Recommendation: Every Frame A Painting

Last month, a blog post slightly shook the internet — or at least the YouTube cinema criticism corner of the internet, which probably amounts to about 40%. The post was by two people: Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos. And it reported the demise of their YouTube video essay series that, I would argue, reinvented the video essay for the modern age.

Plenty of people had made video essays on YouTube, particularly about film, before Every Frame A Painting came along. Just as plenty of people had done video blogs on YouTube before Casey Neisat came along. But then one day one of these creators comes along, and just raises the bar so much that they start to become the subjects of videos themselves.

I’m interested in the craft of film editing, but… not interested enough to watch nearly 30 short videos about it. Unless they’re done with such insight, charm, and above all clarity, that I can’t watch enough of them.

If you’re interested in film-making… in fact, if you’re interested in any kind of communication — and particularly if you’re interested in how platforms like YouTube are communicating ideas from people’s home offices to audiences of many millions, this is an essential series to check out.

If that all sounds a bit much, here’s a really good overview of what the series is about:

If you’re already a fan, on the other hand, and didn’t yet know they wound the series up, hey, I know the feels! Here is the full story:

View at Medium.com

Current Favourite Video:

P.S. Here’s a quote from that article which made me smile, after a few days of explaining to people why I’m not insane for keeping an enormous database of lyric, chord, arrangement, blog and newsletter ideas:

Organization is not just some anal-retentive habit; it is literally the best way to make connections that would not happen otherwise.

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