The Why and How of

Video Essays

Name: ___________________ Class: _________

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Workbook Contents Page

Title Page

eSupport Documents…………………………………………………………………………………..3

What is a Video Essay?................................................................................................................4

What is Involved in Your Video Essay?................................................................................5

Guiding Principles………………………………………………………………………………………6

Requirements…………………………………………………………………………………………….7

Sitting Down and Working it Out………………………………………………………………...8

Generating Ideas Page…………………………………………………………………………...……9

Thesis Statement Outline…………………………..………………………………………………10

Thesis Statement Brainstorming………………………………………………………………..11

Research…………………………………………………………………………………………………...12

Sourcing and Selecting Images…………………………………………………………………..14

Writing and Performing Your Script…………………………………………………………..15

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eSupport Documents

The nature of this unit requires a set of online support documents to exist in
conjunction with this workbook.

We suggest that you use Adobe Spark to create your final video essay
submission. Adobe Spark can be found here: https://spark.adobe.com/

You can access support documents and links at the following site:
• www.padlet.com/mspride/videoessay

YouTube is obviously the main source of material for creating video essays. The
main video that can help walk you through the creation process is:
• How to Use Adobe Spark for Digital Storytelling by Jen Jonson

Video essayists of note to be found on YouTube with some specific video

suggestions to start you off. So, in no particular order:

• Every Frame a Painting: Drive (2011) – The Quadrant System

• The School of Life: The Problem With Our Phones
• The Nerdwriter: The Epidemic of Passable Movies
• Now You See It: Opening Shots Tell Us Everything
• Channel Criswell: Colour in Storytelling
• PBS Idea Channel: How to Create Responsible Social Criticism
• Lessons from the Screenplay: Rogue One vs The Force Awakens
• Just Write: Dystopian Fiction: How Stories Invade Your Mind
• The Royal Ocean Film Society: Isao Takahata: The Other Master
• ScreenPrism: The Handmaid’s Tale is About the Present

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What is a Video Essay?

The video essay is a still-evolving, dynamic form of critical analysis.

Its form involves the inclusion of visual, audio and written textual elements,
whilst its content is concerned with analysing specific topics or terms. These
points of analysis are most commonly:

 based on a single text

 a topic that is addressed across the work of an auteur
 comparisons between how two texts address the same issue

An important point to realise about video essays is that they are:

 subjective
 driven by a single, strong thesis statement
 created with the deliberate curation of images/video alongside audio

Video essays may include any or all of the following:

• Voice-over (VO)- film or still images are shown while someone is

speaking over the top
• Text & Images - Written text that has been inserted/created on the
screen over video or still images; this may also include the use of
infographics.
• Supercut – this term refers to the selective cutting between excerpts
from feature films, with or without the inclusion of a guiding voice-over

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What is Involved in Your Video Essay?

The first step in preparing for your video essay is to understand what elements
are involved. This is a multimodal text – which simply refers to its inclusion of
different senses (or modes) in its transfer of information.

Visual:
Still images
Video
Text
Graphics

Audio:
Gestural:
VO
Hand movements Video
Diegetic sound
Facial expression Essay
SFX
Body language
Silence

Linguistic:
Word choice
Sentence
structure

An awareness of how these elements interact with each other, along with the
timing required to maximise the impact of each, is a crucial step in creating an
effective video essay.

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Guiding Principles for Creating Video
Essays

It is important to remember that just because a video essay is in a multimodal

form, does not mean that any of the academic rigour is compromised.

Video essays should follow these principles:

 They do not abandon the tools and techniques of providing evidence and
support for a thesis statement; they simply present them in new ways

▪ They move scholarship beyond just creating knowledge and take on an

aesthetic function

▪ This form should evoke the same intellectual enquiry, engagement and
allure as the very text that initiated your inquiry using all modes of
interaction

▪ The creator will need to consider issues of the form at the same time as
they address the content (ie: image, voice, pacing, text, sound, music,
montage, cadence, etc.)

In other words, the video essay requires you to create something that is:
▪ Informed
▪ Intelligent
▪ Enjoyable to watch

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Requirements for Your Video Essay

In more specific terms for your unit, the video essay you will create must:

1) be based upon a clearly defined thesis statement

2) involve a related text that is relevant and thematically connected to your

original text

3) include some form of narration (ie: VO from you; intertitles; subtitles as

necessary)

4) support your overarching thesis statement with carefully selected clips

and/or still images from the text you are addressing

5) include bibliographic references that cite at least THREE academic sources to

support your video essay (using the online journal opportunities that your
State Library card offers you should be a first port of call in this regard)

6) have a strong title that reflects the thesis

7) last no longer than 4 minutes

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Sitting Down and Working it Out
Selecting your related text (RT)

Your RT must have a connection with the prescribed text. It is this connection
that should drive the thesis statement and which will, in turn, be the focus of
your video essay. So here are a few ideas that can help you in the selection of a
relevant RT:

• What are some main ideas you have covered in class about your prescribed
text (PT)?
▪ Author – background, ideas, personal and/or political context
▪ Context – when was it made? and under what conditions (political,
global, publishing, cinematic, philosophical)?
▪ Theme – challenging ideas addressed; unique perspective on a topic
▪ Text – development of character; progression of plot; aesthetic approach

• What do you like to read and/or watch?

▪ Do any of your favourite texts share elements outlined above with the
PT?
▪ What did you enjoy or dislike about the PT?
▪ Can you think of a text you have read or watched that evoked a
similar reaction from you?
▪ Is there a genre that you enjoy that might unexpectedly share ideas or
methods of approaching character/plot/theme?

• If you are still stuck, draw up a connotation map:

▪ Write down ideas addressed in your RT randomly across a page
▪ Start writing random words that you associate with that term
▪ After you have filled up the page, step back and highlight some terms that
appeal to you
▪ See if you can now create any associations between these terms and a
possible RT

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Generating Ideas Page

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Thesis Statement – Driving Your Focus

As has already been mentioned, the thesis statement is the core of your video
essay. It is therefore essential to create one that will allow you to speculate,
draw comparisons, access theory and create new ideas. It needs to be your
opinion – remember, video essays draw upon theory in order to present an
informed, yet fundamentally personal, approach to the texts.

You should have selected your RT with a connection or relationship to the PT.
Your thesis statement will be an expression of this idea.
Generic ideas can include:
• RT and PT: How They Explore Character
• Topic in RT and PT
• Context as explored in RT in relation to PT
Specific examples as starting points:
• Macbeth and Batman: The Flawed Hero
• Power and Corruption in Animal Farm and House of Cards
• World War II and Children as represented in Life is Beautiful and The Boy
in the Striped Pyjamas
These points above could also make strong titles for your video essays.
Making your thesis statement more specific will involve you thinking closely
about just what it is that you want to say based on how you perceive these
concepts.
Drawing upon the specific examples above:
• The most believable heroes are those who succumb to their weaknesses.
• The corrupting influence of opportunity.
• By changing our perspective we can work towards the difficult job of
understanding war.

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Thesis Statement Brainstorming
How do you start even thinking about your thesis statement in a relevant and
engaging manner? You will only become specific after having considered a
range of broader ideas first. Feel comfortable thinking about your RT as part of
the dystopia genre and what this might mean for its relationship with the PT.
Use this page to brainstorm ideas for your thesis statement:

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Research
You will need to explore other ideas and opinions related to your thesis
statement. There are a lot of opinions out there! Curating and collating these
resources is important to avoid plagiarism. Quoting others is completely fine as
long as it is done in moderation and is adequately referenced.

As you research, create a document where you can paste links, citations and
titles. This master document will become an integral part of your video essay
process and should inform your final references list. You could even colour
code the text of each text or link depending on how useful it was to your
writing process and then your final video essay.

As you trawl the internet, you will want to look up your topic on various sites.
This is the perfect time to start using your State Library card to best effect. Use
it to access online academic resources such as JStor. You can also start looking
at Google Scholar and Google Books. This requires you to cite your references
with inclusion of the book title or journal and article titles – not just the URL.

When researching, read as much as you can that is relevant to your topic.
Importantly, however, you will need to generate your own ideas as you read.
Use these tips to get the most from your research:
• Who wrote this? Why might they have written it?
• What assumptions do they make in their work? How do these support or
challenge your own ideas in your thesis statement?
• What examples do they mention from the text? What main points arise
from these that you might be able to use as pull-out visuals in your video
essay?
• When was this written? Have there been any other ideas since then that
contradict or support their idea further?

It is important to remember that if you find other work that doesn’t support
your opinions, it is totally ok as long as you still have academic analysis that
supports your opinion. Your opinion cannot stand as valid just because you say
so – it needs to be supported by literature/film analysis, plot and character
understanding, contextual awareness and genre breakdown.
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Research – Details

Your working research list should include:

• Author/director
• Date of publication/release
• Title of Work
• Name of journal/website/publication
• When you accessed it

Other notes that are helpful to make as you read the work can include:
• Main idea of the piece
• What the piece specifically says about your thesis statement (if anything)
• How you found it – what other pieces was it related to?
• Questions you would like answered, eg: what does the creator mean
when they use a specific term? Why do they assume one thing over
another?
• Words or ideas you don’t understand

Remember that your research citations refer to images and video as well.

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Sourcing and Selecting Images and Video
There needs to be a purpose to each image you use in your video essay. It
should link to your essay script in one of two main ways:
• Reflects a main idea through theme or metaphor (mostly for still images)
• Demonstrates in practise what you are analysing (mostly for film clips)

Finding support images online is no doubt something you are familiar with,
using Google Images. You must provide a URL for each image so that the
marker can reference where it came from. We appreciate that this may
compromise the aesthetic of the slide using that image so if you would prefer,
you can list these on your resources page instead. They must be in order of how
they appear in your final video essay submission.

Consider carefully what is in your image and be certain that you could answer
this important question for every image and clip used:

How does this support or highlight the content of my spoken essay at this time?

Some common problems:

• Images fly by too quickly – this will overwhelm the viewer. If you feel that
this is necessary to support what your content is dealing with, then you will
need to return to your script and adjust the amount of time you are
spending on each point of analysis. As a rule of thumb, images should not be
shown for less than five seconds.
• Images stay on the screen for too long – this will bore the viewer. This
suggests that you have not gone to the trouble of addressing potential
visual stimuli that can be touched upon in your script. If you feel there is no
relevant visual, then you can address your content by using text and
referring to it instead.
• Images have a tenuous connection to the content – this suggests a lack of
creativity or interest in searching thoroughly for supporting documents.
Try more specific or unusual image search terms and be prepared to scroll!

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Writing and Performing Your Script
When writing the script for your video essay, remember that you will be
reading this aloud as you show images, text and/or video onscreen. It should
make reference to these visuals to support your main idea.

Your script will need to walk a fine line between an academic formality and
being personal engaging. Imagine that you are talking directly to your teacher
and trying to impress them with your knowledge, whilst also keeping them
interested in what you are saying. It’s not difficult, but you do need to be aware
of your tone.

After writing your essay script, you need to pace it alongside the visuals you
collated. Create a table as follows to assist you in the pacing of your essay, and
have it in front of you when you are ready to record:
Essay Script Accompanying Visual/Sound Length of Time
What you are going to say What will be shown on the screen at the How long this particular
with text marked up for same time screen time and writing
your emphasis and will be on screen for
pauses

Marking up your script in preparation for reading aloud will require you to
read it aloud numerous times. Mark where you need to emphasise words,
where you need to pause and where you need to take a breath.

Here is an example
document from the ABC
website with the
following mark-ups:
•- Pause
• / Breath
• __ Emphasise

Source: https://open.abc.net.au/explore/96572
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Be sure to avoid verbal ‘filler’ words: um, uh, like, y’know, like, right, ok, er, like.
Did we mention avoiding “like”?

The fluency of your video essay is completely dependent upon how much you
have prepared and practised. Don’t be let down by this element in the final
marking criteria – it is easy to prepare for because it only requires you to put in
the time and effort before you record. Don’t just be content – be proud of your
work.

When preparing to sit down and record your voice, test the volume of your
microphone. Be sure that it is not going to blast the eardrums of anyone
listening to it through headphones.

Run through it without recording by playing the slides and just speaking the
script as they play. This can tell you whether you need to rephrase your script,
change the timing of the visual, or move things around if they don’t seem to
make sense.

You may very well hear grammar issues when you begin speaking your script
aloud. Make sure that you stop and rectify these on the page of your script
when you hear them so that they are not repeated in your final recording.

Organise to have a study partner and swap videos with each other prior to
submission. You could even use the marking criteria grid to have a mock
marking guide in front of you as you watch and listen to the video essay. This
can help to iron out any final issues with your video essay that, on your own,
you may not have realised.

Finally, double-check the link and upload details of your finished product. It
will not be enough to simply say It worked for me last night – you must leave
time for the technical details to be finalised. These are your responsibility and
the time required for finalising these details needs to be included in your
time management. Last minute work and night-before recording will not
work and will be appropriately penalised.
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