie and then considering its characteristics : genre, structure, contextual context, etc. Film analysis is usually considered to be a form of rhetorical analysis . The key to success here is to formulate a clear and logical argument, supporting it with examples.

🚦 Film Analysis Essay Types

Since a film analysis essay resembles literature analysis, it makes sense that there are several ways to do it. Its types are not limited to the ones described here. Moreover, you are free to combine the approaches in your essay as well. Since your writing reflects your own opinion, there is no universal way to do it.

• Semiotic analysis . If you’re using this approach, you are expected to interpret the film’s symbolism. You should look for any signs that may have a hidden meaning. Often, they reveal some character’s features. To make the task more manageable, you can try to find the objects or concepts that appear on the screen multiple times. What is the context they appear in? It might lead you to the hidden meaning of the symbols.
• Narrative structure analysis . This type is quite similar to a typical literature guide. It includes looking into the film’s themes, plot, and motives. The analysis aims to identify three main elements: setup, confrontation, and resolution. You should find out whether the film follows this structure and what effect it creates. It will make the narrative structure analysis essay if you write about the theme and characters’ motivations as well.
• Contextual analysis . Here, you would need to expand your perspective. Instead of focusing on inner elements, the contextual analysis looks at the time and place of the film’s creation. Therefore, you should work on studying the cultural context a lot. It can also be a good idea to mention the main socio-political issues of the time. You can even relate the film’s success to the director or producer and their career.
• Mise-en-scene analysis . This type of analysis works with the most distinctive feature of the movies, audiovisual elements. However, don’t forget that your task is not only to identify them but also to explain their importance. There are so many interconnected pieces of this puzzle: the light to create the mood, the props to show off characters’ personalities, messages hidden in the song lyrics.

To write an effective film analysis essay, it is important to follow specific format requirements that include the following:

• Standard essay structure. Just as with any essay, your analysis should consist of an introduction with a strong thesis statement, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. The main body usually includes a summary and an analysis of the movie’s elements.
• Present tense for events in the film. Use the present tense when describing everything that happens in the movie. This way, you can make smooth transitions between describing action and dialogue. It will also improve the overall narrative flow.
• Proper formatting of the film’s title. Don’t enclose the movie’s title in quotation marks; instead, italicize it. In addition, use the title case : that is, capitalize all major words.
• Proper use of the characters’ names. When you mention a film character for the first time, name the actor portraying them. After that, it is enough to write only the character’s name.
• In-text citations. Use in-text citations when describing certain scenes or shots from the movie. Format them according to your chosen citation style. If you use direct quotes, include the time-stamp range instead of page numbers. Here’s how it looks in the MLA format: (Smith 0:11:24–0:12:35).

Even though film analysis is similar to the literary one, you might still feel confused with where to begin. No need to worry; there are only a few additional steps you need to consider during the writing process.

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Starting Your Film Analysis Essay

There are several things you need to do before you start writing your film analysis paper. First and foremost, you have to watch the movie. Even if you have seen it a hundred times, you need to watch it again to make a good film analysis essay.

Note that you might be given an essay topic or have to think of it by yourself. If you are free to choose a topic for your film analysis essay, reading some critical reviews before you watch the film might be a good idea. By doing this in advance, you will already know what to look for when watching the movie.

In the process of watching, keep the following tips in mind:

• Consider your impression of the movie
• Enumerate memorable details
• Try to interpret the movie message in your way
• Search for the proof of your ideas (quotes from the film)
• Make comments on the plot, settings, and characters
• Draw parallels between the movie you are reviewing and some other movies

Making a Film Analysis Essay Outline

Once you have watched and possibly re-watched your assigned or chosen movie from an analytical point of view, you will need to create a movie analysis essay outline . The task is pretty straightforward: the outline can look just as if you were working on a literary analysis or an article analysis.

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• Introduction : This includes the basics of the movie, including the title, director, and the date of release. You should also present the central theme or ideas in the movie and your thesis statement .
• Summary : This is where you take the time to present an overview of the primary concepts in the movie, including the five Ws (who, what, when, where, and why)—don’t forget how!—as well as anything you wish to discuss that relates to the point of view, style, and structure.
• Analysis : This is the body of the essay and includes your critical analysis of the movie, why you did or did not like it, and any supporting material from the film to support your views. It would help if you also discussed whether the director and writer of the movie achieved the goal they set out to achieve.
• Conclusion: This is where you can state your thesis again and provide a summary of the primary concepts in a new and more convincing manner, making a case for your analysis. You can also include a call-to-action that will invite the reader to watch the movie or avoid it entirely.

You can find a great critical analysis template at Thompson Rivers University website. In case you need more guidance on how to write an analytical paper, check out our article .

Writing & Editing Your Film Analysis Essay

We have already mentioned that there are differences between literary analysis and film analysis. They become especially important when one starts writing their film analysis essay.

First of all, the evidence you include to support the arguments is not the same. Instead of quoting the text, you might need to describe the audiovisual elements.

However, the practice of describing the events is similar in both types. You should always introduce a particular sequence in the present tense. If you want to use a piece of a dialogue between more than two film characters, you can use block quotes. However, since there are different ways to do it, confirm with your supervisor.

For your convenience, you might as well use the format of the script, for which you don’t have to use quotation marks:

Get an originally-written paper according to your instructions!

ELSA: But she won’t remember I have powers?

KING: It’s for the best.

Finally, to show off your proficiency in the subject, look at the big picture. Instead of just presenting the main elements in your analysis, point out their significance. Describe the effect they make on the overall impression form the film. Moreover, you can dig deeper and suggest the reasons why such elements were used in a particular scene to show your expertise.

Stuck writing a film analysis essay? Worry not! Use our template to structure your movie analysis properly.

Introduction

• The title of the film is… [title]
• The director is… [director’s name] He/she is known for… [movies, style, etc.]
• The movie was released on… [release date]
• The themes of the movie are… [state the film’s central ideas]
• The film was made because… [state the reasons]
• The movie is… because… [your thesis statement].
• The main characters are… [characters’ names]
• The events take place in… [location]
• The movie is set in… [time period]
• The movie is about… [state what happens in the film and why]
• The movie left a… [bad, unforgettable, lasting, etc.] impression in me.
• The script has… [a logical sequence of events, interesting scenes, strong dialogues, character development, etc.]
• The actors portray their characters… [convincingly, with intensity, with varying degree of success, in a manner that feels unnatural, etc.]
• The soundtrack is [distracting, fitting, memorable, etc.]
• Visual elements such as… [costumes, special effects, etc.] make the film [impressive, more authentic, atmospheric, etc.]
• The film succeeds/doesn’t succeed in engaging the target audience because it… [tells a compelling story, features strong performances, is relevant, lacks focus, is unauthentic, etc.]
• Cultural and societal aspects make the film… [thought-provoking, relevant, insightful, problematic, polarizing, etc.]
• The director and writer achieved their goal because… [state the reasons]
• Overall, the film is… [state your opinion]
• I would/wouldn’t recommend watching the movie because… [state the reasons]
• Analysis of the film Inception by Christopher Nolan .
• Examine the rhetoric in the film The Red Balloon .
• Analyze the visual effects of Zhang Yimou’s movie Hero .
• Basic concepts of the film Interstellar by Christopher Nolan.
• The characteristic features of Federico Fellini’s movies.
• Analysis of the movie The Joker .
• The depiction of ethical issues in Damaged Care .
• Analyze the plot of the film Moneyball .
• Explore the persuasive techniques used in Henry V .  
• Analyze the movie Killing Kennedy .
• Discuss the themes of the film Secret Window .
• Describe the role of audio and video effects in conveying the message of the documentary Life in Renaissance .
• Compare and analyze the films Midnight Cowboy and McCabe and Mrs. Miller .
• Analysis of the movie Rear Window .
• The message behind the film Split .
• Analyze the techniques used by Tim Burton in his movie Sleepy Hollow .
• The topic of children’s abuse and importance of trust in Joseph Sargent’s Sybil .
• Examine the themes and motives of the film Return to Paradise by Joseph Ruben .
• The issues of gender and traditions in the drama The Whale Rider.
• Analysis of the film Not Easily Broken by Duke Bill.
• The symbolism in R. Scott’s movie Thelma and Louise .
• The meaning of audiovisual effects in Citizen Kane .
• Analyze the main characters of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo .
• Discuss the historical accuracy of the documentary The Civil War .
• Analysis of the movie Through a Glass Darkly .
• Explore the core idea of the comedy Get Out .
• The problem of artificial intelligence and human nature in Ex Machina .
• Three principles of suspense used in the drama The Fugitive .
• Examine the ideas Michael Bay promotes in Armageddon .
• Analyze the visual techniques used in Tenet by Christopher Nolan.
• Analysis of the movie The Green Mile .
• Discrimination and exclusion in the film The Higher Learning .
• The hidden meaning of the scenes in Blade Runner .
• Compare the social messages of the films West Side Story and Romeo + Juliet .
• Highlighting the problem of children’s mental health in the documentary Kids in Crisis .  
• Discuss the ways Paul Haggis establishes the issue of racial biases in his movie Crash .
• Analyze the problem of moral choice in the film Gone Baby Gone .
• Analysis of the historical film Hacksaw Ridge .
• Explore the main themes of the film Mean Girls by Mark Walters .
• The importance of communication in the movie Juno .
• Describe the techniques the authors use to highlight the problems of society in Queen and Slim .
• Examine the significance of visual scenes in My Family/ Mi Familia .
• Analysis of the thriller Salt by Phillip Noyce.
• Analyze the message of Greg Berlanti’s film Love, Simon .
• Interpret the symbols of the film The Wizard of Oz (1939).
• Discuss the modern issues depicted in the film The Corporation .
• Moral lessons of Edward Zwick’s Blood Diamond .
• Analysis of the documentary Solitary Nation .
• Describe the audiovisual elements of the film Pride and Prejudice (2005) .
• The problem of toxic relationships in Malcolm and Marie .

📄 Film Analysis Examples

Below you’ll find two film analysis essay examples. Note that the full versions are downloadable for free!

Film Analysis Example #1: The Intouchables

Raising acute social problems in modern cinema is a common approach to draw the public’s attention to the specific issues and challenges of people facing crucial obstacles. As a film for review, The Intouchables by Oliver Nakache and Éric Toledano will be analyzed, and one of the themes raised in this movie is the daily struggle of the person with severe disabilities. This movie is a biographical drama with comedy elements. The Intouchables describes the routine life of a French millionaire who is confined to a wheelchair and forced to receive help from his servants. The acquaintance of the disabled person with a young and daring man from Parisian slums changes the lives of both radically. The film shows that for a person with disabilities, recognition as a full member of society is more important than sympathy and compassion, and this message expressed comically raises an essential problem of human loneliness.

Movie Analysis Example #2: Parasite

Parasite is a 2019 South Korean black comedy thriller movie directed by Bong Joon-ho and is the first film with a non-English script to win Best Picture at the Oscars in 2020. With its overwhelming plot and acting, this motion picture retains a long-lasting effect and some kind of shock. The class serves as a backbone and a primary objective of social commentary within the South Korean comedy/thriller (Kench, 2020). Every single element and detail in the movie, including the student’s stone, the contrasting architecture, family names, and characters’ behavior, contribute to the central topic of the universal problem of classism and wealth disparity. The 2020 Oscar-winning movie Parasite (2019) is a phenomenal cinematic portrayal and a critical message to modern society regarding the severe outcomes of the long-established inequalities within capitalism.

Want more examples? Check out this bonus list of 10 film analysis samples. They will help you gain even more inspiration.

• “Miss Representation” Documentary Film Analysis
• “The Patriot”: Historical Film Analysis
• “The Morning Guy” Film Analysis
• 2012′ by Roland Emmerich Film Analysis
• “The Crucible” (1996) Film Analysis
• The Aviator’ by Martin Scorsese Film Analysis
• The “Lions for Lambs” Film Analysis
• Bill Monroe – Father of Bluegrass Music Film Analysis 
• Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Harry Potter’ Film Analysis
• Red Tails by George Lucas Film Analysis

Film Analysis Essay FAQ

• Watch the movie or read a detailed plot summary.
• Read others’ film reviews paying attention to details like key characters, movie scenes, background facts.
• Compose a list of ideas about what you’ve learned.
• Organize the selected ideas to create a body of the essay.
• Write an appropriate introduction and conclusion.

The benefits of analyzing a movie are numerous . You get a deeper understanding of the plot and its subtle aspects. You can also get emotional and aesthetic satisfaction. Film analysis enables one to feel like a movie connoisseur.

Here is a possible step by step scenario:

• Think about the general idea that the author probably wanted to convey.
• Consider how the idea was put across: what characters, movie scenes, and details helped in it.
• Study the broader context: the author’s other works, genre essentials, etc.

The definition might be: the process of interpreting a movie’s aspects. The movie is reviewed in terms of details creating the artistic value. A film analysis essay is a paper presenting such a review in a logically structured way.

• Film Analysis – UNC Writing Center
• Film Writing: Sample Analysis // Purdue Writing Lab
• Yale Film Analysis – Yale University
• Film Terms And Topics For Film Analysis And Writing
• Questions for Film Analysis (Washington University)
• Resources on Film Analysis – Cinema Studies (University of Toronto)
• Does Film Analysis Take the Magic out of Movies?
• Film Analysis Research Papers – Academia.edu
• What’s In a Film Analysis Essay? Medium
• Analysis of Film – SAGE Research Methods
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EXCELENT COVERAGE!

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All the best.

Visual Rhetoric

Video essay resource guide.

PAR 102 (M-Th, 9 AM- 5 PM) Fine Arts Library Media Lab (same hours as FAL) PCL Media Lab (same hours as PCL)

About video essays

What are they.

“The video essay is often described as a form of new media, but the basic principles are as old as rhetoric: the author makes an assertion, then presents evidence to back up his claim. Of course it was always possible for film critics to do this in print, and they’ve been doing it for over 100 years, following more or less the same template that one would use while writing about any art form: state your thesis or opinion, then back it with examples. In college, I was assured that in its heart, all written criticism was essentially the same – that in terms of rhetorical construction, book reviews, music reviews, dance reviews and film reviews were cut from the same cloth, but tailored to suit the specific properties of the medium being described, with greater emphasis given to form or content depending on the author’s goals and the reader’s presumed interest.”

Matt Zoller Seitz on the video essay .

what makes a good video essay? 

Tony Zhou on how to structure a video essay

Kevin B. Lee on what makes a video essay “ great “

why should we use them? what are their limits?

Kevin B. Lee’s  experimental/artistic pitch for video essays

Kevin B. Lee’s mainstream pitch for video essay

“Of all the many developments in the short history of film criticism and scholarship, the video essay has the greatest potential to challenge the now historically located text-based dominance of the appraisal and interpretation of film and its contextual cultures…”

Andrew McWhirter argues that t he video essay has significant academic potential in the Fall 2015 issue of  Screen

“Importantly, the [new] media stylo does not replace traditional scholarship. This is a new practice beyond traditional scholarship. So how does critical media differ from traditional scholarship and what advantages does it offer? First, as you will see with the works in this issue, critical media demonstrates a shift in rhetorical mode. The traditional essay is argumentative-thesis, evidence, conclusion. Traditional scholarship aspires to exhaustion, to be the definitive, end-all-be-all, last word on a particular subject. The media stylo, by contrast, suggests possibilities-it is not the end of scholarly inquiry; it is the beginning. It explores and experiments and is designed just as much to inspire as to convince…”

Eric Fadden’s “ A Manifesto for Critical Media “

Adam Westbrook’s “ The Web-Video Problem: Why It’s Time to Rethinking Visual Storytelling from the Bottom Up “

Video essayists and venues

Matt Zoller Seitz (various venues) A writer and director by trade, Zoller Seitz is nonetheless probably best known as a prominent American cultural critic.  He’s made over 1000 hours of video essays and is generally recognized as a founder of the video essay movement in high-brow periodicals.  A recognized expert on Wes Anderson, Zoller Seitz is also notable because he often mixes other cinematic media (especially television) into his analysis, as in the above example, which doubles as an experiment in the absence of voiceover.

Various contributors, Press Play Co-founded by Matt Zoller Seitz and Ken Cancelosi,  Press Play  (published by Indiewire)   is one of the oldest high-brow venues for video essays about television, cinema, and other aspects of popular culture.

Various contributors, Keyframe   (A Fandor online publication) Fandor’s video essay department publishes work from many editors (what many video essayists call themselves) on and in a range of topics and styles.  Check it out to get an idea of all that things a video essay can do!

Various contributors, Moving Image Source A high-brow publication for video essays.

Tony Zhou, Every Frame a Painting The master of video essays on filmic form, Tony’s arguments are clean, simple, and well-evidenced.  Look to Tony as an example of aggressive and precise editing and arrangement.  He’s also an excellent sound editor–pay attention to his choices and try out some of his sound-mixing techniques in your essay.

Adam Johnston, Your Movie Sucks (YMS) Although an excellent example of epideictic film rhetoric, this channel is a great example of what  not  to do in this assignment (write a movie review, gush about how good/bad you think a movie is, focus on motifs or narrative content instead of  film form  as the center of your argument).  What you  can  learn from Adam is a lot about style.  Adam’s delivery, pacing, and editing all work together to promote a mildly-disinterested-and-therefore-credible ethos through a near-monotone, which I’ll affectionately dub the “Daria” narratorial ethos.

Adam Westbrook, delve.tv Adam Westbrook is part of an emerging group of professional video essayists and delve.tv is his version of a visual podcast.  Using the video essay form, Adam has developed a professional public intellectual ethos for himself through skillful overlay of explanation/interpretation and concept.  Check out Westbrook’s work as a really good example of presenting and representing visual concepts crucial to an argument.  He’s a master at making an argument in the form of storytelling, and he uses the video essay as a vehicle for that enterprise.

:: kogonada (various venues) If you found yourself wondering what the auteur video essay might look like, :: kogonada is it.  I like to call this “expressionist” video essay style.  Kogonada is the ultimate minimalist when it comes to voiceover/text over–its message impossibly and almost excessively efficient.  Half of the videos in his library are simple, expertly-executed supercuts , highlighting how heavily video essays rely on the “supercut” technique to make an argument.  Crafting an essay in this style really limits your audience and may not be a very good fit for the constraints of assignment (very “cutting edge,” as we talked about it in class), but you will probably draw inspiration from ::kogonada’s distinct, recognizable style, as well as an idea of what a video essay can do at the outer limits of its form.

Lewis Bond,  Channel Criswell Narrating in brogue-y Northern English, Bond takes his time, releasing a very carefully-edited, high-production video essay once every couple of months.  He’s a decent editor, but I feel his essays tend to run long, and I feel rushed by his narration at times.  Bond also makes a useful distinction between video essays and analysis/reviews on his channel–and while most of his analysis/reviews focus on film content (what you don’t want to imitate), his video essays stay pretty focused on film technique (what you do).  Hearing the same author consciously engage in two different modes of analysis might help you better understand the distinction between the two, as well.

Jack Nugent,  Now You See It Nugent’s brisk, formal analysis is both insightful and accessible–a good example of what it takes to secure a significant following in the highly-competitive Youtube marketplace.  [That’s my way of slyly calling him commercial.] Nugent is especially good at pairing his narration with his images.  Concentrate and reflect upon his simple pairings as you watch–how does Nugent help you process both sets of information at the pacing he sets?

Evan Puschak, The Nerdwriter Nerdwriter  is a great example the diversity of topics a video essay can be used to craft an argument about.  Every week, Puschak publishes an episode on science, art, and culture.  Look at all the different things Puschak considers visual rhetoric and think about how he’s using the video essay form to make honed, precisely-executed arguments about popular culture.

Dennis Hartwig and John P. Hess,  FilmmakerIQ Hartwig and Hess use video essays to explain filmmaking technique to aspiring filmmakers.  I’ve included the channel here as another example of what  not  to do in your argument, although perhaps some of the technical explanations that Hartwig and Hess have produced might help you as secondary sources.  Your target audience (someone familiar on basic film theory trying to better understand film form) is likely to find the highly technical, prescriptive arguments on FilmIQ boring or alienating. Don’t focus on technical production in your essay (how the film accomplishes a particular visual technique using a camera); rather, focus on how the audience interprets the end result in the film itself; in other words, focus on choices the audience can notice and interpret–how is the audience interpreting the product of production?  How often is the audience thinking about/noticing production in that process?

Kevin B. Lee (various venues) A good example of the older, high-brow generation of video essayists, Kevin’s collection of work hosted on his Vimeo channel offers slow, deliberate, lecture-inspired readings of film techniques and form.  Note the distinct stylistic difference between Kevin’s pacing and someone like Zhou or Lewis.  How does delivery affect reception?

Software Guides

How to access Lynda tutorials (these will change your life)

Handbrake and MakeMKV  (file converters)

Adobe Premiere  (video editing)

Camtasia  (screen capture)

File management

Use your free UTBox account to upload and manage your files.  Make sure you’ve got some sort of system for tracking and assembling everything into your video editing software.   UTBox has a 2 terabyte limit (much higher than Google Drive) and is an excellent file management resource for all sorts of academic work.

Adobe Premiere saves versions with links to your video files, so it’s imperative that you keep your video files folder in the same place on every machine you open it up on.  That’s why I keep all my video files in a big folder on box that I drop on the desktop of any machine I’m working on before I open my premiere files.  The Adobe Premiere project walkthrough  has more details on this.

Where to find video and how to capture it

About fair use . Make sure your composition complies with the Fair Use doctrine and familiarize yourself with the four criteria.

The best place to capture images is always from a high-resolution DVD or video file .  The first place you should go to get the film is the library– see instructions for searching here .

To import the video and audio from your DVD or video file into your video editing software (like Premiere), you will first need to use a software to convert it to an .mkv.  See instructions on how to do that here .

Camtasia tutorials .  Camtasia is a program that allows you to capture anything that’s going on on your screen .  This is a critical tool for this assignment as you decide what kind of interface you want to present to your reader in your video essay.  Camtasia also allows you to capture any high-quality video playing on your desktop without licensing restrictions.

You can also use Clip Converter to capture images and sound from pre-existing YouTube videos , and it may be a little faster and easier than Camtasia.   I suggest converting things into .mkv before putting them into your video editor, regardless of where you get the material from.

Film theory and criticism

• /r/truefilm’s reading and viewing guide

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Video Essays 101: Advice on Making Your Own Film Analysis Videos

The film industry isn't only the domain of filmmakers, but film analysts as well..

In recent years, we've seen a huge influx in video essays about film, which is not only giving students of film access to the kind of film analysis you tend to only get in film school, but it's also changing the way film analyses are produced and exhibited altogether. In fact, this surge of content is giving "amateur" film analysts a way to share their thoughts on different aspects of cinema , like how filmmakers use color as a psychological tool or the cultural, social, and political impact of different film movements.

For those who have always wanted to get into the video essay scene, film analyst Rob Ager offers a ton of helpful advice on how to do it in the video below.

Before I ever made a film, I analyzed a film. I broke down every minute, every camera move, every cinematic element in hopes of finding clues, patterns, and messages about the true meaning of a film. They're all up there—hidden in plain site on the big screen. Film analysis is about discovery. It's about reading between the lines (or looking between the frames) to find the grander message a filmmaker is trying to convey with their work. It's about revealing a new way of watching films to those who love to watch them, a way that can offer more enjoyment, more understanding, and more appreciation for the art form. 

Source: Collative Learning

What is Ethos in Advertising?

Get your mind wrapped around this crucial definition of the rhetoric of ethics..

In the world of persuasion, from speeches to advertisements, credibility is key. How can you get your message across to the clients or general public, and how can you get them to believe you?

The answer lies somewhere in the mode of persuasion called Ethos.

Ethos, a fundamental concept of rhetoric, is the art of establishing trustworthiness and authority. Whether through showcasing expertise, highlighting values, or leveraging reputation, ethos convinces an audience that the speaker or brand is worth listening to.

We're going to dig into why this is important right now.

Let's dive in.

Ethos Definition

Ethos is the use of the philosophical definition of ethics to make a moral argument. It refers to stated credibility or an authoritative stance on a subject. It is also one of Aristotle's modes of persuasion.

You could use the words of an instructor, doctor, expert, or philosopher. The point is, ethos is achieved by citing someone knowledgable and producing facts. So come prepared to make your audience feel smarter for listening to you. Give them numbers and citations that make you seem trustworthy. 4 out of 5 readers love this definition.

Advertisers employ ethos to convince the audience that their brand, product, or service is reliable, coming from experts, and worthy of consideration.

Aristotle and Advertising

Most of the storytelling we deal with harkens back to Aristotle's "Poetics." It was the building block for drama and became a must-read for anyone interested in crafting their own plays, movies, televisions shows, and now advertisements.

As advertising leans more and more on storytelling, "Poetics" has become even more important today.

In "Poetics," Aristotle said:

Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself.

But what were the three modes of persuasion Aristotle found?

The Three Modes of Persuasion

• Ethos (ἦθος—disposition or character)
• Pathos (πάθος—emotion or passion)
• Logos (λόγος—argument or discourse)

These modes are referred to as ethical strategies or rhetorical appeals.

They're based on the idea that persuasion is achieved by the speaker's personal character. By the speaker, I mean the author of the advertisement. You want to seem credible as an author. Whether that's the writer, director, or anyone working in that space.

Your persuasive ideas must stir something in the reader. An emotional reaction

This cannot just be through your written or spoken words. You have to exhibit an inherent or apparent truth. That way, you appear to have all the answers to the question you asked the reader.

All this manifests itself in each of the aforementioned modes.

What Makes Ethos Important to Advertisers? 

Ethos builds a sense of trust with the audience, making them more likely to listen to and believe the advertising message.It also enhances the believability of the claims made about the product or service.

When you're selling something, you're also trying to connect to the people listening. Ethos helps the audience identify with the brand on a personal level if they admire or relate to the figure used.

The more they identify with it, the more this can lead to customers becoming loyal to a brand over time.

Ethos Examples in Advertising

Any celebrity endorsement is the work of ethos.I like to focus on the Michael Jordan commercials here. Specifically, the one where he and Mia Hamm face off. This black and white commercial asserts them both as athletes at the top of their game.

They have command in their sport, and any other sport you can think about.The dueling here allows them both to endorse the one thing they agree on; Gatorade.

Other uses of ethos:

• Celebrity Endorsements: Linking a product to a well-respected or popular figure known for certain qualities (athletes for sports gear, doctors for health products). This implies the endorsement is based on the celebrity's knowledge or experience.
• Experts and Professionals: Featuring doctors, scientists, or specialists in their fields lends their expertise to the claims about a product.
• Testimonials: Real people sharing positive experiences with a product builds a sense of trustworthiness and social proof.
• Company Reputation: Highlighting a company's commitment to ethics, social responsibility, or a history of excellent products builds trust.
• Plain Folks Appeal: Using relatable people and settings to show that the brand understands the everyday consumer.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

What Are The Best Science Fiction Movies of All Time?

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How to do a Video Essay: The Video Essay Process

• Plan, Prepare & Create

Storyboarding

• Finding, Filming & Editing
• References & Credits
• The Video Essay Process

This section will give an introductory overview of the stages required to create a video essay.  Video essayers advice is to start simple and work through each stage of the video production process. Visit the Resources page of this guide for more.

Identify what is your argument? What is it that you want to communicate to the viewer? Write this down in a few sentences, refer and modify it as required.

Watch Video Essays

Watch a selection of video essays, read blogs and web pages from video essayers and decide what type of video essay you would like to create. Start simple.

A storyboard is a detailed outline (similar to an outline in a written essay) that helps you to organise and visualise the video essay as to what is on the screen, text, media, message and transitions between shots.

Storyboards assist in determining the length, message and meaning of the video essay and help save time with editing and post production processes.

• Free Storyboard Templates

Collect & Edit

Collect video material as downloads, ripping DVDs, screen grabs, mobile phone footage and create voice-overs. Use research skills to find information and statements to support your argument. Maintain a standard of quality and manage your videos by naming conventions and storage.

Use editing software and experiment with available functionality to enhance and support your argument. Add a voice-over, sound effects, music and other aspects of multimodality. Be sure to include references and credits to all sources used in creating the video essay.

Revisit elements of your video essay and modify as required.

Visit the Resources page of this guide for more.

• Where to find video and how to capture it
• Video Editing Basics - iMovie
• Software Guides

References & Credits

References to cite sources used in the Video Essay. Referencing is a formal, systematic way of acknowledging sources that you have used in your video essay. It is imperative that you reference all sources used (including videos, stills, music, sfx) and apply the correct formatting so that references cited can be easily traced. The referencing style used at ECU is the APA style, 6th ed. 2010. Refer to the ECU Referencing Library Guide for accurate citation in APA style.

Production credits Individuals: acknowledgement of individuals and their role in the production. Purpose: A statement for internal use, e.g. “This video was produced for [course name] at [institution’s name] in [semester, year]”

• Referencing Library Guide
• << Previous: What is a Video Essay?
• Next: Modes, MultiModality & Multiliteracies >>
• What is a Video Essay?
• Modes, MultiModality & Multiliteracies
• A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies
• Modes Of Multimodality
• Video Essay Journals
• Video Essay Channels
• Weblinks to Video Essay Resources
• Weblinks to Creative Commons Resources
• Titles in the Library
• Referencing & Copyright
• Marking Rubric
• Last Updated: Aug 28, 2023 2:57 PM
• URL: https://ecu.au.libguides.com/video-essay

Edith Cowan University acknowledges and respects the Noongar people, who are the traditional custodians of the land upon which its campuses stand and its programs operate. In particular ECU pays its respects to the Elders, past and present, of the Noongar people, and embrace their culture, wisdom and knowledge.

Scripting Video Essays: How to Write a Great Narrative

There are many ways in which you can write video essays. Some have argued that video essays are a new trend in the world of creative writing. There is so much emphasis on developing a story from visuals, photographs, videos, and music to tell an enduring tale or lesson in this day and age. 

So, if you want to join the video essay bandwagon as an artist, expert, researcher, or student, you must know how to write them first before creating them.

Writing a narrative video essay is a great way to share your ideas with the world. Narrative essays let you not only say something meaningful but also show it. A good narrative video essay is also about the art of visual storytelling.

But first, if you are wondering what exactly is a video essay. Let’s address it first.

What is a Video Essay?

A video essay is a form of a documentary-like video narrative film using film footage, video clips, and graphics to discuss an issue or topic. Academics and artists can typically use video essays to discuss their research. 

In addition to blog posts and magazine articles, video essays are a new type of storytelling in the digital world. They take one idea and meticulously construct a narrative on how it came to be, how it’s been used/applied, or what it means.

In its most popular form (one person talking head), a video essay is made up of between 3-7 minutes in length and usually presents one concept or topic.

It often looks at a film and demonstrates how it is engaging in meaning or does not. The video essay can also emphasize the acts performed by actors or directors, such as performance, staging, and editing techniques.

But today, it is not fixated to film subjects only.  You can also expand your visual stories about anything under the sun like history, politics, science, technology, etc. Just choose an idea and proceed with your essay writing.

Here is an excellent example of the best video essays –  Example: Best Video Essays by Vox

How do you Create a Narrative in your Video Essay?

To create a compelling video essay, you must know how to write an essay with a video component to produce a compelling story. A good video essay should have the following qualities:

• It should be insightful, thought-provoking, or informative.
• It should be argumentative and practice critical thinking
• It should be visual, formal, and well-structured.
• It should help the viewer understand and appreciate a topic/situation from various angles.
• It should inspire viewers through findings, vocabulary, and plot.

The best video essays also use candid footage and demonstrate the use of nonfiction or documentary filmmaking techniques . And the main reason why people gravitate towards narrative essays is that they let you show your ideas visually to your viewers.

How to Write a Video Essay Script?

Many people are starting to make video essays as a way of presenting their own thoughts and experiences. The problem is that these videos do not have any actual narration, leaving the viewer lost trying to understand what’s happening.

But to write a grand narrative, you must follow the following stages:

Brainstorming ideas is the first stage. At this stage, you should list a few interesting concepts in an organized way. You may want to use the topic form like: “A Case for Video Essays” or “How to Create a Story Using Text and Images?” So, while ideating, follow these:

• Begin by picking a topic ( mostly what you are passionate about).
• Think about your point of view and audience. 
• Set up the background and context for your essay or story (the “what”). 
• Reveal the turning point in your story (the “why”). 
• Provide evidence to support your account of events (the “where”) 
• Discuss how the incident relates to broader social concerns (the “what now?”).

Research is the next stage of writing a video essay. The moment you decide to make a video essay, you should have enough information about the topic. The more information and research you do in the ideation stage, the easier it will be for you as a writer and speaker to share your knowledge with the audience. Research may include:

• Finding out facts from books, interviews, or research papers.
• Finding out relevant video footage of the person, place, or event.
• Getting access to the video footage of a particular event (e.g., presidential speeches).
• Find audio or video files on the Internet and transcribe them into text format (e.g., podcasts, interviews).
• THE ESSAY STRUCTURE: 

Because the video essay is still relatively new, there are no definitive rules about structure and genre for these films.  But still, we should adhere to some basic rules while constructing the script structure. Your structure is the most crucial stage for a crackling narrative. 

The essentials of a great narrative essay structure are as follows :

• First, create a rough outline from your research material.
• Think about a compelling opening line with a single line answer to the question of the essay
• Begin with questions, then answer in a way to create an argument.
• The Argument then leads to the next question.
• The emotion and Tone of the script should be formal, thought-provoking, insightful, and informative, supported by relevant visual reference.
• The essay must represent a single point of view.
• But it should be a well-reasoned perspective.
• It must have the writer or creator’s personal touch.
• Good writing is about the economy of words articulated to the point.
• Don’t forget to mention the What is the Takeaway for the audience.
• Don’t make it lengthy. Video essays are also about documenting or reviewing videos. So the script should not eat it all.
• Once you have structured the script, go back to the beginning and review your work.

Once you have prepared a rough draft of your essay, read it out loud and find the rhythm in the story. Is it telling the theme visually?  Rewrite and get the tone right. Your first few scripts may not be satisfactory. Don’t worry about that. It is a learning process.

• WRITING THE FINAL DRAFT:

Now, once you have gotten all the ideas into a script, you will be eager to write the final draft. At this stage, make sure to follow the following tips:

• Make sure every line is comprehensible so that viewers can easily understand your point of view without missing anything important in it.
• Proofread and make sure that you don’t leave any unfinished work or broken sentences in the video essay structure.
• Check the length of the video essay and make sure to follow the minimum requirements.
• Once you are done with the script, check for the formatting of your work.
• Spend extra time on a great narration that helps explain your content effectively and concisely.
• Get a clear idea about what you want to say so that you know what kind of images to use in the final draft of your essay and how they should be arranged.
• Conclude the essay by providing the audience with everything they need to know about your subject.

For a compelling narrative, the first thing to do is identify what makes the story you are trying to tell unique and why an audience wants to learn about it.

Related Question:

Are Video Essays Popular Today?

Though the concept was coined in the mid-1990s, it has only become popular in the last five years or so. As of now, a considerable amount of video essays and short films are uploaded on Youtube. Some have even garnered millions of views.  The prominent mentions are the Nerdwriter, and Every Frame is a Painting.

check out – Best Video Essays of last year

How Long Does a Video Essay Take to Write?

If you are writing a long video essay, it can take you a considerable amount of time. However, if you aim to create a short film covering one event, it can be done in a day or two. 

But, you may take time if you don’t have the research material in your hand. 

Final words:

The video essay became popular because it is a way to engage with the writer rather than just “watching” them talk about something. But, to make a great narrative, you have to research a lot and put in your best efforts. 

We hope this write-up has helped you create a great video essay. Happy writing!

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How to Write a Film Analysis Essay – Step by Step

So, your assignment is to watch a movie and analyze it in an essay. Great!

I’m Tutor Phil, and in this tutorial I’ll show you how to write a film analysis. 

In short, to write a film analysis means to:

• Identify the elements of the film
• Identify the relationships among those elements
• Form an argument about your findings
• Support your argument using evidence

If this task seems daunting, don’t worry – it is actually fun once you know exactly what to do. 

So, let’s dive right in. Here are…

7 Steps to Writing a Film Analysis Essay

Step 1. Watch the movie while taking notes

If you already saw the film you need to analyze, you’ll probably need to watch it again, this time taking some notes. 

Why is note taking important? Well, to analyze really means to break something into parts and to discuss relationships among them. 

And to identify parts (or elements) of a movie, you need to watch it while paying attention to details and writing down your observations. 

Taking notes will allow you to do several things:

• Identify some of the elements of the film so you have something to discuss
• Uncover details you would otherwise miss
• Make connections between ideas
• Get some raw content you can readily use in your essay

How to take notes

Here’s a tip on how to do it most efficiently. Play the movie on one device while taking notes on another. 

For example, play the movie on your TV or iPad, and take notes on your laptop. This way, you can pause the movie and make a note without switching apps on your laptop. 

What to look for 

When watching the movie, you are looking for elements that it is made up of. You can simply start a bulleted list with a timeline and some of the things you observe. 

Importantly, you usually don’t want to simply describe every event of the film. You need some kind of a theme or motif to focus on because otherwise you’ll simply write a synopsis if the movie. 

But you want some useful notes. Here’s how to choose what to focus on. 

First, your assignment should determine your focus. For example, if your instructor wants you to write about a particular character, then pay special attention to that character.

If your assignment includes more details, that’s even better. Maybe you have to pick a character and write about her love life or her relationship with her mother. 

Great – that will help you narrow down your focus. 

Second, you can choose your own theme to focus on. If your assignment is very general, don’t worry – just pick your own character, theme, or something in the movie you want to write about.

In this case, if you’ve already seen the film, just think back and choose something to focus your analysis on. 

Third, you can simply analyze the entire film. In this case, your task is to identify the overall message of the film and how its elements help deliver this message. 

Each of these ways to approach writing a film analysis essay works great. And the steps you learn here will help you whatever approach you choose. 

Example of note-taking

Let me give you an example. Recently, I had to write about one particular character in a movie. I also had to discuss the mental health of the character. So, I paid special attention to anything that had to do with mental health. 

I chose the movie The Hours based on Michael Cunningham’s book of the same title. And by the way, let’s use this film from now on as an example to illustrate our seven steps to writing a film analysis. 

This movie follows three women at different periods of the twentieth century. One of them is Virginia Woolf, based on the real-life writer of the same name. 

Since my task was to write about her, I took notes primarily related to her. But I also noted relevant elements in other parts of the film. 

Note that I time-stamped the events that happen on the screen. This would help me orient myself in the story when I later read my notes. 

This can also help you use quotations from the film because in some citation styles you are required to provide exact time stamps for the dialogue lines. 

Here is a sample of the notes that I took while watching the movie:

00:00 – 3:30 Very compulsive behavior. Frantically dressing up. 

“I feel that I’m going mad again.”

08:35 – ~11:00 “How was your sleep?” “Uneventful. No headache. I believe I may have the first sentence.”

“Always giving parties to cover the silence.” – Ed Harris. ~22:00

27:44 – 31:50 “Her fate becomes clear to her.” 

Makes demands on her cook. Being kind of rude. 

43:20 Doesn’t comply with doctors. Depressed all the time. Lies down by the dead bird, as if wanting to join it.

01:05:45 Talking to herself, mumbling, in the presence of others – sister, nephews, niece. 

-What were you thinking about? 

-I was going to kill my heroine but I changed my mind. 

01:08:05 “I’m afraid I might have to kill someone else instead.”

Your notes don’t have to consist of perfect sentences. You can jot down sentence fragments, phrases, or even just words. 

But complete sentences, or at least sentence fragments, will help you understand what you were thinking when taking the note. A sentence will tell you more than a word or a phrase. 

Write down some important dialogue verbatim. You can later use these quotations in your essay. 

Elements to look for

Let’s explore what kinds of elements you can look for while watching the movie. Cinema is an amazing medium that combines a multitude of things to talk about.

A film can contain everything a novel can. And in addition, it has visuals and sound. So, it’s very rich. Let’s divide the elements into two categories – literary and cinematic.

Literary elements

• Story (the beginning, middle, and end)
• Plot (how events are arranged in time and space)
• Setting (where and when the action takes place)
• Characterization (characters and their unique qualities)
• Themes (recurring elements that link things together by topic)
• Message (the point, the argument, if you will, of the movie)
• Dialogue (what characters say)
• Symbols (concrete visual or auditory bits that stand for abstract ideas)
• Contrast (highlighting differences)

Cinematic elements

• Sound (music, noises, or the use of silence)
• Lighting (how light is used to convey or emphasize ideas)
• Camera angles (positioning of the camera when shooting a scene)
• Editing (putting different shots together in a sequence)
• Mise-en-scene (everything you see on the screen)
• Casting (the choice of actors)
• Acting (the art of playing a character)

If you’re a film or literature student, many of these elements will sound familiar to you. But even if you’re not, you don’t have to know much about all or even most of these to write a great film analysis. 

All you need is a few good elements that will serve as ideas to organize and develop your paper. And you are probably already familiar with some of them, such as story and characters, for example.

As you watch the movie and take notes, keep these elements somewhere in your document so you could check in with the list at any time. 

Step 2. Make some connections among the elements

If you really want to do well on this paper, you might want to watch the movie one more time after you’ve taken your initial notes. This time, you’ll be making connections using these elements.

You can do this step from memory and your initial set of notes, but if you do it while watching the film one more time, your paper will be a lot stronger. And the writing part will be easier.

As you watch the film, especially for the second and maybe even a third time, you’ll notice patterns. 

You’ll begin to see how different elements are connected by themes and other unifying elements.

Here are examples of how different and seemingly distant elements can be connected in a movie:

Thematic connection

Two or more characters have the same pattern of behavior. They may not know each other or may even live on different continents or in different time periods. But they both feel stuck in their marriages, for example.

Connection through dialogue

Two or more characters who, again, seem completely unrelated say the same things. Or, one character says something, and another picks it up or answers it in the next scene or shot. 

Connection through mise-en-scene

Mise-en-scene is all the visual elements on the screen. A recurring visual can link different elements, such as characters, together.

For example, a character can have a red rose in her hand. Another character, in a different time and space, can also have a red rose in her hand. This is a director’s way of saying: “Pay attention and look for connections between these characters.”

Musical connection

The same music can play in different scenes. Or, the same tune can be played in a major, happy key in one scene but in a minor, sad key in another. Or, a short motive can be repeated at pertinent moments in the film. 

Movie writers and directors make all kinds of other connections in their films. If you watch the movie more than once while being consciously aware of the possibilities, you’ll notice things. 

You can choose any types of connections you want. If your instructor wants you to be specific and use cinematography and dialogue, for example, then use these two categories. 

But if you identify some nice connections in other categories, put them in your notes, too. You’ll use them as supporting ideas in your essay. 

Example of making connections 

Let me give you an example of how I used elements of film to make some connections for that film analysis I worked on. 

Note that I’m using only four categories of these elements because to discuss more of them would only make the essay get out of hand. It’s better to focus on a few. Make sure it’s no fewer than two, and preferably three or four. 

The first one or two can be the main ones, and the rest can be used as supporting ideas (more on this later). 

To make better sense of the example below, keep in mind that the movie The Hours follows three women in different times and places. 

I used letters V, L, and C as acronyms of their first names, because it’s faster and easier that way. 

Here is a sample of connections (as brief notes)  

• Homosexuality and bisexuality. 
• Around 42:00 – L kisses her neighbor Kitty. Later, V kisses her sister Vanessa. Both women are not only stuck in their situations – they are also stuck in the closet. 
• C is also stuck, according to her own words. 
• V tries to write a novel. L tries to bake a cake. C tries to throw a party. Each one is frustrated. 
• But there is a progression from V-L-C. V never succeeds. L fails at first attempt but succeeds with the second one. C makes everything ready, but the party never happens through no fault of her own.
• Also, trying to run away. V fails. L succeeds. So does Louis in modern times. 
• C says at one point, “From then on I’ve been stuck.” It seems she’s stuck in bisexuality. 
• When L drops off her son, it’s with Mrs. Latch (note the name). A latch is a fastening or binding device. 
• Louis Waters says, “The day I left him, I got on a train and made my way across Europe. I felt free for the first time in years.”
• V succeeds on the third attempt. L contemplates it but changes her mind. C never attempts. But Richard succeeds. 
• 13:54 – (1951) L’s son asks to help with the cake. L: “Of course you can, sweet pea. I’m not gonna do anything without you.” Cuts to 2001 New York: C: “No, of course!” 
• It’s as if the director is being sarcastic: “Yeah, sure. Of course I’m not gonna do anything without you.” 
• L eventually abandons her family, including her son. So, this juxtaposition seems sarcastic and acts as foreshadowing. 

Mise-en-scene (visual elements)

• Each of two women, V and L, is alone in a bed; one is in bed with a partner. 
• L is particularly emphasized as alone with an empty half bed – happens again later in the film.
• The light is pouring in from outside, but the room is dark. She is isolated by the window frame. Isolated from everything in the home, including her son. 
• Later, around 17:30, her son will be alone in a very dark apartment: “I needed to let in some light.” Maybe light is associated with freedom.
• V depressed, even disturbed
• L wondering what the day will bring
• C excited about the upcoming day.
• There seems to be a progression from worse to better in V-L-C. 

When you actively look for connections, you’ll make many of them. In this step, you’re not thinking deeply about them. You’re just noticing things and jotting them down.

The main thinking is done in the next step. 

Step 3. Formulate your main argument

Now that you have your elements and you’ve perceived some relationships among them, it’s time to formulate your thesis. 

A thesis is the main point of your essay. This step is the most important because this is where you take a stand. 

This is also a creative step. You’re essentially making a decision about what to say about this movie or an aspect of the movie. 

Here’s a short video I created, explaining what a thesis is:

Read back through your notes

Read through the initial notes you took and the connections that you’ve made. 

What stands out to you as the most important, the most general and overarching idea that is probably the main one?

Make your thesis about this idea. And the rest of the elements or ideas will act as supporting points (we’ll add them in the next step). 

Choose the subject

Let’s choose what to write about – our subject – in our sample film analysis. We have four categories of elements in which we’ve made notes and connections:

• Mise-en-scene

Just by looking at this list and reading through the connections made, it is easy to notice:

One or more of the themes are dominant, and the rest is supportive. Therefore, our main point should probably be about a theme . 

Again, if your instructor has given you a specific subject to focus on, then that’s what your thesis will be about. 

In this example, let’s assume that we must simply write a film analysis, and we’re free to choose what to write about.

So, we’ll pick one of the themes, take a stand on it, and formulate our thesis based on it. Let’s look at the themes we’ve picked out again:

• Repressed sexuality
• Frustration
• Being stuck
• Seeking freedom  

Which of these is the dominant one? Which one is all-encompassing? Which one includes some of the others?

These are some of the questions we might ask to pick the main subject for our essay. Let’s arrange these themes in the order of more general to more specific:

Why is being stuck the most general and all-encompassing theme? That’s because it seems that the rest of the themes are either the signs or the effects of it. 

Repressed sexuality and frustration in trying to accomplish things and failing are signs, examples, or manifestations of being stuck. 

It is only possible to seek freedom if you feel stuck. And suicide, at least in this film, is a result of being stuck and seeing no way out. 

This tells us that being stuck as a theme is the best candidate for our thesis. In other words, this essay will be about the theme of being stuck in the film The Hours .  

Formulate the thesis

At this point, we have everything we need to formulate our thesis, our main point that we’ll be supporting in the essay. Let’s do it:

“In the film The Hours, the feeling of being stuck in terms of their sexualities and life situations plagues the main characters. And the earlier in the century the action takes place, the more disastrous the consequences of them feeling stuck.” 

What’s going on in this thesis? 

First, we have two sentences because this film analysis is kind of complex. It is possible to write out the main point in only one sentence, but then it would be too long and complicated. 

Second, note that we have all the main elements either explicitly or implicitly present in this statement. In other words, this thesis summarizes our entire essay perfectly. 

It contains the themes of:

• Being stuck (which is our main subject)
• Sexuality (one supporting idea)
• Seeking freedom (from an unwanted life situation)
• Sucide (a disastrous consequence)

In other words, it’s all there in the thesis. And we’ll unpack these concepts more in the next two steps. 

Step 4. Write the introductory paragraph

The introductory paragraph consists of three parts:

• An introductory sentence
• The thesis (main point)
• The supporting points

Here is a diagram of how it is organized:

We already have one of these parts, which is the thesis (part 2). Now, all we need is  the introductory sentence and the supporting points. 

Let’s put together our supporting points – the crucial part of a thesis statement. A full thesis statement always includes the main point and the supporting ideas. And then we’ll write out the complete introductory paragraph.

Keep in mind that each of our supporting points will correspond to a section of our essay. And I always recommend using the Power of Three to organize a paper. 

Three is a great number to divide one idea into many. Note that writing an essay on any topic is very much a matter of dividing big topics into subtopics. 

What three supporting points or sections can we have in this essay? Well, luckly, it just so happens that the film The Hours centers around three main characters set in different time periods and places. 

This makes a perfect division into three parts. Now, your movie may not have such a clear division, and in that case you’ll need to come up with three supporting ideas creatively. 

For example, you could discuss the feeling or predicament if being stuck in terms of these concepts:

And your essay would have three main sections. Each section would be devoted to being stuck in a particular sense. 

In our essay, the three women are:

• Virginia Woolf (1923)
• Laura Brown (1951)
• Clarissa Vaughan (2001)

From our thesis, we know two things:

• They all share the feeling of being stuck, in similar ways
• There is a progression from past to present in how it affects them

So, now, let’s write out the complete thesis statement. Note that we’re also including the introductory sentence, whose function is to pull the reader into the subject matter of the essay.

Our film analysis thesis statement example

“Through the power of narrative and visual elements, cinema allows the viewer a glimpse into worlds she otherwise could not know, revealing difficulties people have faced throughout history. In the film The Hours, the feeling of being stuck in terms of their sexualities and life situations plagues the main characters. And the earlier in the century the action takes place, the more disastrous the consequences of them feeling stuck. Virginia Woolf, set in 1923, is in the worst situation because while she suffers from repressed homosexuality and hates living in the country, it is next to impossible for her to find a viable way out. Laura Brown, set in 1951, is also a closet lesbian and lives a small-town family life she despises. But she eventually finds a way to liberate herself. Finally, Clarissa Vaughn, set in 2001, is stuck in her bisexuality. But her life situation, while challenging, is otherwise better than those of the other two characters.”

Step 5. Outline the essay 

The thesis statement that we just put together also acts as our big-picture outline. Let’s see how our essay will be organized, in terms of the main sections:

Notice that this big-picture outline is dictated completely by our thesis statement. This is why a great, detailed thesis statement is so important. 

Fulfilling the word count requirement

Your film analysis essay assignment may have a specific word or page count requirement. Let me give you an example of this film analysis outline with a breakdown of words per section and subsection.

Let’s say you need to write a 2,000-word paper. Well, right now our introductory paragraph contains about 150 words. Here is how we could distribute words to meet that word count requirement.

Outline with word count distribution

• Introductory paragraph (150 words)
• Sexuality ( 300 words )
• Life situation ( 300 words )
• Conclusion (100 words)

If you add up all the sections and subsections, you’ll get 2,050, which is about our desired word count. 

If you need to write 5,000 words, then distribute your words accordingly. You’ll have about 250 words per introduction and conclusion, which will leave you with 4,500 words for the body of the essay.

That will be 1,500 words per main section. Divide each main section into three subsections using the Power of Three, and you have 500 words per subsection. 

It’s very helpful to know how to distribute your words because that allows you to map out how much you’re writing in each section and paragraph. 

Step 6. Write the body of the essay

The body of a film analysis essay consists of sections, and each section consists of one or more paragraphs. 

So, your main building block in the body of the essay is the body paragraph. Here is how a body paragraph is structured:

The first sentence is the so-called lead sentence. It must summarize the contents of the paragraph succinctly and perfectly. 

An explanation is where you have a chance to provide any reasoning or describe a process.

And examples are the most specific parts of any paragraph or essay. They are the most fun to write and to read. 

Let’s write a body paragraph to illustrate exactly how such a building block works in a movie analysis. 

Our example is about Virginia Woolf. It belongs in Section 1, subsection 1 – about being stuck with repressed homosexuality. 

Note that this subsection can have more than one paragraph. This will be one of the paragraphs in this section. 

Film analysis body paragraph example

“Virginia feels stuck in her personal life as if in a prison because of her repressed sexuality. She appears to be a closet homosexual, which is a difficult predicament to endure in the early 20th century England. Homosexuality was looked down upon, and a woman had to be married to a man, regardless of her innate sexual preferences. She lives with her husband who takes care of her and clearly loves her. However, when her sister Vanessa comes to visit, at the end of the visit, Virginia gives her a long, passionate kiss on the lips that is apparently reciprocated. The kiss is so intense that it indicates a repressed desire. Vanessa accepts it, but it is not clear whether she does so out of mutual attraction or compassion for her sister’s suffering.”

This paragraph follows the structure illustrated in the diagram. 

It opens with a lead sentence which summarizes and introduces the entire contents of the paragraph perfectly. It is also the most general statement of the essay.

Next comes the explanation. We explain why we think that Virginia has a problem. The time period she lives in makes it difficult to be a sexual minority. 

Finally, we provide an example – the most specific kind of evidence in an essay. It is an example of a kiss, with a description and implications. 

To complete the body of the essay, we would need to build it out by writing one paragraph after another, following the outline and maintaining this body paragraph structure. 

Note that you can also use outside sources to support your points. But first write out what you can without resorting to research. And only then go and find sources that would confirm your thinking and ideas. 

Step 7. Write the conclusion

This is the final step and the easiest one. I usually advocate for concluding with a simple restatement. 

All you need to do is write out the thesis statement using different words so it doesn’t come across as a mere copy. 

Your conclusion can be shorter than the introductory paragraph. After all, you’ve already said it all. And now, just restate in fewer and different words. You can also add a more general statement at the very end, as a finishing touch. 

And let’s do it.

“The Hours is a fascinating study of how repressed sexuality and confining life situations have affected people’s lives throughout the twentieth century. The three characters live in different times, and the earlier the period the more difficult the situation and the harder it is to endure. Virginia commits suicide because she can’t find a way out of her situation. Laura almost commits suicide but then chooses to abandon her situation, which is physically a little easier in the 1950’s. And Clarissa lives with her girlfriend. Her situation is better although she is still stuck as a bisexual. Life in 2001 is significantly better, though not devoid of challenges.”

And there you have it. Now you know exactly how to write a film analysis paper. 

I hope this was helpful!

Tutor Phil is an e-learning professional who helps adult learners finish their degrees by teaching them academic writing skills.

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How to Write a Video Essay: A Step-by-Step Guide and Tips

• by Joseph Kenas
• January 5, 2024
• Writing Tips

The video essay has become an increasingly popular way of presenting ideas and concepts in the age of the internet and YouTube. In this guide, we present a step-by-step guide on how to write a video essay and tips on how to make it.

While it is easy to write a normal essay, the structure of the video essay is a bit of a mystery, owing to the newness of the term.

However, in this article, we are going to define what is a video essay, how to write a video essay, and also How to present a video essay well in class.

What is a Video Essay?

A video essay is a video that delves into a certain subject, concept, person, or thesis. Video essays are difficult to characterize because they are a relatively new form, yet they are recognized regardless. Simply, video essays are visual compilations that try to persuade, educate, or criticize.

These days, there are many creatives making video essays on topics like politics, music, movies, and pop culture.

With these, essays have become increasingly popular in the era of video media such as Youtube, Vimeo, and others.

Video essays, like photo and traditional essays, tell a story or make a point.

The distinction is that video essays provide information through visuals.

When creating a video essay, you can incorporate video, images, text, music, and/or narration to make it dynamic and successful.

When you consider it, many music videos are actually video essays. 

Since making videos for YouTube and other video sites has grown so popular, many professors are now assigning video essays instead of regular essays to their students. So the question is, how do you write a video essay script?

Steps on How to Write a Video Essay Script

Unscripted videos cost time, effort, and are unpleasant to watch. The first thing you should do before making a video writes a script, even if it’s only a few lines long. Don’t be intimidated by the prospect of writing a script. All you need is a starting point.

A video script is important for anyone who wants to film a video with more confidence and clarity. They all contain comparable forms of information, such as who is speaking, what is said, where, and other important details.

While there are no precise criteria that a video essay must follow, it appears that most renowned video essayists are adhering to some steps as the form gets more popular and acknowledged online. 

1. Write a Thesis

Because a video essayist can handle a wide range of themes, video analysis essays lack defined bounds. The majority of essays, on the other hand, begin with a thesis.

A thesis is a statement, claim, theme, or concept that the rest of the essay is built around. A thesis might be broad, including a variety of art forms. Other theses can be quite detailed.

A good essay will almost always have a point to express. Every video analysis essay should have a central idea, or thesis, that ties the film together.

2. Write a Summary

Starting with a brief allows you and your team to document the answers to the most pressing project concerns. It ensures that everyone participating in the video production is on the same page.

This will avoid problems of mixing ideas or getting stuck when you are almost completing the project.

3. Choose a Proper Environment and Appropriate Tools

When it comes to writing your script, use any tool you’re familiar with, such as pen and paper. Also, find a writing atmosphere that is relaxing for you, where you can concentrate and be creative.

Consider what you don’t have to express out loud when you’re writing. Visual elements will be used to communicate a large portion of your content.

4. Use a Template

When you don’t have to reinvent the process every time you sit down, you get speed and consistency.

It’s using your cumulative knowledge of what works and doing it over and over again. Don’t start with a blank page when I sit down to create a script- try to use an already made template. 

5. Be Conversational

You want scripts that use language that is specific and targeted. Always avoid buzzwords, cliches, and generalizations. You want your audience to comprehend you clearly without rolling their eyes.

6. Be Narrative

Make careful to use a strong story structure when you’re trying to explain anything clearly. Ensure your script has a beginning, middle, and end, no matter how short it is. This will provide a familiar path for the viewers of your video script.

7. Edit Your Script

Make each word work for a certain position on the page when you choose your words.

They must serve a purpose.

After you’ve completed your first draft, go over your script and review it.

Then begin editing, reordering, and trimming. Remove as much as possible.

Consider cutting it if it isn’t helping you achieve your goal.

 8. Read Your Script Loudly

Before recording or going on in your process, it’s recommended to read your script aloud at least once. Even if you won’t be the one reading it, this is a good method to ensure that your message is clear. It’s a good idea to be away from people so you may practice in peace.

Words that flow well on paper don’t always flow well when spoken aloud. You might need to make some adjustments based on how tough certain phrases are to pronounce- it’s a lot easier to change it now than when recording.

9. Get Feedback

Sometimes it is very difficult to point out your mistakes in any piece of writing. Therefore, if you want a perfect video essay script, it is advisable to seek feedback from people who are not involved in the project.

Keep in mind that many will try to tear your work apart and make you feel incompetent. However, it can also be an opportunity to make your video better.

The best way to gather feedback is to assemble a group of people and read your script to them. Watch their facial reaction and jot own comments as you read. Make sure not to defend your decisions. Only listen to comments and ask questions to clarify.

After gathering feedback, decide on what points to include in your video essay. Also, you can ask someone else to read it to you so that you can listen to its follow.

A video essay can be a good mode to present all types of essays, especially compare and contrast essays as you can visually contrast the two subjects of your content.

How to make a Good Video from your Essay Script

You can make a good video from your script if you ask yourself the following questions;

• What is the video’s purpose? What is the purpose of the video in the first place?
• Who is this video’s intended audience?
• What is the subject of our video? (The more precise you can be, the better.) 
• What are the most important points to remember from the video?- What should viewers take away from it?

If the context had multiple characters, present their dialogues well in the essay to bring originality. If there is a need to involve another person, feel free to incorporate them.

How to Present a Video Essay Well in Class

• Write down keywords or main ideas in a notecard; do not write details- writing main ideas will help you remember your points when presenting. This helps you scan through your notecard for information.
• Practice- in presentations it is easy to tell who has practiced and who hasn’t. For your video essay to grab your class and professor’s attention, practice is the key. Practice in front of your friends and family asking for feedback and try to improve.
• Smile at your audience- this is one of the most important points when presenting anything in front of an audience. A smiley face draws the attention of the audience making them smile in return thus giving you confidence.
• Walk to your seat with a smile- try not to be disappointed even if you are not applauded. Be confident that you have aced your video presentation.

Other video presentations tips include;

• Making eye contact
• Have a good posture
• Do not argue with the audience 
• Look at everyone around the room, not just one audience or one spot
• Rember to use your hand and facial expressions to make a point.

Joseph is a freelance journalist and a part-time writer with a particular interest in the gig economy. He writes about schooling, college life, and changing trends in education. When not writing, Joseph is hiking or playing chess.

What Is a Video Essay? Definition & Examples Of Video Essays

A video essay consists of a series of videos that collectively, present an in-depth analysis or interpretation of a given subject or topic.

In this way, a video essay can be thought of as a condensed version of a lengthy written article.

VIDEO ESSAY

What is a video essay.

A video essay is an audio-visual presentation of your thoughts on a topic or text that usually lasts between 5 and 10 minutes long.

It can take the form of any type of media such as film, animation, or even PowerPoint presentations.

The most important thing to remember when creating a video essay is to include voiceover narration throughout the whole project so that viewers feel they are listening in on your thoughts and ideas rather than watching passively.

Video essays are typically created by content creators’ critics to make arguments about cinema, television, art history, and culture more broadly.

Ever wondered how ideas unfold in the dynamic world of video?

That’s where video essays come in.

They’re a compelling blend of documentary and personal reflection, packed into a visually engaging package.

We’ll dive deep into the art of the video essay, a form that’s taken the internet by storm.

In this article, we’ll explore how video essays have revolutionized storytelling and education.

They’re not just a person talking to a camera; they’re a meticulously crafted narrative, often weaving together film footage, voiceover, text, and music to argue and inform.

Stick with us as we unpack the nuances that make video essays a unique and powerful medium for expression and learning.

Components Of A Video Essay

As storytellers and educators, we recognize the intricate elements that comprise a video essay.

Each component is vital for communicating the essay’s message and maintaining the audience’s engagement.

Narrative Structure serves as the backbone of a video essay.

Our crafting of this structure relies on a cinematic approach where the beginning, middle, and end serve to introduce, argue, and explore our ideas.

Film Footage then breathes life into our words.

We handpick scenes from various sources, be it iconic or obscure, to visually accentuate our narrative.

The Voiceover we provide acts as a guide for our viewers.

It delivers our analysis and commentary, ensuring our perspective is heard.

Paired with this is the Text and Graphics segment, offering another layer of interpretation.

We animate bullet points, overlay subtitles, and incorporate infographics to highlight key points.

Our sound design, specifically the Music and Sound Effects , creates the video essay’s atmosphere.

It underscores the emotions we wish to evoke and punctuates the points we make.

This auditory component is as crucial as the visual, as it can completely change the viewer’s experience.

We also pay close attention to the Editing and Pacing .

This ensures our video essays are not only informative but also engaging.

The rhythm of the cuts and transitions keeps viewers invested from start to finish.

In essence, a strong video essay is a tapestry woven with:

• Narrative Structure – the story’s framework,
• Film Footage – visual evidence supporting our claims,
• Voiceover – our distinctive voice that narrates the essay,
• Text and Graphics – the clarity of our arguments through visual aids,
• Music and Sound Effects – the emotive undercurrent of our piece,
• Editing and Pacing – the flow that maintains engagement.

Each element works Along with the others, making our video essays not just informative, but also a cinematic experience.

Through these components, we offer a comprehensive yet compelling way of storytelling that captivates and educates our audience.

The Power Of Visual Storytelling

Visual storytelling harnesses the innate human attraction to imagery and narrative.

At its core, a video essay is a compelling form of visual storytelling that combines the rich tradition of oral narrative with the dynamic appeal of cinema.

The impact of visual storytelling in video essays can be profound.

When crafted effectively, they engage viewers on multiple sensory levels – not just audibly but visually, leading to a more immersive and memorable experience.

Imagery in visual storytelling isn’t merely decorative.

It’s a crucial carrier of thematic content, enhancing the narrative and supporting the overarching message.

By incorporating film footage and stills, video essays create a tapestry of visuals that resonate with viewers.

• Film Footage – Brings concepts to life with cinematic flair,
• Stills and Graphics – Emphasize key points and add depth to the narrative.

Through the deliberate choice of images and juxtaposition, video essays are able to articulate complex ideas.

They elicit emotions and evoke reactions that pure text or speech cannot match.

From documentaries like An Inconvenient Truth to educational content on platforms like TED-Ed, video essays have proven their capacity to inform and inspire.

Sound design in video essays goes beyond mere accompaniment; it’s an integral component of storytelling.

Music and sound effects set the tone, heighten tension, and can even alter the audience’s perception of the visuals.

It’s this synergy that elevates the story, giving it texture and nuance.

• Music – Sets the emotional tone,
• Sound Effects – Enhances the realism of the visuals.

Crafting a narrative in this medium isn’t just about what’s on screen.

It requires an understanding of how each element – from script to sound – works in concert.

This unity forms an intricate dance of auditory and visual elements that can transform a simple message into a powerful narrative experience.

The Influence Of Video Essays In Education

Video essays have become a dynamic tool in academic settings, transcending traditional teaching methods.

By blending entertainment with education, they engage students in ways that lectures and textbooks alone cannot.

How To Create A Powerful Video Essay

Creating a compelling video essay isn’t just about stitching clips together.

It requires a blend of critical thinking, storytelling, and technical skill.

Choose a Central Thesis that resonates with your intended audience.

Like any persuasive essay, your video should have a clear argument or point of view that you aim to get across.

Research Thoroughly to support your thesis with factual data and thought-provoking insights.

Whether you’re dissecting themes in The Great Gatsby or examining the cinematography of Citizen Kane , your analysis must be thorough and well-founded.

Plan Your Narrative Structure before jumping into the editing process.

Decide the flow of your argument and how each segment supports your central message.

Typically, you’d include:

• An intriguing introduction – set the stage for what’s coming,
• A body that elaborates your thesis – present your evidence and arguments,
• Clearly separated sections – these act as paragraphs would in written essays.

Visuals Are Key in a video essay.

We opt for high-quality footage that not only illustrates but also enhances our narrative.

Think of visuals as examples that will bring your argument to life.

Audio selection Should Never Be an Afterthought.

Pair your visuals with a soundtrack that complements the mood you’re aiming to create.

Voice-overs should be clear and paced in a way that’s easy for the audience to follow.

Editing Is Where It All Comes Together.

Here, timing and rhythm are crucial to maintain viewer engagement.

We ensure our cuts are clean and purposeful, and transition effects are used judiciously.

Interactive Elements like on-screen text or graphics can add a layer of depth to your video essay.

Use such elements to highlight important points or data without disrupting the flow of your narrative.

Feedback Is Invaluable before finalizing your video essay.

We often share our drafts with a trusted group to gain insights that we might have missed.

It’s a part of refining our work to make sure it’s as impactful as it can be.

Remember, creating a video essay is about more than compiling clips and sound – it’s a form of expression that combines film criticism with visual storytelling.

It’s about crafting an experience that informs and intrigues, compelling the viewer to see a subject through a new lens.

With the right approach, we’re not just delivering information; we’re creating an immersive narrative experience.

What Is A Video Essay – Wrap Up

We’ve explored the intricate craft of video essays, shedding light on their ability to captivate and inform.

By weaving together compelling visuals and sound with a strong narrative, we can create immersive experiences that resonate with our audience.

Let’s harness these tools and share our stories, knowing that with the right approach, our video essays can truly make an impact.

Remember, it’s our unique perspective and creative vision that will set our work apart in the ever-evolving landscape of digital storytelling.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is visual storytelling in video essays.

Visual storytelling in video essays is the craft of using visual elements to narrate a story or present an argument, engaging viewers on a sensory level beyond just text or speech.

Why Is Visual Storytelling Important In Video Essays?

Visual storytelling is important because it captures attention and immerses the audience, making the content more memorable and impactful through the integration of visuals, sound, and narrative.

What Are The Key Elements Of A Powerful Video Essay?

The key elements include a central thesis, thorough research, a well-planned narrative structure, high-quality visuals, fitting audio, effective editing, interactive components, and a compelling immersive narrative experience.

How Do I Choose A Central Thesis For My Video Essay?

Choose a central thesis that is focused, debatable, and thought-provoking to anchor your video essay and give it a clear direction.

What Should I Focus On During The Research Phase?

Focus on gathering varied and credible information that supports your thesis and enriches the narrative with compelling facts and insights.

What Role Does Audio Play In Video Essays?

Audio enhances the visual experience by adding depth to the narrative, providing emotional cues, and aiding in information retention.

How Can Interactive Elements Improve My Video Essay?

Interactive elements can enhance engagement by allowing viewers to participate actively, often leading to a deeper understanding and connection with the content.

Why Is Feedback Important In Creating A Video Essay?

Feedback is crucial as it provides insights into how your video essay is perceived, allowing you to make adjustments to improve clarity, impact, and viewer experience.

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A video essay is a type of video that is used to present a single, cohesive argument or idea. They can be used to communicate a complex idea in a way that is easy to understand. They can also be used to show how a

It is indeed.

Absolutely, Greg.

Great post! I found the definition of video essays to be particularly insightful.

As someone who is new to the world of video essays, it’s helpful to understand the different forms and purposes of this medium. The examples you provided were also enlightening, particularly the one on the First Amendment.

I’m looking forward to exploring more video essays in the future!

I found this post to be incredibly informative and helpful in understanding the concept of video essays.

As a budding filmmaker, I’m intrigued by the idea of blending traditional essay structure with visual storytelling. The examples provided in the post were particularly insightful, showcasing the versatility of video essays in capturing complex ideas and emotions. I can’t wait to explore this medium further and see where it takes me!

I found this post really fascinating, especially the section on the different types of video essays. I never knew there were so many variations!

As a student, I’m definitely going to start experimenting with video essays as a way to express myself and communicate my ideas. Thanks for sharing!

Interesting read! I’m curious to explore more video essays and see how they can be used to convey complex ideas in an engaging way.

Appreciate the comment

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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.

Film Analysis: Example, Format, and Outline + Topics & Prompts

Films are never just films. Instead, they are influential works of art that can evoke a wide range of emotions, spark meaningful conversations, and provide insightful commentary on society and culture. As a student, you may be tasked with writing a film analysis essay, which requires you to delve deeper into the characters and themes. But where do you start?

In this article, our expert team has explored strategies for writing a successful film analysis essay. From prompts for this assignment to an excellent movie analysis example, we’ll provide you with everything you need to craft an insightful film analysis paper.

• 📽️ Film Analysis Definition

📚 Types of Film Analysis

• ✍️ How to Write Film Analysis
• 🎞️ Movie Analysis Prompts
• 🎬 Top 15 Topics

📝 Film Analysis Example

• 🍿 More Examples

🔗 References

📽️ what is a film analysis essay.

A film analysis essay is a type of academic writing that critically examines a film, its themes, characters, and techniques used by the filmmaker. This essay aims to analyze the film’s meaning, message, and artistic elements and explain its cultural, social, and historical significance. It typically requires a writer to pay closer attention to aspects such as cinematography, editing, sound, and narrative structure.

Film Analysis vs Film Review

It’s common to confuse a film analysis with a film review, though these are two different types of writing. A film analysis paper focuses on the film’s narrative, sound, editing, and other elements. This essay aims to explore the film’s themes, symbolism , and underlying messages and to provide an in-depth interpretation of the film.

On the other hand, a film review is a brief evaluation of a film that provides the writer’s overall opinion of the movie. It includes the story’s short summary, a description of the acting, direction, and technical aspects, and a recommendation on whether or not the movie is worth watching.

Wondering what you should focus on when writing a movie analysis essay? Here are four main types of film analysis. Check them out!

📋 Film Analysis Format

The movie analysis format follows a typical essay structure, including a title, introduction, thesis statement, body, conclusion, and references.

The most common citation styles used for a film analysis are MLA and Chicago . However, we recommend you consult with your professor for specific guidelines. Remember to cite all dialogue and scene descriptions from the movie to support the analysis. The reference list should include the analyzed film and any external sources mentioned in the essay.

When referring to a specific movie in your paper, you should italicize the film’s name and use the title case. Don’t enclose the title of the movie in quotation marks.

📑 Film Analysis Essay Outline

A compelling film analysis outline is crucial as it helps make the writing process more focused and the content more insightful for the readers. Below, you’ll find the description of the main parts of the movie analysis essay.

Film Analysis Introduction

Many students experience writer’s block because they don’t know how to write an introduction for a film analysis. The truth is that the opening paragraph for a film analysis paper is similar to any other academic essay:

• Start with a hook to grab the reader’s attention . For example, it can be a fascinating fact or a thought-provoking question related to the film.
• Provide background information about the movie . Introduce the film, including its title, director, and release date. Follow this with a brief summary of the film’s plot and main themes.
• End the introduction with an analytical thesis statement . Present the central argument or interpretation that will be explored in the analysis.

Film Analysis Thesis

If you wonder how to write a thesis for a film analysis, we’ve got you! A thesis statement should clearly present your main idea related to the film and provide a roadmap for the rest of the essay. Your thesis should be specific, concise, and focused. In addition, it should be debatable so that others can present a contrasting point of view. Also, make sure it is supported with evidence from the film.

Let’s come up with a film analysis thesis example:

Through a feminist lens, Titanic is a story about Rose’s rebellion against traditional gender roles, showcasing her attempts to assert her autonomy and refusal to conform to societal expectations prevalent in the early 20th century.

Movie Analysis Main Body

Each body paragraph should focus on a specific aspect of the film that supports your main idea. These aspects include themes, characters, narrative devices , or cinematic techniques. You should also provide evidence from the film to support your analysis, such as quotes, scene descriptions, or specific visual or auditory elements.

Here are two things to avoid in body paragraphs:

• Film review . Your analysis should focus on specific movie aspects rather than your opinion of the film.
• Excessive plot summary . While it’s important to provide some context for the analysis, a lengthy plot summary can detract you from your main argument and analysis of the film.

Film Analysis Conclusion

In the conclusion of a movie analysis, restate the thesis statement to remind the reader of the main argument. Additionally, summarize the main points from the body to reinforce the key aspects of the film that were discussed. The conclusion should also provide a final thought or reflection on the film, tying together the analysis and presenting your perspective on its overall meaning.

✍️ How to Write a Film Analysis Essay

Writing a film analysis essay can be challenging since it requires a deep understanding of the film, its themes, and its characters. However, with the right approach, you can create a compelling analysis that offers insight into the film’s meaning and impact. To help you, we’ve prepared a small guide.

1. Understand the Prompt

When approaching a film analysis essay, it is crucial to understand the prompt provided by your professor. For example, suppose your professor asks you to analyze the film from the perspective of Marxist criticism or psychoanalytic film theory . In that case, it is essential to familiarize yourself with these approaches. This may involve studying these theories and identifying how they can be applied to the film.

If your professor did not provide specific guidelines, you will need to choose a film yourself and decide on the aspect you will explore. Whether it is the film’s themes, characters, cinematography, or social context, having a clear focus will help guide your analysis.

2. Watch the Film & Take Notes

Keep your assignment prompt in mind when watching the film for your analysis. For example, if you are analyzing the film from a feminist perspective, you should pay attention to the portrayal of female characters, power dynamics , and gender roles within the film.

As you watch the movie, take notes on key moments, dialogues, and scenes relevant to your analysis. Additionally, keeping track of the timecodes of important scenes can be beneficial, as it allows you to quickly revisit specific moments in the film for further analysis.

3. Develop a Thesis and an Outline

Next, develop a thesis statement for your movie analysis. Identify the central argument or perspective you want to convey about the film. For example, you can focus on the film’s themes, characters, plot, cinematography, or other outstanding aspects. Your thesis statement should clearly present your stance and provide a preview of the points you will discuss in your analysis.

Having created a thesis, you can move on to the outline for an analysis. Write down all the arguments that can support your thesis, logically organize them, and then look for the supporting evidence in the movie.

4. Write Your Movie Analysis

When writing a film analysis paper, try to offer fresh and original ideas on the film that go beyond surface-level observations. If you need some inspiration, have a look at these thought-provoking questions:

• How does the movie evoke emotional responses from the audience through sound, editing, character development , and camera work?
• Is the movie’s setting portrayed in a realistic or stylized manner? What atmosphere or mood does the setting convey to the audience?
• How does the lighting in the movie highlight certain aspects? How does the lighting impact the audience’s perception of the movie’s characters, spaces, or overall mood?
• What role does the music play in the movie? How does it create specific emotional effects for the audience?
• What underlying values or messages does the movie convey? How are these values communicated to the audience?

5. Revise and Proofread

To revise and proofread a film analysis essay, review the content for grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors. Ensure the paper flows logically and each paragraph contributes to the overall analysis. Remember to double-check that you haven’t missed any in-text citations and have enough evidence and examples from the movie to support your arguments.

Consider seeking feedback from a peer or instructor to get an outside perspective on the essay. Another reader can provide valuable insights and suggestions for improvement.

🎞️ Movie Analysis: Sample Prompts

Now that we’ve covered the essential aspects of a film analysis template, it’s time to choose a topic. Here are some prompts to help you select a film for your analysis.

• Metropolis film analysis essay . When analyzing this movie, you can explore the themes of technology and society or the portrayal of class struggle. You can also focus on symbolism, visual effects, and the influence of German expressionism on the film’s aesthetic.
• The Godfather film analysis essay . An epic crime film, The Godfather , allows you to analyze the themes of power and corruption, the portrayal of family dynamics, and the influence of Italian neorealism on the film’s aesthetic. You can also examine the movie’s historical context and impact on future crime dramas.
• Psycho film analysis essay . Consider exploring the themes of identity and duality, the use of suspense and tension in storytelling, or the portrayal of mental illness. You can also explore the impact of this movie on the horror genre.
• Forrest Gump film analysis essay . If you decide to analyze the Forrest Gump movie, you can focus on the portrayal of historical events. You might also examine the use of nostalgia in storytelling, the character development of the protagonist, and the film’s impact on popular culture and American identity.
• The Great Gatsby film analysis essay . The Great Gatsby is a historical drama film that allows you to analyze the themes of the American Dream, wealth, and class. You can also explore the portrayal of the 1920s Jazz Age and the symbolism of the green light.
• Persepolis film analysis essay . In a Persepolis film analysis essay, you can uncover the themes of identity and self-discovery. You might also consider analyzing the portrayal of the Iranian Revolution and its aftermath, the use of animation as a storytelling device, and the film’s influence on the graphic novel genre.

🎬 Top 15 Film Analysis Essay Topics

• The use of color symbolism in Vertigo and its impact on the narrative.
• The moral ambiguity and human nature in No Country for Old Men .
• The portrayal of ethnicity in Gran Torino and its commentary on cultural stereotypes.
• The cinematography and visual effects in The Hunger Games and their contribution to the dystopian atmosphere.
• The use of silence and sound design in A Quiet Place to immerse the audience.
• The disillusionment and existential crisis in The Graduate and its reflection of the societal norms of the 1960s.
• The themes of sacrifice and patriotism in Casablanca and their relevance to the historical context of World War II.
• The psychological horror in The Shining and its impact on the audience’s experience of fear and tension.
• The exploration of existentialism in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind .
• Multiple perspectives and unreliable narrators in Rashomon .
• The music and soundtrack in Titanic and its contribution to the film’s emotional resonance.
• The portrayal of good versus evil in the Harry Potter film series and its impact on understanding morality.
• The incorporation of vibrant colors in The Grand Budapest Hotel as a visual motif.
• The use of editing techniques to tell a nonlinear narrative in Pulp Fiction .
• The function of music and score in enhancing the emotional impact in Schindler’s List .

Check out the Get Out film analysis essay we’ve prepared for college and high school students. We hope this movie analysis essay example will inspire you and help you understand the structure of this assignment better.

Film Analysis Essay Introduction Example

Get Out, released in 2017 and directed by Jordan Peele, is a culturally significant horror film that explores themes of racism, identity, and social commentary. The film follows Chris, a young African-American man, visiting his white girlfriend’s family for the weekend. This essay will analyze how, through its masterful storytelling, clever use of symbolism, and thought-provoking narrative, Get Out reveals the insidious nature of racism in modern America.

Film Analysis Body Paragraphs Example

Throughout the movie, Chris’s character is subject to various types of microaggression and subtle forms of discrimination. These instances highlight the insidious nature of racism, showing how it can exist even in seemingly progressive environments. For example, during Chris’s visit to his white girlfriend’s family, the parents continuously make racially insensitive comments, expressing their admiration for black physical attributes and suggesting a fascination bordering on fetishization. This sheds light on some individuals’ objectification and exotification of black bodies.

Get Out also critiques the performative allyship of white liberals who claim to be accepting and supportive of the black community. It is evident in the character of Rose’s father, who proclaims: “I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could” (Peele, 2017). However, the film exposes how this apparent acceptance can mask hidden prejudices and manipulation.

Film Analysis Conclusion Example

In conclusion, the film Get Out provides a searing critique of racial discrimination and white supremacy through its compelling narrative, brilliant performances, and skillful direction. By exploring the themes of the insidious nature of racism, fetishization, and performative allyship, Get Out not only entertains but also challenges viewers to reflect on their own biases.

🍿 More Film Analysis Examples

• Social Psychology Theories in The Experiment
• Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader: George Lukas’s Star Wars Review
• Girl, Interrupted : Mental Illness Analysis
• Mental Disorders in the Finding Nemo Film
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Film: Interpretive Psychological Analysis
• Analysis of Spielberg’s Film Lincoln
• Glory – The Drama Movie by Edward Zwick
• Inventors in The Men Who Built America Series
• Crash Movie: Racism as a Theme
• Dances with Wolves Essay – Movie Analysis
• Superbad by G. Mottola
• Ordinary People Analysis and Maslow Hierarchy of Needs
• A Review of the Movie An Inconvenient Truth by Guggenheim
• Chaplin’s Modern Times and H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau
• Misé-En-Scene and Camera Shots in The King’s Speech
• Children’s Sexuality in the Out in the Dark Film
• Chinese and American Women in Joy Luck Club Novel and Film
• The Film Silver Linings Playbook by Russell
• The Role of Music in the Films The Hours and The Third Man
• The Social Network : Film Analysis
• My Neighbor Totoro : Film by Hayao Miyazaki
• Marriage Story Film Directed by Noah Baumbach

❓ Film Analysis Essay: FAQ

Why is film analysis important.

Film analysis allows viewers to go beyond the surface level and delve into the deeper layers of a film’s narrative, themes, and technical aspects. It enables a critical examination that enhances appreciation and understanding of the film’s message, cultural significance, and artistic value. At the same time, writing a movie analysis essay can boost your critical thinking and ability to spot little details.

How to write a movie analysis?

• Watch the film multiple times to grasp its key elements.
• Take notes on the story, characters, and themes.
• Pay attention to the film’s cinematography, editing, sound, message, symbolism, and social context.
• Formulate a strong thesis statement that presents your main argument.
• Support your claims with evidence from the film.

How to write a critical analysis of a movie?

A critical analysis of a movie involves evaluating its elements, such as plot, themes, characters, and cinematography, and providing an informed opinion on its strengths and weaknesses. To write it, watch the movie attentively, take notes, develop a clear thesis statement, support arguments with evidence, and balance the positive and negative.

How to write a psychological analysis of a movie?

A psychological analysis of a movie examines characters’ motivations, behaviors, and emotional experiences. To write it, analyze the characters’ psychological development, their relationships, and the impact of psychological themes conveyed in the film. Support your analysis with psychological theories and evidence from the movie.

• Film Analysis | UNC Writing Center
• Psychological Analysis of Films | Steemit
• Critical Film Analysis | University of Hawaii
• Questions to Ask of Any Film | All American High School Film Festival
• Resources – How to Write a Film Analysis | Northwestern
• Film Analysis | University of Toronto
• Film Writing: Sample Analysis | Purdue Online Writing Lab
• Film Analysis Web Site 2.0 | Yale University
• Questions for Film Analysis | University of Washington
• Film & Media Studies Resources: Types of Film Analysis | Bowling Green State University
• Film & Media Studies Resources: Researching a Film | Bowling Green State University
• Motion Picture Analysis Worksheet | University of Houston
• Reviews vs Film Criticism | The University of Vermont Libraries
• Television and Film Analysis Questions | University of Michigan
• How to Write About Film: The Movie Review, the Theoretical Essay, and the Critical Essay | University of Colorado

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371 fun argumentative essay topics for 2024.

Film Analysis

What this handout is about.

This handout introduces film analysis and and offers strategies and resources for approaching film analysis assignments.

Writing the film analysis essay

Writing a film analysis requires you to consider the composition of the film—the individual parts and choices made that come together to create the finished piece. Film analysis goes beyond the analysis of the film as literature to include camera angles, lighting, set design, sound elements, costume choices, editing, etc. in making an argument. The first step to analyzing the film is to watch it with a plan.

Watching the film

First it’s important to watch the film carefully with a critical eye. Consider why you’ve been assigned to watch a film and write an analysis. How does this activity fit into the course? Why have you been assigned this particular film? What are you looking for in connection to the course content? Let’s practice with this clip from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958). Here are some tips on how to watch the clip critically, just as you would an entire film:

• Give the clip your undivided attention at least once. Pay close attention to details and make observations that might start leading to bigger questions.
• Watch the clip a second time. For this viewing, you will want to focus specifically on those elements of film analysis that your class has focused on, so review your course notes. For example, from whose perspective is this clip shot? What choices help convey that perspective? What is the overall tone, theme, or effect of this clip?
• Take notes while you watch for the second time. Notes will help you keep track of what you noticed and when, if you include timestamps in your notes. Timestamps are vital for citing scenes from a film!

For more information on watching a film, check out the Learning Center’s handout on watching film analytically . For more resources on researching film, including glossaries of film terms, see UNC Library’s research guide on film & cinema .

Brainstorming ideas

Once you’ve watched the film twice, it’s time to brainstorm some ideas based on your notes. Brainstorming is a major step that helps develop and explore ideas. As you brainstorm, you may want to cluster your ideas around central topics or themes that emerge as you review your notes. Did you ask several questions about color? Were you curious about repeated images? Perhaps these are directions you can pursue.

If you’re writing an argumentative essay, you can use the connections that you develop while brainstorming to draft a thesis statement . Consider the assignment and prompt when formulating a thesis, as well as what kind of evidence you will present to support your claims. Your evidence could be dialogue, sound edits, cinematography decisions, etc. Much of how you make these decisions will depend on the type of film analysis you are conducting, an important decision covered in the next section.

After brainstorming, you can draft an outline of your film analysis using the same strategies that you would for other writing assignments. Here are a few more tips to keep in mind as you prepare for this stage of the assignment:

• Make sure you understand the prompt and what you are being asked to do. Remember that this is ultimately an assignment, so your thesis should answer what the prompt asks. Check with your professor if you are unsure.
• In most cases, the director’s name is used to talk about the film as a whole, for instance, “Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo .” However, some writers may want to include the names of other persons who helped to create the film, including the actors, the cinematographer, and the sound editor, among others.
• When describing a sequence in a film, use the literary present. An example could be, “In Vertigo , Hitchcock employs techniques of observation to dramatize the act of detection.”
• Finding a screenplay/script of the movie may be helpful and save you time when compiling citations. But keep in mind that there may be differences between the screenplay and the actual product (and these differences might be a topic of discussion!).
• Go beyond describing basic film elements by articulating the significance of these elements in support of your particular position. For example, you may have an interpretation of the striking color green in Vertigo , but you would only mention this if it was relevant to your argument. For more help on using evidence effectively, see the section on “using evidence” in our evidence handout .

Also be sure to avoid confusing the terms shot, scene, and sequence. Remember, a shot ends every time the camera cuts; a scene can be composed of several related shots; and a sequence is a set of related scenes.

Different types of film analysis

As you consider your notes, outline, and general thesis about a film, the majority of your assignment will depend on what type of film analysis you are conducting. This section explores some of the different types of film analyses you may have been assigned to write.

Semiotic analysis

Semiotic analysis is the interpretation of signs and symbols, typically involving metaphors and analogies to both inanimate objects and characters within a film. Because symbols have several meanings, writers often need to determine what a particular symbol means in the film and in a broader cultural or historical context.

For instance, a writer could explore the symbolism of the flowers in Vertigo by connecting the images of them falling apart to the vulnerability of the heroine.

Here are a few other questions to consider for this type of analysis:

• What objects or images are repeated throughout the film?
• How does the director associate a character with small signs, such as certain colors, clothing, food, or language use?
• How does a symbol or object relate to other symbols and objects, that is, what is the relationship between the film’s signs?

Many films are rich with symbolism, and it can be easy to get lost in the details. Remember to bring a semiotic analysis back around to answering the question “So what?” in your thesis.

Narrative analysis

Narrative analysis is an examination of the story elements, including narrative structure, character, and plot. This type of analysis considers the entirety of the film and the story it seeks to tell.

For example, you could take the same object from the previous example—the flowers—which meant one thing in a semiotic analysis, and ask instead about their narrative role. That is, you might analyze how Hitchcock introduces the flowers at the beginning of the film in order to return to them later to draw out the completion of the heroine’s character arc.

To create this type of analysis, you could consider questions like:

• How does the film correspond to the Three-Act Structure: Act One: Setup; Act Two: Confrontation; and Act Three: Resolution?
• What is the plot of the film? How does this plot differ from the narrative, that is, how the story is told? For example, are events presented out of order and to what effect?
• Does the plot revolve around one character? Does the plot revolve around multiple characters? How do these characters develop across the film?

When writing a narrative analysis, take care not to spend too time on summarizing at the expense of your argument. See our handout on summarizing for more tips on making summary serve analysis.

Cultural/historical analysis

One of the most common types of analysis is the examination of a film’s relationship to its broader cultural, historical, or theoretical contexts. Whether films intentionally comment on their context or not, they are always a product of the culture or period in which they were created. By placing the film in a particular context, this type of analysis asks how the film models, challenges, or subverts different types of relations, whether historical, social, or even theoretical.

For example, the clip from Vertigo depicts a man observing a woman without her knowing it. You could examine how this aspect of the film addresses a midcentury social concern about observation, such as the sexual policing of women, or a political one, such as Cold War-era McCarthyism.

A few of the many questions you could ask in this vein include:

• How does the film comment on, reinforce, or even critique social and political issues at the time it was released, including questions of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality?
• How might a biographical understanding of the film’s creators and their historical moment affect the way you view the film?
• How might a specific film theory, such as Queer Theory, Structuralist Theory, or Marxist Film Theory, provide a language or set of terms for articulating the attributes of the film?

Take advantage of class resources to explore possible approaches to cultural/historical film analyses, and find out whether you will be expected to do additional research into the film’s context.

Mise-en-scène analysis

A mise-en-scène analysis attends to how the filmmakers have arranged compositional elements in a film and specifically within a scene or even a single shot. This type of analysis organizes the individual elements of a scene to explore how they come together to produce meaning. You may focus on anything that adds meaning to the formal effect produced by a given scene, including: blocking, lighting, design, color, costume, as well as how these attributes work in conjunction with decisions related to sound, cinematography, and editing. For example, in the clip from Vertigo , a mise-en-scène analysis might ask how numerous elements, from lighting to camera angles, work together to present the viewer with the perspective of Jimmy Stewart’s character.

To conduct this type of analysis, you could ask:

• What effects are created in a scene, and what is their purpose?
• How does this scene represent the theme of the movie?
• How does a scene work to express a broader point to the film’s plot?

This detailed approach to analyzing the formal elements of film can help you come up with concrete evidence for more general film analysis assignments.

Reviewing your draft

Once you have a draft, it’s helpful to get feedback on what you’ve written to see if your analysis holds together and you’ve conveyed your point. You may not necessarily need to find someone who has seen the film! Ask a writing coach, roommate, or family member to read over your draft and share key takeaways from what you have written so far.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Aumont, Jacques, and Michel Marie. 1988. L’analyse Des Films . Paris: Nathan.

Media & Design Center. n.d. “Film and Cinema Research.” UNC University Libraries. Last updated February 10, 2021. https://guides.lib.unc.edu/filmresearch .

Oxford Royale Academy. n.d. “7 Ways to Watch Film.” Oxford Royale Academy. Accessed April 2021. https://www.oxford-royale.com/articles/7-ways-watch-films-critically/ .

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Video Essay Analysis and Composition

Lesson plan, grade level.

Undergraduate (Face-to-Face or Online)

Students will be introduced to a contemporary essay genre to see how people argue in multimodal environments.

Students will reinforce their understanding of various ideas from composition studies discussed throughout the semester, including Aristotle’s Triangle, Toulmin’s Model, and paragraph structure. 1

Students will demonstrate their understanding of expository writing and argumentative approaches.

Students will compose a short video essay based on a previous assignment to learn the basics of video essay composition.

Background and Context

I provide these exercises near the middle of the semester as a way to show the relevancy of what students are learning in the composition class. I teach this genre in both Composition 1 and 2. The exercises demonstrate how people use the same structure and argumentative techniques in video essays that the students are using in their written work. Given the increasing popularity of video essays, this assignment allows students to see what contemporary expository writing is like in the digital age.

Total Estimated Class Time

A single class period (approx. 50 mins.)

Videos Used for This Session and Assignment

Jack Saint’s “The Truth about 90s Cartoons and ‘LGBT Brainwashing’”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L–Fa8_ujBA

Jack Saint’s “Sky High: Disney’s Fascist Eugenics Movie”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIdbLUm-ez8

Sequence of Activities

• Viewing and Analysis (30 mins.)

As students watch the videos, they take notes, guided by the questions in the Video Essay Analysis exercise.

• Class Discussion (20 mins.)

As a class, we share everyone’s answers, referring to specific sections of the videos. This discussion creates a lot of interaction: some students are unsure about what the thesis is, while others find it easily—more easily than they found the thesis in any written essay previously provided.

Then we discuss whether students would rather write traditional essays or compose video essays. Many students prefer watching the essay video to reading an essay, yet most would rather compose a written essay, since they recognize that it would take more time to complete and edit a well-paced video essay.

These discussions always reinforce compositional elements and allow students to think about how genre and structure affect the creation of an argument.

Follow-Up Activities

For homework, students create one-minute recorded versions of traditional essays they wrote earlier in the course, then share the recordings in discussion boards. This activity offers them a chance to experiment with speaking while using a scripted argument and helps them think about how they can adapt, retool, and revise their claims.

Possible Alterations

One way to strengthen the discussion is to assign the students to watch the video for homework and complete the exercise sheet before they come to the next session. The main reason my students watch the video in class is that they have limited access to the Internet outside the school because they live in a rural area. If students lived in an area where they could access the Internet asynchronously, I would assign watching the video before they came to class so that we could spend more time on analysis and discussion.

I have used these exercises for online composition classes and made only minor adjustments. For online classes, we simply divide each stage into individual assignments and discussion boards. The students answer the questions about the video essay on their own and then share the responses in a discussion board. The larger discussion occurs in the same discussion board. The video essays are posted in another forum, an activity that creates further dialogue about this genre.

You can use these assignments in secondary education courses as well. If time and curricular requirements allow, you can easily use more essays with a similar theme to help show how people respond to topics and each other’s interpretations.

Although Jack Saint’s videos are fun to use, especially since I teach film as well, I would recommend finding video essays that coincide with a course’s theme or that focus on current events. The topics of video essays on the web are as varied as the approaches used to create them. Certain ones use a simple webcam, while others use more sophisticated editing. In any case, introducing video essays in a composition course allows students to see and hear arguments—a valuable experience.

1 Aristotle’s Triangle, also known as the rhetorical triangle, includes the foundational ways in which speakers or writers can appeal to their audiences. The three components include pathos (appeals to an audience’s emotion), logos (appeals to an audience’s sense of logic and reasoning), and ethos (appeals that establish an author’s credibility for an audience). Stephen Toulmin created his model to show the fundamental elements of argumentation in writing. The basic elements include claim, data, and warrant or synthesis. He argues that these three components are needed for any argument to be successful, and this structure is the basis for most paragraphs for expository writing. The traditional formula for structuring a paragraph involves starting with a topic sentence argument, followed by examples, and ending with synthesis sentences.

Lesson Materials

Video Essay Analysis Exercise  

Video Essay Prompt  

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How to Write a Film Analysis Essay: Examples, Outline, & Tips

22 December 2023

last updated

This guideline is designed to teach people how to write a film analysis essay. Basically, students and anyone interested in writing a good movie analysis essay should read the details and tips that can help them to produce a high-standard piece. The article begins by defining what a film analysis is, listing the possible topics of such an essay, and giving a sample outline and example. The guideline also teaches about the various types of film analysis and the most common concepts that such a paper may address. As a result, the article concludes with tips, including ten things to do and ten not to do when writing a film analysis essay.

General Aspects of How to Write an Outstanding Film Analysis Essay

A college education is dynamic and robust because students undertake various academic activities in and out of the lecture room. Typically, activities within lecture halls are theoretical, and those that happen outside are practical. A critical academic exercise is a film analysis assignment, where professors require students to watch a movie and discuss using particular elements. The elements directors and producers use to bring the action alive include the stage, lighting, sound, and other special effects. As such, analyzing a film is a complex exercise that requires one to perfect the art of writing. In turn, this article is a guideline for how to write a film analysis essay. By reading this text, students can gain insights into the details and elements they must address when writing a movie analysis essay.

Definition of What Is a Film Analysis and Its Meaning

According to a simple definition, film analysis explores the use of particular elements in a film, including mise-en-scène, cinematography, sound, and editing. Students should talk about actors’ positioning, scenery adaptation, physical setting, stage lighting, and cultural context when writing this kind of essay. Another critical fact to consider is that films come in various genres, including action, documentaries, drama, horror, romance, and science fiction. Each type of movie analysis utilizes the above elements differently. Therefore, film analysis means writing an in-depth examination of how directors and producers approach their productions to make them entertaining and informative. For example, most science fiction films are futuristic, showing how society may change. In this respect, all films have a cultural context students must address in their movie analysis essay.

Unique Features of a Film Analysis

Generally, film analysis essays differ from other types of papers , including an argumentative essay , a cause and effect essay , and a research paper , because they focus on a single production and explore the use of the above elements. Some unique features that differentiate film analysis papers from other types of essays include a short plot summary where writers briefly tell readers what the movie is about, such as exterminating evil. In this type of analysis, writers evaluate the use of the elements above and state whether they make the film great or below expectations. Another feature is a poster showing sceneries to give readers a visual experience of the movie. Such visuals are essential to arouse the reader’s emotions and mental involvement in a movie analysis. Therefore, when writing a film analysis essay, students should focus on telling the story and depicting it.

6 Common Types of a Film Analysis Essay

Students must determine the type of film analysis essay to avoid sounding ignorant and irrelevant when writing about the movie. The most common types are semiotic, narrative, contextual, mise-en-scène, cultural, and historical analyses. Each type requires students to adopt a singular focus, meaning one cannot concentrate effort on elements that do not fall under the study. The reason for these types of analyses is that it is not always possible to understand an entire film in an essay, which is generally a short text of about two to three pages. Nonetheless, it is prudent for students to know how to write each type, meaning understanding the approach and unique features they must discuss and evaluate.

🔸 Semiotic Analysis

A semiotic essay involves discussing, evaluating, and interpreting the use of literary analysis elements, including analogies and metaphors, to inanimate characters and objects. Generally, these elements have different meanings, and students should determine what a particular feature stands for in the film they are analyzing vis-à-vis its broader cultural or historical significance in society. For example, when analyzing the 1958 film Vertigo , one may discuss the symbolism of flowers by stating how some images of them falling apart depict the heroine’s vulnerability. In turn, when conducting a semiotic analysis, one should consider several issues, including the repetition of objects or images throughout the movie, the association of a character with particular objects, and the relation between an object and other objects. Hence, a semiotic analysis essay requires students to examine the use of objects and symbols to communicate a deep meaning.

🔸 Narrative Analysis

A narrative analysis essay involves examining the elements that directors or producers use to construct the storyline, including characters, the plot, the setting, and the narrative structure. As such, students should focus on the entire movie and the message it seeks to communicate. Considering the example above of Vertigo , writers may discuss the narrative role of flowers by analyzing how director Alfred Hitchcock introduces them as the film begins and only brings them up again toward the end to complete the heroine’s character arc. Students should also consider several issues when conducting a narrative analysis essay, including the plot and how it unfolds. For example, one may talk about whether events are systematic or out of order and what that signifies. However, students should not focus on summarizing the plot at the expense of making and defending an argument.

🔸 Contextual Analysis

A contextual analysis of a film is a discussion of the placement of the movie within particular contexts, such as slavery, women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement, or the industrial revolution. In this case, filmmakers produce movies and base their identity on the unfolding circumstances or themes defining a particular time in history.

🔸 Mise-en-Scène Analysis

A mise-en-scène analysis essay involves discussing and evaluating compositional elements, including sets, props, actors, costumes, and lighting, and how they complement or conflict with cinematography, sound, and editing. The most effective approach in conducting this movie analysis is to focus on one or a few scenes rather than the entire film, telling readers how they support or undermine the plot. As such, mise-en-scène is part of the director’s narrative because this element influences how the audience understands the central message in the production. Taking Vertigo as a case study , one may discuss how Hitchcock incorporates lighting and camera angles to characterize Jimmy Stewart (starring as former police detective John “Scottie” Ferguson) as acrophobic. When adopting a mise-en-scène analysis, students should consider how particular scenes create effects and their purpose and how different scenes emphasize a theme central to the plot.

🔸 Cultural Analysis

A cultural analysis essay examines, evaluates, and interprets the broader cultural disposition the director adopts to tell the story. Students must understand that, regardless of a film’s production period, a culture influences its various elements, like characters and their mannerisms. Taking Vertigo as an example, one may interpret the scene where a man observes a woman without her knowing it to mean the sexual policing of women in mid-20th century America. When analyzing the context of a movie, students should consider how the film captures, reinforces, or critiques social norms in a particular culture or era.

🔸 Historical Analysis

A historical analysis essay means writing about a particular film from the perspective of the period underscoring its production. Ideally, filmmakers place their work into a historical context, such as the colonial era or ancient civilizations. Therefore, when writing a film analysis essay, students should focus on the period the director situates its plot.

How to Write a More Technical and Focused Film Analysis Essay

Film analysis helps readers to understand essential details, including the plot and its central themes, characters and their disposition, scenes and significance, and effects and the message they communicate. In this respect, one must be ready to undertake a technical, focused, and vigorous analysis of one or several of these elements. In most instances, instructions dictate the aspects students should write about. However, without such specifications, they should focus on a few elements and examine them vigorously. For example, one may decide to focus on the plot. In this instance, a movie analysis essay must examine the plot from different perspectives, including the characters, central themes, and the message. Such a focused analysis allows readers to gain an in-depth understanding of a particular element of movie reviews instead of an analysis that discusses several elements superficially. Some elements and terms that students can use for writing a film analysis essay include:

• Flashback and flashforward: Flashbacks are scenes that recount events that have a powerful influence on the current or unfolding event. On the other hand, flashforwards are scenes that reveal events that will occur later in the film, and their purpose is to create anticipation in the audience.
• Time framework: Film directors structure time linearly to depict an orderly unfolding of events. The most common time framework is omitting events to move the story forward.
• Setting: The environment within which a director creates a movie, including physical surrounding like a city and period like a year or century.
• Range of events: The different events in a film sustain the plot. Typically, these events directly or indirectly affect protagonists because they facilitate the storyline.
• Cast: The people producing a film, including the main actors and the production crew. However, actors take priority when discussing the cast.
• Plot: The sequence of events that directors create to communicate a central message in a movie analysis. When writing a film analysis essay, students should never ignore this aspect because it underscores the storyline.
• Shot, scene, and sequence: Features that tell the quality of a film but, most importantly, the interconnectivity of elements in the director’s aim to tell a story.
• Genre: The classification of movies into various forms, such as action, documentaries, science fiction, horror, or romance. Knowing a film’s genre under analysis is helpful in identifying the significance of cinematography and mise-en-scène elements.
• Directing: Supervising film production by visualizing the script, controlling and managing the artistic and dramatic aspects, and guiding the actors and technical crew.
• Scenario: The aspect of a movie analysis that provides the audience insight into the plot or characters. Ideally, scenarios are scenes that convey critical details of the storyline, such as climax.
• Acting: The role that individuals play to bring a film’s plot alive. As such, it involves all people who assume different characters in a movie, including protagonists, antagonists, heroes, and heroines.
• Visual effects: The qualities that filmmakers use to bring the action alive, such as images, shots, and scenes. When discussing visual effects in a film analysis essay, students should comment on how they reinforce certain concepts or themes, like mood, fear, and suspense.
• Music and audio effects: Sound and language that enhance the audience’s understanding of the central message. Most films incorporate background sounds in multiple scenes to arouse reactions in the audience.
• Camera angle: The positioning of the camera to capture precise shots in films. Filmmakers use camera angles in relation to scenes and characters to affect the audience’s perception.
• Lighting: A mise-en-scène element that filmmakers use to create different effects in a film. Ideally, movies involve different lighting techniques, such as key light, fill light, and backlight, to guide the audience’s attention, create a visual impact, give the film a texture, or create an atmosphere.
• References: Features that indicate how a film uses dialogue and images in its storyline to allude to, recall, or refer to another movie. Ideally, filmmakers use this feature to contextualize their productions within a cultural or historical space.
• Animation: The use of drawings or puppets with mobility like humans. Although it is a movie genre for analysis today, filmmakers use animation to give objects animal or human qualities, such as walking, talking, crying, or fighting. Animations effectively depict society as a complex system comprising different life systems.
• Protagonist: The character that takes center stage in a film and whom the director uses to construct the plot. While a film’s plot may revolve around several actors, only one is central, and others only assist the main hero in accomplishing agendas. In this respect, when students are writing a film analysis, they should tell the audience the main protagonist(s).
• Antagonist: Characters that stand opposite of protagonists. Filmmakers use them to depict the main character as assailed by forces aiming to thwart their agenda.
• Climax: The point in a movie where the plot peaks and where the protagonist puts into motion a series of events that significantly determine their final experience. These events may include betrayal, heroism, or tragedy. Therefore, one can identify a film’s climax by assessing how the plot intensifies and events directly impacting the protagonist unfolds.
• Hero vs. anti-hero: Heroes stand out as brave because they attempt what others fear. In most movies, protagonists are heroes because they survive what consumes others. On the other hand, an anti-hero is a central character who lacks heroic qualities like bravery but is timid, fearful, frustrating, and irritating. As a result, the audience celebrates heroes under analysis and loath anti-heroes.
• Atmosphere: The environment in which a movie imbues the audience through the sequence of events revolving around the plot. Generally, action films create an intense atmosphere because of the frequency of fights. On the other hand, romantic movies create an emotional atmosphere characterized by attraction and happiness. On their part, horror films create an uneasy atmosphere because of the constant anticipation of evil.
• Background: The technique of capturing an image or object from a distance, often giving other images or objects prominence. Filmmakers use this quality to create a sense of authenticity in scenes. For example, a scene capturing a rioting crowd may have in its background an image of anti-riot police forming a barrier using their bodies. Looking at the imagery, one may see rioters more clearly but also understand the situation’s intensity because of the police in the background.
• Cameo: The dramatic appearance of a famous actor or personality in a movie for various reasons, including fun, publicity, or to give the film credibility. However, such characters do not become protagonists because they appear briefly and only once. When doing a film analysis, students should indicate such personalities and the role they may have played in the plot.
• Cinematography: The artistic use of technology and visual effects to dramatize the sequence of events in a film. Ideally, writers should examine the scenes’ general composition, locations’ lighting, camera angles and movements, and special effects, like illusions or camera tricks.
• Comic relief: A scene that allows the audience to release emotional weight or tension that may have built up due to escalating events with a negative outcome, such as betrayal and a series of murders. Filmmakers interpose comic relief in tragic scenarios to avoid burdening the audience emotionally to the point of refusing to watch the film to its conclusion . The only film genre that rarely uses comic relief is gothic.
• Film critics: Individuals who have made criticizing films a part- or full-time engagement. Ideally, these people watch movies to identify negative qualities, like a confused plot, poor lighting, and sound effects. While one may consider them an appropriate source of film reviews, they rarely highlight a good analysis of a movie.
• Director’s cut: An edited film version that represents the director’s original edit before the release of the theatrical edit that reaches the screens. This part of the film is important because it shows scenes that some editors may cut or altered. By examining the director’s cut, the writer of a film analysis essay looks at the complete production and tells how it may enhance the audience’s viewing experience.
• Foreshadowing: The technique of giving the audience a sneak preview of events yet to unfold to build anticipation and heighten dramatic tension. Filmmakers use this quality early in the film to create excitement in the audience and make them want to view the production to the end. Typically, foreshadowing focuses on events directly affecting the protagonist, such as a tragedy.
• Editing: Perfecting a film by deleting, arranging, and splicing scenes and synchronizing all elements, including cinematography, mise-en-scène, sound, and special effects. The goal of editing is to make a film perfect for airing on the big screen. In this respect, it aims to remove all features affecting quality.
• Long shot: A scene in a film that filmmakers shoot from a considerable distance to give images and objects indistinct shapes, almost unrecognizable. An excellent long shot captures people walking New York City streets from the city’s skyline. While one would know the images are people walking, they cannot describe their demographics, such as age, gender, or race.
• Metaphor: A literary device that allows filmmakers to represent similarities between objects. An example of a metaphor in a movie is a visual metaphor, where filmmakers represent nouns through graphical images to suggest a particular association or resemblance. For example, an advert can represent beauty through the appearance of a flawless face, implying that beauty is equal to a look without flaws. Such an advert increases people’s interest in having a perfect face, leading to purchasing beauty products.
• Montage: The film editing technique where filmmakers combine a series of short shots into one sequence to condense time, establish continuity, or provide contrast. Montages take different forms, including repetition of camera movements, minimal or no dialogue, quick cuts, music, and voice narration.
• New wave: A French art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s to pave the way for experimentation and iconoclasm, thus rejecting traditional filmmaking conventions. Filmmakers who subscribed to this wave used film as a medium, like pottery or novels, for telling stories and translating thoughts and ideas by experimenting with form and style.
• Mockumentary traits: Films that assume a documentary genre, although they do not tell true stories. Instead, filmmakers use parody, satire, and humor to describe contemporary society through events, ideas, and emerging trends. Simply put, a movie is a mockumentary if it is a fictional documentary.
• Slow motion: A filmmaking effect where time appears to slow down because the film captures footage at a slower speed. This technique is common for rewinding scenarios to reinforce an idea in the audience. For example, most productions of sports tournaments use slow motion to provide viewers with detailed and perfect shots that leave no room for imagination and analysis.
• Soundtrack: The sound, often music, which filmmakers incorporate in a plot to accompany scenes for heightened effects, such as arousing the audience’s emotions. In most instances, this music plays in the background, often from a low to high intensity and vice versa, depending on the scene.
• Theme: The concept, idea, or principle that emphasizes a film’s plot and central message, such cas sadness, victory, morality, or community. By identifying the themes that a director uses to construct the plot, authors of a film analysis essay can tell the audience their meaning and significance through the story of the protagonist.
• Symmetry: The quality of balancing shots between characters or placing shots symmetrically to each other to create a pattern. For example, visual symmetry involves repeating parts of an image along a path, across an axis, or around a center. Filmmakers use symmetrical patterns to convey a sense of unity or uniformity.
• Symbolism: The literary device of using objects to symbolize ideas. For example, a filmmaker can use a dove to symbolize peace or the color black to symbolize evil. In essence, symbolism allows filmmakers to communicate profound messages to the audience. Therefore, students need to identify symbols representing ideas in film analysis.

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Topic Examples for Writing a Film Analysis Essay

• Video Review: Salt (2010)
• Video Review and Approval of Black Panther (2018)
• Analysis Essay of Volodymyr Zelensky’s Speech “I Call for You to Do More”
• Examining Gender Issues Through Symbolism in The Ugly Truth (2009)
• Discussing the Narrative Structure in The Godfather (1972)
• Evaluating Christopher Nolan’s Use of Mise-en-Scène Elements in Oppenheimer (2023)
• What Features Indicate the Context of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (1993)?
• What Is the Cultural Context of City of God (2002)?
• How Does History Feature as an Element in the Star Wars Trilogy?
• How Does Roman Polanski Employ Flashback and Flashforward to Tell the Story of Wladyslaw Szpilman in The Pianist (2002)?
• Discussing the Conception of Time in The Matrix (1999)
• How Does the Setting of The Departed (2006) Underscore the Film’s Contemporary Significance?
• Describing the Chronology of Events in The Bark Night Rises (2012)
• How Does Casting Affect the Plot in American Beauty (1992)?
• What Central Themes Describe the Plot in Inglorious Bastards (2009)?
• Discussing How Scenes in Idiots (2009) Facilitate the Plot
• Analysis of Gothic Elements in the Horror Genre via the Lens of The Mummy (2017)
• Evaluating Mel Gibson’s Directing of The Braveheart (1995)
• Discussing the Scenarios that Construct the Climax in Capernaum (2018)
• Evaluating Al Pacino’s Acting in Scarface (1983)
• Analyzing the Significance of Visual Effects in Film From the Perspective of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
• How Does Sound Affect the Audience in Monster House (2006)?
• Evaluating How Camera Angle Enrich Viewer Experience in Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
• How Does Lighting Fit in the Gothic Film Sleepy Hollow (1999)?
• How Does Steven Spielberg Employ References in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)?
• Analysis of Animation in a Film From the Perspective of King Kong (1933)
• Who Is the Protagonist in The Wolf of Wallstreet (2013) and Why?
• What Makes Saruman the Antagonist in The Lord of the Rings Series?
• How Does Climax Underpin the Plot in Casino (1995)?
• Analyzing the Difference Between Heroes and Anti-Heroes via the Lenses of Black Panther (2018) and Black Adam (2022)
• How Does Suspense Create an Atmosphere of Anticipation in Black Swan (2010)?
• Discussing How Background Influences Viewer Experience in No Country for Old Men (2007)
• Evaluating the Impact of Harrison Ford’s Appearance in  Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013)
• How Does M. Night Shyamalan Employ Cinematography in The Sixth Sense (1999)?
• Explaining Comic Relief in Film Using Uncut Gems (2019) as a Case Study
• Criticizing Jurassic Park (1993) from the Perspective of Cinematography
• How Does Director’s Cut Enrich the Storyline in Blade Runner (1982)?
• Exploring Foreshadowing in the Film Using 12 Years a Slave (2013)
• Explaining the Link Between Film Editing and Quality Using Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) as an Example
• How Do Long Shots Affect Viewers’ Experience in Film?
• Understanding a Visual Metaphor in Hotel Rwanda (2004)
• How Does Dialogue Underscore Montage in The Terminator (1984)?
• Analysis of How the Mid-20th Century New Wave Impacted French Filmmaking
• How Does Forgotten Silver (1995) Incorporate Mocumentary Traits?
• What Role Does Slow Motion Play in Films?
• Analyzing the Importance of Soundtracks From the Perspective of Horror Films
• How Do Film Directors Use Themes as Conveyors of the Central Message?
• Discussing How Symmetry Affects the Quality of Films
• Exploring Symbolism in the Film Using Angels & Demons (2009)

Sample Outline Template for Writing a Film Analysis Essay

I. College Essay Introduction

• Introduce the film’s title, followed by the director’s name and year of production.
• Give a short description of the film or some context underpinning its release.
• End this paragraph with a thesis statement about the film.

II. Summary

• Overview the film by describing its context, setting, plot, and main characters.

III. Analysis

• Describe several scenes in more detail by focusing on various elements, including cinematography, mise-en-scène, and others that help to evaluate the film.
• Provide and cite some scenes as details and supporting evidence for analysis.
• Evaluate and interpret the use of the above elements.

IV. Conclusion

• Remind the audience about the film’s context and plot.
• Recapitulate information in the analysis section.
• Interpret the film’s significance.

Example of a Film Analysis Essay

Topic: What Features Indicate the Context of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (1993)?

I. Example of Writing an Introduction for a Film Analysis Essay

Films play a crucial role in educating people about the context within which movies come into their lives. Ideally, filmmakers implement various societal elements to construct ideas and use cinema as a conveyor belt to pass movies to different populations. Therefore, analyzing the film’s context is critical in understanding the ideas that the director embraced to produce the work. Several features in the 1993 film The Joy Luck Club indicate the film’s context.

II. Example of Writing a Summary Paragraph for a Film Analysis Essay

Directed by Wayne Wang, The Joy Luck Club tells the story of an Asian woman named Jun, born of the late Suyuan, who founded the Joy Luck Club social group. The movie’s plot revolves around the experiences of Asian mothers as immigrants in America from the perspective of their daughters. In this respect, the film takes a narrative approach. The movie’s setting alternates between San Francisco, California, and China, with the scenes in San Francisco representing the present day. Set in the 1980s, the storyline takes the viewer across generations. In this case, the mothers have flashbacks of the 1920s and 1940s.

III. Example of Writing an Analysis Paragraph for a Film Essay

A. physical landscape.

A key feature that reveals the context of The Joy Luck Club is the physical landscape. The film captures San Francisco as an urban place populated by buildings, busy streets, and a coastline. The movie contrasts this landscape with the mountainous landscape in China, where natural elements exceed physical structures.

B. Cultural Nuances

Another feature that reveals the film’s context is cultural nuances between mothers and their daughters. The viewer learns how mothers went through a world so different from that of their daughters to the extent they loathe some of the behaviors and mannerisms they see in them. However, the viewer can tell that some cultural differences between mothers and daughters may explain why there is confusion between two generations. Born in the conservative Chinese culture, mothers experience a cultural shock once in America, which does not happen for their daughters because they have only experienced the liberal American culture. In this respect, life values and perspectives of mothers and their daughters are constantly in conflict.

C. Conflict Between Generations

Although the scenes in San Francisco and China are essential to the storyline, cultural nuances of mothers and their daughters take center stage in a conflict between generations in the film. While daughters seem relaxed and willing to engage in fantasies, their mothers insist they embrace education as the noblest achievement. As such, two generations are always at loggerheads about leisure time because mothers seek to utilize every minute to work, while daughters want to have fun most of the time. Ironically, mothers see education as the tool to make their daughters truly American because it determines their quality of life.

IV. Example of Writing a Conclusion for a Film Analysis Essay

The Joy Luck Club exposes the experiences of Chinese mothers in America, showing some cultural nuances that influence their relationships with their daughters. The film depicts immigration as crucial to the women’s experiences in the movie because it is the avenue through which mothers arrived in America. In essence, the film depicts mothers as caring despite their unpleasant experiences and their daughters’ ignorance.

4 Easy Steps for Writing a Film Analysis Essay

Writing a good film analysis essay is a technical process that requires students to grasp and demonstrate certain qualities. Ideally, one should know how to produce a high-standard paper, including adequate preparation, stage setup, creating an initial draft, and perfecting a final draft. These details summarize the steps of writing a great film analysis essay.

Step 1: Preparation

Preparation is the first step of writing a film analysis essay and involves several tasks. The first aspect is defining possible essay topics if instructions from tutors do not specify them. In turn, one may select film research paper topics that are easy yet challenging. The second task is to generate ideas that the audience can relate to, such as the cultural or historical issues in the film.

Step 2: Stage Set Up

Setting the stage is the second step of writing a film analysis essay. It involves watching the film to understand its context and plot and using cinematography and other elements. The second task is to research credible sources that help to analyze the movie, such as scholarly reviews and scholarship on film, including gothic movies and the use of literary or rhetorical devices . The next task is to create a clear essay outline according to the sample above.

Step 3: The Writing Process of Starting a First Draft

The third step of writing a film analysis essay is to write a paper focusing on producing an initial draft. The text activity should combine all ideas to create a document with a logical order of ideas and content. Some of the activities in this stage include adding or deleting reliable sources to fit a paper and altering an initial outline to organize ideas. Students should also focus on developing a clear thesis statement when writing the introduction because it summarizes the paper’s aim. Students should adopt evidence-based writing by incorporating evidence and corresponding citations in the body. The last aspect is to restate the thesis and summarize the analysis in the conclusion by mentioning the most critical points.

Step 4: Wrap-Up and Finishing a Final Draft

The final step of writing a film analysis essay is to wrap it up by perfecting a first draft. In this respect, students should focus on revising their first drafts to eliminate flaws like inconsistent ideas. The second task is to edit a film analysis essay by adding to deleting words and sentences to foster a logical flow of thought. Students should also ensure each body paragraph has a topic sentence , evidence, scenes, or details cited from academic sources or films, explanation and analysis sentences, concluding remark, and transition to the next paragraph, not forgetting to check if the paper’s formatting is perfect. Concerning formatting, students should adopt one style in the entire document: APA , MLA , Harvard , or Chicago/Turabian . Considering The Joy Luck Club , templates and examples of citations should read as follows:

📕 Citing a Film in APA

• Reference entry: Wang, W. (Director). (1993). The Joy Luck Club [Film]. Walt Disney Studios.
• In-text citation: (Wang, 1993, 00:46:00-00:50:00)

📕 Citing a Film in MLA

• Work Cited entry: The Joy Luck Club . Directed by Wayne Wang, performances by Suyuan Woo and Rose Hsu Jordan, Walt Disney Studios, 1993.
• In-text citation: ( The Joy Luck Club 00:46:00-00:50:00)

📕 Citing a Film in Harvard

• Reference List entry: The Joy Luck Club (1993). Directed by Wayne Wang. Burbank, CA: Walt Disney Studios.
• In-text citation: ( The Joy Luck Club 1993, 00:46:00-00:50:00)

📕 Citing a Film in Chicago/Turabian

• Bibliography entry: Wang, Wayne, director. The Joy Luck Club . Walt Disney Studios, 1993.
• Footnote: 1. The Joy Luck Club , directed by Wayne Wang (Walt Disney Studios, 1993), 00:46:00-00:50:00.

20 Tips for Writing a Good Film Analysis Essay

Students must learn essential tips for writing a high-standard film analysis essay. These tips include watching a specific film before starting a movie analysis paper; determining the aspects to cover, such as the plot, cinematography, context, or setting; selecting suitable sources to construct ideas and defend arguments; and creating a well-organized outline.

10 things to do when writing a film analysis essay include:

• watching the film at least once;
• considering the audience;
• commenting on the acting;
• criticizing the directing by mentioning cinematography, mise-en-scène, or special effects;
• supporting the criticism;
• talking about the plot;
• consulting professional reviewers, like Roger Ebert and Rotten Tomatoes;
• reading, rereading, editing, and revising;
• cultivating a personal voice to demonstrate knowledge;
• proofreading the final text.

10 things not to do include:

• retelling the film;
• overusing sentences;
• generalizing ideas;
• continuously comparing the movie with its adaptations, like a book or novel;
• ignoring or doing superficial research;
• telling irrelevant details;
• writing poorly with too many grammar and format errors;
• getting too personal;
• reviewing another film;
• plagiarizing reviews.

Summing Up on How to Write a Perfect Film Analysis Essay

• Watch a chosen film while notetaking.
• Read several reviews focusing on the plot, context, setting, characters, scenes, and elements, like cinematography and mise-en-scène.
• Create a list of ideas.
• Organize the ideas to fit various aspects of a film indicated above: plot, context, and other elements.
• Write an appropriate introduction.
• Summarize the film.
• Analyze the film by exploring one or several aspects comprehensively.
• Write a conclusion, which must satisfy the audience.

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Film Writing: Sample Analysis

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Introductory Note

The analysis below discusses the opening moments of the science fiction movie  Ex Machina  in order to make an argument about the film's underlying purpose. The text of the analysis is formatted normally. Editor's commentary, which will occasionally interrupt the piece to discuss the author's rhetorical strategies, is written in brackets in an italic font with a bold "Ed.:" identifier. See the examples below:

The text of the analysis looks like this.

[ Ed.:  The editor's commentary looks like this. ]

Frustrated Communication in Ex Machina ’s Opening Sequence

Alex Garland’s 2015 science fiction film Ex Machina follows a young programmer’s attempts to determine whether or not an android possesses a consciousness complicated enough to pass as human. The film is celebrated for its thought-provoking depiction of the anxiety over whether a nonhuman entity could mimic or exceed human abilities, but analyzing the early sections of the film, before artificial intelligence is even introduced, reveals a compelling examination of humans’ inability to articulate their thoughts and feelings. In its opening sequence, Ex Machina establishes that it’s not only about the difficulty of creating a machine that can effectively talk to humans, but about human beings who struggle to find ways to communicate with each other in an increasingly digital world.

[ Ed.:  The piece's opening introduces the film with a plot summary that doesn't give away too much and a brief summary of the critical conversation that has centered around the film. Then, however, it deviates from this conversation by suggesting that Ex Machina has things to say about humanity before non-human characters even appear. Off to a great start. ]

The film’s first establishing shots set the action in a busy modern office. A woman sits at a computer, absorbed in her screen. The camera looks at her through a glass wall, one of many in the shot. The reflections of passersby reflected in the glass and the workspace’s dim blue light make it difficult to determine how many rooms are depicted. The camera cuts to a few different young men typing on their phones, their bodies partially concealed both by people walking between them and the camera and by the stylized modern furniture that surrounds them. The fourth shot peeks over a computer monitor at a blonde man working with headphones in. A slight zoom toward his face suggests that this is an important character, and the cut to a point-of-view shot looking at his computer screen confirms this. We later learn that this is Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson), a young programmer whose perspective the film follows.

The rest of the sequence cuts between shots from Caleb’s P.O.V. and reaction shots of his face, as he receives and processes the news that he has won first prize in a staff competition. Shocked, Caleb dives for his cellphone and texts several people the news. Several people immediately respond with congratulatory messages, and after a moment the woman from the opening shot runs in to give him a hug. At this point, the other people in the room look up, smile, and start clapping, while Caleb smiles disbelievingly—perhaps even anxiously—and the camera subtly zooms in a bit closer. Throughout the entire sequence, there is no sound other than ambient electronic music that gets slightly louder and more textured as the sequence progresses. A jump cut to an aerial view of a glacial landscape ends the sequence and indicates that Caleb is very quickly transported into a very unfamiliar setting, implying that he will have difficulty adjusting to this sudden change in circumstances.

[ Ed.:  These paragraphs are mostly descriptive. They give readers the information they will need to understand the argument the piece is about to offer. While passages like this can risk becoming boring if they dwell on unimportant details, the author wisely limits herself to two paragraphs and maintains a driving pace through her prose style choices (like an almost exclusive reliance on active verbs). ]

Without any audible dialogue or traditional expository setup of the main characters, this opening sequence sets viewers up to make sense of Ex Machina ’s visual style and its exploration of the ways that technology can both enhance and limit human communication. The choice to make the dialogue inaudible suggests that in-person conversations have no significance. Human-to-human conversations are most productive in this sequence when they are mediated by technology. Caleb’s first response when he hears his good news is to text his friends rather than tell the people sitting around him, and he makes no move to take his headphones out when the in-person celebration finally breaks out. Everyone in the building is on their phones, looking at screens, or has headphones in, and the camera is looking at screens through Caleb’s viewpoint for at least half of the sequence.  

Rather than simply muting the specific conversations that Caleb has with his coworkers, the ambient soundtrack replaces all the noise that a crowded building in the middle of a workday would ordinarily have. This silence sets the uneasy tone that characterizes the rest of the film, which is as much a horror-thriller as a piece of science fiction. Viewers get the sense that all the sounds that humans make as they walk around and talk to each other are being intentionally filtered out by some presence, replaced with a quiet electronic beat that marks the pacing of the sequence, slowly building to a faster tempo. Perhaps the sound of people is irrelevant: only the visual data matters here. Silence is frequently used in the rest of the film as a source of tension, with viewers acutely aware that it could be broken at any moment. Part of the horror of the research bunker, which will soon become the film’s primary setting, is its silence, particularly during sequences of Caleb sneaking into restricted areas and being startled by a sudden noise.

The visual style of this opening sequence reinforces the eeriness of the muted humans and electronic soundtrack. Prominent use of shallow focus to depict a workspace that is constructed out of glass doors and walls makes it difficult to discern how large the space really is. The viewer is thus spatially disoriented in each new setting. This layering of glass and mirrors, doubling some images and obscuring others, is used later in the film when Caleb meets the artificial being Ava (Alicia Vikander), who is not allowed to leave her glass-walled living quarters in the research bunker. The similarity of these spaces visually reinforces the film’s late revelation that Caleb has been manipulated by Nathan Bates (Oscar Isaac), the troubled genius who creates Ava.

[ Ed.:  In these paragraphs, the author cites the information about the scene she's provided to make her argument. Because she's already teased the argument in the introduction and provided an account of her evidence, it doesn't strike us as unreasonable or far-fetched here. Instead, it appears that we've naturally arrived at the same incisive, fascinating points that she has. ]

A few other shots in the opening sequence more explicitly hint that Caleb is already under Nathan’s control before he ever arrives at the bunker. Shortly after the P.O.V shot of Caleb reading the email notification that he won the prize, we cut to a few other P.O.V. shots, this time from the perspective of cameras in Caleb’s phone and desktop computer. These cameras are not just looking at Caleb, but appear to be scanning him, as the screen flashes in different color lenses and small points appear around Caleb’s mouth, eyes, and nostrils, tracking the smallest expressions that cross his face. These small details indicate that Caleb is more a part of this digital space than he realizes, and also foreshadow the later revelation that Nathan is actively using data collected by computers and webcams to manipulate Caleb and others. The shots from the cameras’ perspectives also make use of a subtle fisheye lens, suggesting both the wide scope of Nathan’s surveillance capacities and the slightly distorted worldview that motivates this unethical activity.

[ Ed.: This paragraph uses additional details to reinforce the piece's main argument. While this move may not be as essential as the one in the preceding paragraphs, it does help create the impression that the author is noticing deliberate patterns in the film's cinematography, rather than picking out isolated coincidences to make her points. ]

Taken together, the details of Ex Machina ’s stylized opening sequence lay the groundwork for the film’s long exploration of the relationship between human communication and technology. The sequence, and the film, ultimately suggests that we need to develop and use new technologies thoughtfully, or else the thing that makes us most human—our ability to connect through language—might be destroyed by our innovations. All of the aural and visual cues in the opening sequence establish a world in which humans are utterly reliant on technology and yet totally unaware of the nefarious uses to which a brilliant but unethical person could put it.

Author's Note:  Thanks to my literature students whose in-class contributions sharpened my thinking on this scene .

[ Ed.: The piece concludes by tying the main themes of the opening sequence to those of the entire film. In doing this, the conclusion makes an argument for the essay's own relevance: we need to pay attention to the essay's points so that we can achieve a rich understanding of the movie. The piece's final sentence makes a chilling final impression by alluding to the danger that might loom if we do not understand the movie. This is the only the place in the piece where the author explicitly references how badly we might be hurt by ignorance, and it's all the more powerful for this solitary quality. A pithy, charming note follows, acknowledging that the author's work was informed by others' input (as most good writing is). Beautifully done. ]