VIDEO ESSAY ROUNDUP #7
hello, and welcome back to your regularly scheduled roundup of-- what was that? i haven't updated this blog since september 2024? no way, that's crazy.
anywho, let's talk about some video essays.
"MOLE MANIA: The Nintendo Franchise That Wasn't" by alex and crackers.
a friend sent this to me saying it seemed like a "you-tier video," and wouldn't you know it she was right. this is a breezy thirty-minute retrospective of an obscure Nintendo game called Mole Mania, and the way it's sometimes described as "Shigeru Miyamoto's forgotten gem." but what makes this essay stand out is that it's an earnest analysis of "authorship" at Nintendo and the ways the modern fandom overly attribute every bad decision the company makes to Miyamoto, while also being critical of Nintendo's bad business practices. as a Nintendo kid who's grown increasingly cynical about the company myself, i often struggle to walk the line between giving them deserved credit and being a hater. the focus on nuance when it comes to Miyamoto's input on third party developers' games does a great job walking that very line, i think.
contents aside, this essay is very well produced. gameplay sections feature these wonderfully 2000s monocolor claylike renders to frame 4:3 footage on a 16:9 screen.
they remind me of custom skins you'd download for real player or winamp back in the day, or the unlockable themed windows you could get in gamecube-era anniversary collections of classic franchises like MegaMan or Sonic; functionally superfluous splashes of shape and texture which nevertheless add much-needed character and personality to the software --exactly the kind of customization modern "apps" are existentially opposed to enabling.
she uses what might be an older digital camcorder (but might also be a modern camera with old lenses) for b-roll that is pleasingly superimposed under relevant text, transparent gameplay elements, or her own talking-head footage (itself separated from the b-roll by a tertiary frame rendered similarly to those above).
it's worth giving a respectful nod to alex and/or cracker's talking head videography, which is just her in a grey t-shirt sitting in a wood-paneled room that's pleasantly accented with a single green LED, her face perfectly exposed with a pleasing contrast ratio, speaking into a lav mic that's clipped onto a plastic shark. the conspicuous lav mic is such a bizarre trend in video essay land, i'm too wedded to my shure sm7b and at2020 to go that route but i respect the flavor it brings to the dish. all of this adds up to an essay that's very casual and DIY in a way that hides how much care went into its aesthetics and presentation. the key is that she does not draw our attention to these choices or make a big deal of them. it is a self-confident style that embraces the relatively low-budget tech at hand to great effect. this is her first essay in two years (i went back and watched her analysis of Matrix: Resurrections, which is quite good and echos many of my own feelings on the film) and her channel only has 2300 subscribers, so please give this one a watch and share it with your friends if you think more work like this should exist in the world. i certainly do!
"Failing At Superman: A Man of Steel Retrospective" by Tsudonym.
shifting gears from the previous entry, this one is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin: a feature-length deep dive into the many flaws of Man of Steel, from its direction to its interpretation of the Superman mythos to the bizarre inconsistencies of its own worldbuilding. i don't so much go in for the line-by-line "why did he make THIS choice, was he STUPID" genre of essay these days, but sometimes you get an itch. sometimes you just want to watch someone tear down a movie you don't like very much at great length, regardless of whether or not 100% of the criticism on display is entirely "fair". this one works because it isn't just a critique of the text itself. there is discussion of the production's collaboration with the US military, Snyder's often incoherent directorial philosophy, and the ways other contemporary cape flicks of the time hit similar story beats more effectively.
i think it gets a little lost in the weeds at times, but again, sometimes you want to indulge in a bit of excess. aesthetically, this contains almost exclusively footage of the film itself, often overlaid with high contrast difference-blended text that reads "COPYRIGHT FILTER". one of those garish decisions that are a necessary evil of youtube's arbitrary and uncontestable algorithmic IP detection. i practically can see them going through the premiere timeline after uploading the first draft right before my eyes, painstakingly adding this filter over every timecode that youtube flagged. then doing it again for the second test upload. and then again for the third. the struggle is real and all-too relatable.
this is Tsud's first video on their channel and god bless them it's already at 94k views. but in cases of early success like these, often subsequent essays comparatively underperform. so, you know, subscribe if you want to help keep that from happening whenever their next essay drops.
"Soundtracks & The Death of Extreme Media" by _crustbag_
i'd never heard of _crustbag_ until my gf sent me this video, and tbh i'm not sure if most of their stuff is gonna be For Me necessarily (though i definitely need to watch their older video "A Meta Analysis of Video Essays" for obvious reasons)... but this one? oh man, this one HITS.
broadly speaking, this is an essay about the absolute ubiquity of so-called "extreme" media in the late 90s and early 2000s. we're talking Jackass, we're talking Postal, we're talking movies and games that proudly publicized the in-your-face metal & punk music on their soundtracks. i went into this thinking "idk if i'm gonna get this one as an outsider" but i couldn't have been more wrong. i genuinely forgot how edgy young-adult pop culture was when i was growing up. i wasn't even into this stuff as a teen but i recognized basically everything crustbag referenced to the point of evoking multiple highly specific memories i'd otherwise totally forgotten. but rather than settling for a rote retrospective, _crustbag_ critically asks where this media went and what changed, which leads to some very stark comparisons to modern day pop culture and its complete capture by corporate interests.
watching this felt like sitting in my friend's garage bedroom with several dudes in Pantera shirts in the oklahoma suburbs of 2007 while they showed me Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Metalocalypse, excitedly talking through 80% of it. i mean that as a compliment. ironically for the subject matter, i found this to be a comfortable and kinda nostalgic viewing experience. i envy essayists who can do the green screen thing so effectively. it's a well-written script on a moment in culture that is critically under-studied, and you should give it your time.
"Fantasies of Nuremberg" by Jacob Geller.
alright gang, real-talk time. can i be honest with you? promise you won't get mad at me. okay? okay.
historically, i haven't loved Jacob Geller's videos.
it's not that i think they're bad! he's an accomplished essayist whose style has developed tremendously since his earliest work. i loved his Art for No One video, i loved his analysis of Spec Ops The Line, really he's quite good at what he does and it makes sense that he's popular. i just find that for every one certified classic, there's two or three that feel like philosophical cul-de-sacs, where i'll get to the credits and think "wait, what was i supposed to get out of that? did he actually say anything?" there's something in the tone of his breathless delivery that can make his words sound more meaningful than they actually are (or, at least, than they seem to me), and for that reason i sometimes feel he's a tad overrated. don't get me wrong, i admire Geller's willingness to finish an essay that may not accomplish the goals he set out to achieve and release it anyway. more essayists, myself included, should be willing to do the same.
but all of that is irrelevant to this specific essay. "Fantasies of Nuremberg" is easily my favorite Geller essay in ages, because it starts from a very relatable place of looking at the world today and wishing Some People would Face Justice for their Many Inhumane Crimes, only to delve into the complicated history of the Nuremberg trials and explore why that fantasy is somewhat misguided. he reveals that contrary to our casual perception of the trials as indicting the nazi project once and for all, in actuality they wound up being something of a public relations coup in favor of the nazis. Geller brings to mind the profound failures of past generations to effectively weed out the remainders of these defeated fascist movements, setting the stage for their present-tense resurgence. this is a vulnerable and relatable video that does dare i say essential work in clarifying a critical misapprehension of the past so that we might be better prepared for what the future demands if we are to avoid those mistakes.
on a totally separate topic, please forgive me while i pick a few nits about Geller's cinematography. this isn't something i would normally do for a video essay (lighting is hard on a youtuber's budget, and i should know as a former film electrician) but at 1.44 million subscribers i think Geller can handle it. the red highlights behind the boxes are a good touch and add a lot of character to the scene, but they're unevenly distributed and a bit too hot. particularly in the lower left of frame, there's a single LED peaking out that is the brightest point in the image. our eyes are naturally drawn to highlights, so it's a distraction from the face we're supposed to be focusing on (that said, the shape of that point light falls in line with a natural vignette around Geller which overall draws our eyes back to his face anyway, so it's hardly a catastrophe). the panel providing Geller's key light is presumable also lighting the boxes directly behind his head, and these i think need to be at least a half stop if not a whole stop darker than they are. right now, the boxes are almost equally as bright as his face, which creates a sort of flatness i don't love. his fill light from the right side of frame is easily a stop and a half too bright for my tastes, and is at such an angle that the darkest line of shadow falls straight down the middle of his forehead and over his nose.
does this matter? no, not really. i largely didn't notice these issues at all until i started scrubbing through to write this review. good lighting takes a LOT of time and is VERY finicky, especially if you're doing it all on your own (and even if you've only got one or two other people tbh) so i can hardly blame anyone, even Jacob Geller, for not having Roger Deakins on speed dial. like, ideally i'd prefer if Geller's fill light was coming from above instead to create an edgelight that separated him from the background, leaving the right side of his face in more shadow to create a dramatic high-contrast look, but that's also not possible with the equipment that comes standard with most light panels and is kind of a pain in the ass even if you DO have a c-stand and sandbags. and it's not like cutting those corners hurts his viewcount. "good enough" is genuinely good enough pretty much all the time on youtube, and frankly i am more the fool for behaving otherwise with my own work. i point it out mostly as a critical exercise. "it's good, but it could be better even though it doesn't have to be" is a worthwhile point to make every now and again.
no, the true unforgivable sin is that it was shot in 4k60fps and rendered in 2k30fps. it just looks too clean for my tastes. i'm sorry, Jacob, but anything crisper than 1080p24fps gets you the electric chair.
"What was Phase Five ... about?" by Nando v Movies.
i have a morbid fascination with the post-Endgame MCU. i cannot watch the shows, but i've rented all the movies from my local Blockbuster at some point or other and the ways in which they suck are kind of mesmerizing. i don't much go in for videos on the subject, though, because even the people criticizing these recent installments go too easy for my tastes. this particular video works because it's searching for a thematic "point" to Marvel's Phase Five, and in the process ends up talking more about the similarities in how these films were produced than in the specific subjects they shared in common. there's a good quantity of salient, entertaining criticism here for those inclined to spend an hour with their whole entire head in the slop trough. no judgment if you are, i'm there right alongside you.
"Mr. Plinkett's What Happened To Star Wars?" by RedLetterMedia.
holy shit! it's Mr. Plinkett, The Original Video Essayist, back from the dead to be mad at Star Wars! talk about nostalgia bait!!
in all seriousness, this was a fun watch. i'm glad Plinkett has largely stayed retired, as the last few entries in his oeuvre were to me rather underwhelming. i don't want to call this "a return to form" because he doesn't say nearly enough slurs for that to be true (although he does show a clip of one youtuber using the r-slur), but it IS an entertaining and generally thoughtful summary of what's going on with Star Wars these days. as much as it is a criticism of the media itself, it's also rubbernecking the near-religious worshipfulness on display in many corners of the fandom. writer Mike Stoklasa does a good job laying out Disney's shockingly haphazard approach to the sequel trilogy and how, by contrast, the prequel trilogy is full of memorable images and character designs. i have my quibbles as a Last Jedi defender, but i'm hardly about to die on THAT blood-sullied hill in twenty twenty fucking five.
what made the original Plinkett reviews special (for the time) was their use of fictional interstitial skits that framed his criticism in a uniquely unhinged, horrific context. this has been a characteristic of a lot of RLM's best stuff, and with the exception of the covid years it's largely been absent from their work. that's still basically true here, but between George Lucas's angry voice messages and one giddily disgusting insert of the man baking pizza rolls there's still enough of that old spirit for me to feel like this is actually a Plinkett Review, rather than a glorified Half in the Bag. is that itself, perhaps, a commentary on how Star Wars gives fans exactly enough substance to tickle their dopamine receptors and make them clap like seals at the aquarium? and that in doing so they buy enough good will to make fans overlook the generally subpar quality of the stuff they've been putting out? i dunno. i wouldn't put it past them. either way, i had fun, and you might too.
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and that's it for this roundup! sorry it's been so long since i did one of these, i hadn't found much that i was really excited to talk about for a while and then this past week pulled a hat trick and suddenly i've got too many to count. i will not promise to maintain a regular schedule from here, but i WILL promise that you won't have to wait nearly a year until the next one.
as always, feel free to send recommendations to the vidrev askbox. i'm always looking for new stuff to explore!
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