#video essay

[demilypyro]

My first video essay is now on YouTube. It's about my experience with a "cozy" game called Wanderstop. Please check it out. Thank you.

[orangutansoda]

Sorry my finger slipped…

[itsapmseymour]

Very insightful video I highly recommend watching,

It brings up the discussion that films nowadays are being produced as things to have in the background, and have been written script wise to reflect that.

Thus sacrificing one being crucial element in stories,

Visual and silent storytelling

[deadartistposting]

[swampjawn]

What can you learn from looking at someone's hands?

The answer is a lot. Especially in Witch Hat Atelier, where a person's hands are a representation of their entire identity.

Hands are especially instrumental to a magic system built around drawing sigils, so it makes sense for them to get extra attention through storyboarding and animation, but the crew at the impeccably named studio Bug Films took it to a new level, giving hands a leading role in their visual storytelling, even beyond what's in the original manga.

The theme is practically stated outright when the magic cops come to erase Coco's memory and Easthies examines her hand to see if she's a terrorist, but finds only the calouses and ink stains of a novice apprentice, literally learning her identity by looking at her hand.

But it goes so far beyond that too. A few minutes earlier when he first appeared, his own hand dominates the frame across these three cuts by key animator Taichi Hattori (服部 汰一) and storyboard artist and episode director Hiroshi Seko (瀬古浩司) uses it to frame Coco and Agott's faces, encroching further and filling more of the frame with each cut and leaving the girls less and less space.

But nowhere are hands more central than Qifrey's secret confrontation with the Brimmed Hat, and this 15-second-long close-up on where the camera tracks his hand as it stretches close to Dr. Eyeball, even intermingling with the almost finger-like tassles at the bottom of the robe and hangs there in anticipation for a tantalizing ten frames,

Only for the tassles to dematerialize just as he tries to grab them, and having exhausted its last bit of energy, Quifrey's hand collapses to the ground, now animated on 1's, and the camera stays locked on to this close-up.

After a brief pause in defeat, Qifrey starts to drag his hand back towards himself and it gradually forms back into a fist and rotates toward the camera for the first time as he swears not to give up. Only then do we return to a wide shot.

That's the main chunk of it, but there's an entire mini-narrative here that plays out almost exclusively through hands. There's some dialogue, but this scene would honestly work just as well without it, maybe better!

This is an adapted excerpt from this video, so check it out if you want:

[akajustmerry]

I feel like those of us who are longtime Video Essay Enjoyers™ have been aware something was suss about James Summerton (I remember when Lawrence called out Somerton for stealing their Hannibal essay years ago) for a while. But I think it's cynical to reduce Hbomberguy's vid to just a "dunk" when it's more of an odyssey railing against how influencer and content culture devalues the work of culture critics, academics, and activists. As Harris said, it's not a problem exclusive to Somerton, but a corrosive attitude baked into late capitalist "content" culture. The video is a clear exploration of the consequences of all media and art being flattened into "content" creates a system where the labor of marginalised creatives and storytellers are exploited and stolen by people with more privileges and resources. As someone who has witnessed rich tiktokers quote articles and posts I've written verbatim without credit to make money from their 1000s of followers, this video hit super hard for me. From James Somerton claiming the works of dead gay activists, to Charli D'Amelio building a career from stealing dances created by Black tiktokers - plagiarism is often inseparable from discrimination and exploitation of labor rights. Harris' video is about how the nature of influencer content culture has further exacerbated the exploitative systems that already existed, wrapped up as YouTuber drama analysis. But I hope people don't miss the forest for the trees and remember you should always be citing your sources, fact checking, and be very wary of people who don't. And for the love of God, please stop getting your information exclusively from video essays, tiktoks and podcasts.

[codex-entry]

Persona 3 Portable: The Only Game Where You Can Choose Your Gender, out now!!

its a video essay, featuring @demilypyro.

hope you enjoy~