Volume 1, Issue 34: What do new practitioners think?

Mar 21, 2021

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A few months ago I received an email from Shant Bayramian, who runs the great website www.theavessayist.com, inviting me to chat about video essays and what we as relatively new practitioners think about the form.

As an admirer of Shant’s work (subscribe to his YouTube page!), I was honored to be asked. It was also great to chat with someone who is asking themself many of the same questions I ask myself each time I put out a podcast and newsletter. Shant and I are also at similar stages in our careers, so it was great to talk about our respective work and how our interest in video essays is shaping our professional and personal pursuits.

You can find our conversation, plus some great visual extras Shant added to the videos, below. Let us know what you think!

PART 1

PART 2

PART 3

Episode 24. John Gibbs, plus Douglas Pye on Victor Perkins

NOTE: I first posted a version of this episode with the audio out of sync (sorry John & Doug!). I switched the files shortly after learning of the mistake, but it is possible one might have dowloaded the first version. If that is the case, please re-download and/or refresh the episode. Thanks!

On the latest episode of the show, I sit down with John Gibbs, Head of the School of Arts & Communication Design and Professor of Film at the University of Reading, to discuss style-based criticism, his videographic work, and more. We discuss John's video essay, "‘Say, have you seen the Carioca?’," published as part of the AHRC/FAPESP-funded project, "Intermldia: Towards an Intermedial History of Brazilian Cinema." We also talk about Liz Greene's "The Elephant Man's Sound, Tracked" and "The Strange Streets of a Strange City: The Ambersons Montage" by Patrick Keating.

Douglas Pye also joins the show to discuss his new edited collection, V.F. Perkins on Movies: Collected Shorter Film Criticism, from Wayne State University Press. We discuss the book, the work of Perkins and how it relates to videographic criticism.

News & Notes

I need your help curating this section! Have things I should include? Email me at willdigravio@gmail.com.

A must-read new essay by Jason Mittell on deformative criticism, “Deformin' in the Rain: How (and Why) to Break a Classic Film.”
New works have been added to the rolling Issue 9 of MOVIE: A Journal of Film Criticism. Read and watch here.
Postgraduate students from Birmingham Centre for Film Studies will discuss the diverse research methods behind their audio-visual projects in an event on March 25. Register and learn more here.
The Glasgow Short Film Festival will open with a video essay by Jessica McGoff on March 22. More here.
A new video by Ian Garwood, “The Scholarly Video Essay.”
James MacDowell’s video on YouTube art and aesthetics from SCMS is now available. Watch here.
The program for the Essay Film Festival (March 25 - April 3) is now live. More here.
Melanie E.S. Kohnen has made the materials from her SCMS presentation on teaching with video essays publicly available. Read and watch here.
“Copyright Under COVID-19 in Film and Media Studies,” a new teaching dossier edited by Kirsten Moana Thompson and Brendan Kredell for the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies.
And finally, two great threads from Catherine Grant and David Verdeure on March 8: