Initially
I was planning to do this post in a list format, spotlighting some of
my favorite online film critics and commentators who create digitally
distributed videos to discuss films and filmmaking. However, upon
reflection I decided that the topic really needed more of a proper
write-up.
There have been online movie reviewers
with their own web programs for a while now, and various film commentary
web series that analyze films, mostly comedically. The popular Red
Letter Media dissections of the "Star Wars" prequels are a good
example. They're often described as reviews, but are really analysis
pieces. They go into far more depth and detail than you'd want for an
opinion piece meant to inform the viewer about whether or not they're
likely to enjoy watching the films. I was never much of a fan of Red
Letter Media because I wasn't too fond of the serial killer persona he
adopted as his main gimmick. However, his basic arguments
and his nicely edited presentations of them appealed to me. This was
somebody who was really using the looser, free-form web video format to
its fullest.
However, recently we've seen a new
crop of content creators whose first goal is to inform rather than
entertain, while using many of the tools of the mashup culture. The
most prominent of these is Tony Zhou, creator of Every Frame a
Painting. The series is about analyzing filmmaking techniques, mostly
cinematography and editing. Some of the early entries had snarky
voice-over and digs at bad filmmakers, but over time the commentary has
been refined and focused so that the explanations and examples of
various filmmaking concepts remain center stage. Zhou is excellent at
breaking down films into their basic components and showing how they
work. Each installment is devoted to a particular artist or element of
film. My favorite of his videos so far is his look at the work of Jackie Chan, particularly where he compares Chan's Hong Kong films to
the ones he's made in Hollywood.
Then there's Kyle
Kallgren, whose webseries Brows Held High initially started out as a
more typically comedic commentary series, meant to poke fun at the
pretensions of arthouse films. However, over time the videos became
less about mocking the arthouse and more about exploring it. With an
academic background in film, Kallgren creates videos that are well
researched with lots of cultural and historical context to back up his
analyses. I knew he was someone to watch when I found one of his early
videos on the notoriously vile exploitation pic, "A Serbian Film,"
contained an impressive rundown of the history of Serbia as part of the
commentary. Kallgren still employs his share of gimmicks, but it's all
in service of bridging the gap between casual film viewers and the often
alienating world of highbrow cinema. His more recent videos have been
his better ones, including an analysis of Gus van Sant's "Gerry" that
turns into broader look at how recent films have started incorporating
the visual language of video games.
However, the
video that really got me excited was something completely different
from the traditional web series It was the latest installment of
critic David Ehrlich's annual top 25 countdown of his favorite films
from the past year. Countdown videos are extremely popular, and they're
a common first project for new web talents trying their hand at making
web videos. Ehrlich is the Senior Editor of Film.com and writes text
reviews like a traditional critic. However, his countdown video is in
the style of the year-end movie supercuts created by amateur editors
like Matt Shapiro and Gen I. There's no voice over and barely any
onscreen text at all in this thing - just the names of the films and a
few title and credit screens. What drives it is almost solely the
editing - films clips and music. And it's so much fun to watch. Clips
of the Japanese comedy "Why Don't You Go Play in Hell" set to Redbone's
"Come and Get Your Love," recently heard in the opening of "Guardians of
the Galaxy," were a better recommendation for the movie than Ehrlich's
text review. He completely reinvigorated both the supercut and the
year-end critic's top ten list by mashing them together.
The
term "video essay" has popped up to describe the new crop of
informative film-related web videos in this vein, and they're quickly
becoming popular with my fellow media nerds both as an educational
resource and as conversation pieces. Pop culture comedy commentary like
"How it Should Have Ended" and "Honest Trailers" are still a lot of fun
and have plenty of fans, but I really like the new trend of more
substantive content that's been emerging. We have so much more access
now to the classics and to world cinema, and it's great to see more
informed, more thoughtful pieces starting to emerge, reflecting that.
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