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The best creepy video essays to watch on Youtube

It’s easy to get bored with horror movies that rehash the same stories and plot devices over and over again, leaving the viewer to wonder whether or not there’s something else out there. Enter video essays, pieces of content exploring things like online horror, unsolved mysteries and everything in between that lies within the great unknown. The best part about them, though, is that they are free to watch on Youtube, making them a low-cost alternative to the same scary movie over and over again. 

Searching For the Five- Nexpo

In 1978, five men set out for a basketball game at CSU Chico, about 50 miles away from home. However, they never returned. Rather, a series of mysterious events led to them veering off course and into the Plumas National Forest, where their car was found a few days later with no sign of the men. Since then, what actually happened to the men, known as the Yuba County Five is unknown, but the source of both interest and speculation, as portrayed in this video essay.

Exploring the @gr3gory88 Creepy Twitter Account- Reignbot

In mid-2018, a Twitter user by the name of gr3gory88 popped up and began posting about his grandfather’s death, specifically regarding the fact that he inherited a large sum of his property. However, upon reaching the rural area, strange things began to happen around him. The people in the town acted peculiarly, mysterious artifacts appeared around his house, and a woman with no eyes seemed to be stalking him. The video covers the horror story from start to finish, adding a layer of intrigue along the way.

The Khamar Daban Incident- Nick Crowley

Fans of unsolved mysteries and strange phenomena may be familiar with the Dyatlov Pass incident, in which a group of hikers was found dead in the Russian mountains under unknown circumstances. However, a similar incident took place and left a survivor. In August of 1993, a group of kayakers found 17-year-old Valentina Utochenko on a riverbank, hysterical and covered in dirt and dried blood. 

They helped her get to safety, and Valentina began to recount a horrifying story, in which the group of hikers she was with all died in visceral ways within minutes of each other, leaving her as the sole survivor. To this day, there is no clear answer as to what happened, but this video essay explains both the incident and the theories surrounding it. 

The Unexplainable Disappearances of Missing 411- Wendigoon

There is a strange connection between missing persons cases and the national park system. All share similar details: adverse conditions, the search dogs acting strangely, disappearances in geographic clusters and in the cases of those that are found, the victim being found miles away from where they vanished with no memory of how they got there, much too far for them to travel in the period between their disappearance and when they are found. As a result, theories ranging from the realistic to the fantastic have cropped up surrounding the phenomena, and some of those countless cases and theories are covered in this video essay.

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The Best Video Essay Channels, Ranked

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If you’re a die-hard movie fan, you don’t have to be a hardcore collector to know that you can find a lot of your special features free on YouTube – from movie trailers and top-ten lists to reaction videos and cast-and-crew interviews. But the crème de la crème for any budding cinephile is YouTube ’s subculture of video essayists.

The best of these content creators, particularly those focused on dissecting and analyzing film and television, give viewers a lot of food for thought, making them consider things they hadn’t before, even when it comes to movies they have watched 100 times. There is an embarrassment of content out there, but this article seeks to separate the wheat from the chaff – we are recommending only the channels with the best, most refreshing, and most original analysis. If you're a film lover or budding buff, you owe it to yourself to check out these great video essay channels.

What’s So Great About That?

UK creator and pop-culture academic Grace Lee makes video essays examining themes and form in both horror and animated media; she has an affinity for the deeper, more unexpected thoughts evoked by her favorite genres. Whereas many content creators are quippy or sarcastic, Lee’s voiceover narrative approach is one of measured thoughtfulness.

Related: Explained: How Twin Peaks Changed Television

While her output as What's So Great About That? is not as large as some other creators on this list, that is far from a bad thing as Lee seems to focus more on quality than quantity. Each video discusses fairly narrow topics within a given property – examples include the “treachery of language” in the work of David Lynch or the concept of the “unnatural” in the original Evil Dead film.

You might mistake Canadian vlogger Sarah Z (pronounced “Zed”) for your best friend. She sits on the couch with a cup of coffee and speaks directly to you, a monologuist spending hours on end about all of her opinions, from toxic fandoms to true-crime documentaries.

But these monologues are not the boring, meaningless yarns that you might expect. Rather, Sarah’s channel is an ever-deepening trove of incisive and engaging media analysis encased in a shell of light and fluffy entertainment. The whole thing is driven by Sarah’s palpable excitement and enthusiasm for the topics she is covering, and a penchant for long, detailed videos that are extensively researched. Some videos will even stretch far beyond the one-hour mark, including a 90-minute video on geek culture and a full two hours on Dear Evan Hansen .

Another Canadian creator steps up to the plate in the form of Sage Hyden , a fantasy novelist whose essay channel Just Write seems particularly preoccupied with film’s place in the cultural conversation. In particular, Hyden is fascinated with the messages that movies send us, what they are trying to communicate (consciously or subconsciously), and how they shape our perceptions and prejudices.

For topics that can sometimes land on the serious side, Hyden’s tone and writing style are conversational and often funny, and his insights are fairly eye-opening. Topics include Willy Wonka and its relationship to misconceptions about poverty, the importance of the original Mulan film, and the cinematic lineage of the modern murder mystery Knives Out .

If you consider yourself an outsider or find yourself disagreeing with most of your friends on their favorite movies, you might find a mutual kinship with creator Yhara Zayd , whose videos examine film and television through lenses both personal and political. Zayd’s is not the kind of detached analysis you can expect from many YouTubers; rather, though she is very well-researched, she is also full of unapologetic hot takes, and her videos are brimming with the caustic personality of a modern-day Pauline Kael.

Related: These Are the Best Marilyn Monroe Movies

In some ways, Zayd has crafted the perfect synergy between the highly-opinionated critic and the relentless deconstructionist, enthusiastically dissecting and questioning the images and media we regularly consume. She also has a distinct knack for self-awareness, gazing inward as she gazes outward, a quality which separates her content from that of many of her peers. Zayd covers such divergent subjects as the commodification of the great Marilyn Monroe, reflections of housing discrimination in 1980s horror films , and the under-appreciated legacy of Not Another Teen Movie .

For something a little less personal but no less fascinating, it is worth checking out the prolific Susannah McCullough and her channel The Take . McCullough and her extraordinary team make what are probably the best “Explained” videos you’ll be able to find, along with character breakdowns, deconstructions of tropes, and the lessons movies can teach us. They’ve got videos that deconstruct and explain Donnie Darko , The Sopranos , Get Out , and many, many more. They’ve also nerded out with full series on different franchises, including detailed character analyses in shows such as Friends and Breaking Bad .

The writing is smart but accessible, and the arguments are utterly convincing. The videos themselves are breezily edited and full of poppy visuals. The channel also covers many, many genres and types of movies, so you are sure to find something on a movie or TV show you love. The Take offers incisive film analysis in a context that is fun and completely unpretentious.

Maggie Mae Fish

Decadent, performance-driven vlogs like ContraPoints and Philosophy Tube are all the rage these days, and film buffs finally have their own version in the form of Maggie Mae Fish . Ms. Fish is a singular, idiosyncratic voice who pivots wildly from dedicated film scholar to sketch-comedy caricature and back again. She typically sits center-frame in a variety of ornately designed sets, dressed in colorful outfits, while she patiently spoons out detailed, thoughtful analysis over the course of long videos.

For any video-essay enthusiast, Fish is the real deal – wickedly entertaining, subversive, accessible, and always thought-provoking. Her recent two-video series on Twin Peaks is catnip for any fans seeking a new perspective on the show – and an excellent dressing-down of Twin Perfect’s infamous 4.5-hour breakdown. She also deconstructs auteur theory through the works of David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick, and spends two hours discussing Loki ’s debt to Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker .

Lindsay Ellis

When it comes to distinct personalities, no vlogger quite matches the likes of the controversial but brilliant Lindsay Ellis . She is a brand unto herself, with an over-the-top, self-deprecating style that can only be described as a hopped-up, sleep-deprived, but no less informed, Adam Curtis. She is often seen drinking wine in her videos, breaking down popular media like Disney movies, musical adaptations, and The Lord of the Rings franchise.

Ellis is one of the originals of the medium, and her work is so singular that her influence has likely extended to all the other creators who occupy this list. Some of her most brilliant work includes “The Whole Plate,” a nine-video series that completely deconstructs the first Transformers film through the lenses of gender, sexuality, and film studies. Her most iconic work includes 40-minute videos ranting about the film adaptations of Rent and The Phantom of the Opera . Due to recent Internet events, she has stopped making videos on YouTube, but her existing videos are still there for all to see and are absolutely worth checking out.

Every Frame A Painting

Sometimes the most obvious answer is still the best one. Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou’s gorgeous video series Every Frame A Painting is still the benchmark against which all other video essayists are judged. You’ve probably seen their video on Edgar Wright and visual comedy, or the one on silence in the films of Martin Scorsese. The channel has been defunct for several years now, but the content still feels as fresh and original as it did when it was first published.

The topics covered are narrow and unexpected, but they all work extraordinarily well. The writing is tight and evocative, and Zhou’s voice is unforgettably soothing and inviting. The editing is also crisp and beautiful. Ramos and Zhou have become so renowned for their work that they were even invited to contribute to David Fincher’s Voir , a video essay project for Netflix.

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10 Video Essays That Will Get You Addicted To Video Essays

From deep dives into pretty privilege, to incel culture, to why we love Meryl Streep- here are some of the best gateway video essays.

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Combining the format of the informative (and at times hilarious) essay with video media, video essays have exploded in popularity in the last few years. With 100s of video essayists on 100s of channels across Vimeo and youtube, getting into video essays can be overwhelming.

As a self-confessed video essay addict, I’ve picked ten great video essays to kick you down the rabbit hole. These are perfect for chucking on instead of aimlessly scrolling, or filling the time on your commute, while also learning a new point of view.

Woke Brands | hbomberguy

Hbomberguy explores the trend of ‘woke’ branding, asking whether a product can actually be progressive.

Incels | Contrapoints

Trans video essayist, Natalie Wynn takes a hypnotizing deep-dive into the dark twisted internet subculture of incels.

Pretty Privilege | Khadija Mbowe

Opera singer and vlogger, Khadija Mbowe discusses how social media has exaggerated the phenomena of people having privilege because they’re perceived as pretty.

How The Pandemic Distorted Time | Vox

Have you been feeling like time isn’t moving the same way since the pandemic? The folks over at Vox explain why.

What Is *Good* Queer Representation in 2020? | melinapendulum

Black Bisexual vlogger, Melina takes a deep-dive into what queer representation on film and television is in 2020 and how it’s changed over the last few decades.

Protest Music of the Bush Era | Lindsay Ellis

Lindsay Ellis has often been credited for popularising the video essay on youtube so her channel is full of excellent content, but this recent one touring the popular protest music of the noughties is an eye-opener.

Data | Philosophy Tube

Somewhere between a video essay and absurdist skit, Data by Philosophy Tube sees host Abigail Thorn act out the ethical considerations and concerns of data mining technology.

Tiger King: The Problem with True Crime | Broey Dachenel

broey deschanel uses Tiger King as a case study to demonstrate the issues at large in the mainstream true crime genre.

Why Do We Love Meryl Streep? | Be Kind Rewind

One of my all-time favourite essayists for her analysis of Hollywood culture, this video seeks to answer the age old question: why is Meryl Streep that good?

Jennifer’s Body & the Horror of Bad Marketing | Yhara Zayd

In this video, Yhara zayd takes you step by gruelling step through how and why cult classic Jennifer’s Body was so badly marketed.

Merryana Salem is a proud Wonnarua and Lebanese–Australian writer, critic, teacher, researcher and podcaster on most social media as  @akajustmerry . If you want, check out her podcast,  GayV Club  where she gushes about LGBT rep in media with her best friend. Either way, she hopes you ate something nice today.

What is a Video Essay? The Art of the Video Analysis Essay

I n the era of the internet and Youtube, the video essay has become an increasingly popular means of expressing ideas and concepts. However, there is a bit of an enigma behind the construction of the video essay largely due to the vagueness of the term.

What defines a video analysis essay? What is a video essay supposed to be about? In this article, we’ll take a look at the foundation of these videos and the various ways writers and editors use them creatively. Let’s dive in.

Watch: Our Best Film Video Essays of the Year

Subscribe for more filmmaking videos like this.

What is a video essay?

First, let’s define video essay.

There is narrative film, documentary film, short films, and then there is the video essay. What is its role within the realm of visual media? Let’s begin with the video essay definition. 

VIDEO ESSAY DEFINITION

A video essay is a video that analyzes a specific topic, theme, person or thesis. Because video essays are a rather new form, they can be difficult to define, but recognizable nonetheless. To put it simply, they are essays in video form that aim to persuade, educate, or critique. 

These essays have become increasingly popular within the era of Youtube and with many creatives writing video essays on topics such as politics, music, film, and pop culture. 

What is a video essay used for?

• To persuade an audience of a thesis
• To educate on a specific subject
• To analyze and/or critique 

What is a video essay based on?

Establish a thesis.

Video analysis essays lack distinguished boundaries since there are countless topics a video essayist can tackle. Most essays, however, begin with a thesis. 

How Christopher Nolan Elevates the Movie Montage  •  Video Analysis Essays

Good essays often have a point to make. This point, or thesis, should be at the heart of every video analysis essay and is what binds the video together. 

Related Posts

• Stanley Kubrick Directing Style Explained →
• A Filmmaker’s Guide to Nolan’s Directing Style →
• How to Write a Voice Over Montage in a Script →

interviews in video essay

Utilize interviews.

A key determinant for the structure of an essay is the source of the ideas. A common source for this are interviews from experts in the field. These interviews can be cut and rearranged to support a thesis. 

Roger Deakins on "Learning to Light"  •  Video Analysis Essays

Utilizing first hand interviews is a great way to utilize ethos into the rhetoric of a video. However, it can be limiting since you are given a limited amount to work with. Voice over scripts, however, can give you the room to say anything. 

How to create the best video essays on Youtube

Write voice over scripts.

Voice over (VO) scripts allow video essayists to write out exactly what they want to say. This is one of the most common ways to structure a video analysis essay since it gives more freedom to the writer. It is also a great technique to use when taking on large topics.

In this video, it would have been difficult to explain every type of camera lens by cutting sound bites from interviews of filmmakers. A voice over script, on the other hand, allowed us to communicate information directly when and where we wanted to.

Ultimate Guide to Camera Lenses  •  Video essay examples

Some of the most famous video essayists like Every Frame a Painting and Nerdwriter1 utilize voice over to capitalize on their strength in writing video analysis essays. However, if you’re more of an editor than a writer, the next type of essay will be more up your alley. 

Video analysis essay without a script

Edit a supercut.

Rather than leaning on interview sound bites or voice over, the supercut video depends more on editing. You might be thinking “What is a video essay without writing?” The beauty of the video essay is that the writing can be done throughout the editing. Supercuts create arguments or themes visually through specific sequences. 

Another one of the great video essay channels, Screen Junkies, put together a supercut of the last decade in cinema. The video could be called a portrait of the last decade in cinema.

2010 - 2019: A Decade In Film  •  Best videos on Youtube

This video is rather general as it visually establishes the theme of art during a general time period. Other essays can be much more specific. 

Critical essays

Video essays are a uniquely effective means of creating an argument. This is especially true in critical essays. This type of video critiques the facets of a specific topic. 

In this video, by one of the best video essay channels, Every Frame a Painting, the topic of the film score is analyzed and critiqued — specifically temp film score.

Every Frame a Painting Marvel Symphonic Universe  •  Essay examples

Of course, not all essays critique the work of artists. Persuasion of an opinion is only one way to use the video form. Another popular use is to educate. 

• The Different Types of Camera Lenses →
• Write and Create Professionally Formatted Screenplays →
• How to Create Unforgettable Film Moments with Music →

Video analysis essay

Visual analysis.

One of the biggest advantages that video analysis essays have over traditional, written essays is the use of visuals. The use of visuals has allowed video essayists to display the subject or work that they are analyzing. It has also allowed them to be more specific with what they are analyzing. Writing video essays entails structuring both words and visuals. 

Take this video on There Will Be Blood for example. In a traditional, written essay, the writer would have had to first explain what occurs in the film then make their analysis and repeat.

This can be extremely inefficient and redundant. By analyzing the scene through a video, the points and lessons are much more clear and efficient. 

There Will Be Blood  •   Subscribe on YouTube

Through these video analysis essays, the scene of a film becomes support for a claim rather than the topic of the essay. 

Dissect an artist

Essays that focus on analysis do not always focus on a work of art. Oftentimes, they focus on the artist themself. In this type of essay, a thesis is typically made about an artist’s style or approach. The work of that artist is then used to support this thesis.

Nerdwriter1, one of the best video essays on Youtube, creates this type to analyze filmmakers, actors, photographers or in this case, iconic painters. 

Caravaggio: Master Of Light  •  Best video essays on YouTube

In the world of film, the artist video analysis essay tends to cover auteur filmmakers. Auteur filmmakers tend to have distinct styles and repetitive techniques that many filmmakers learn from and use in their own work. 

Stanley Kubrick is perhaps the most notable example. In this video, we analyze Kubrick’s best films and the techniques he uses that make so many of us drawn to his films. 

Why We're Obsessed with Stanley Kubrick Movies  •  Video essay examples

Critical essays and analytical essays choose to focus on a piece of work or an artist. Essays that aim to educate, however, draw on various sources to teach technique and the purpose behind those techniques. 

What is a video essay written about?

Historical analysis.

Another popular type of essay is historical analysis. Video analysis essays are a great medium to analyze the history of a specific topic. They are an opportunity for essayists to share their research as well as their opinion on history. 

Our video on aspect ratio , for example, analyzes how aspect ratios began in cinema and how they continue to evolve. We also make and support the claim that the 2:1 aspect ratio is becoming increasingly popular among filmmakers. 

Why More Directors are Switching to 18:9  •  Video analysis essay

Analyzing the work of great artists inherently yields a lesson to be learned. Some essays teach more directly.

• Types of Camera Movements in Film Explained →
• What is Aspect Ratio? A Formula for Framing Success →
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Writing video essays about technique

Teach technique.

Educational essays designed to teach are typically more direct. They tend to be more valuable for those looking to create art rather than solely analyze it.

In this video, we explain every type of camera movement and the storytelling value of each. Educational essays must be based on research, evidence, and facts rather than opinion.

Ultimate Guide to Camera Movement  •  Best video essays on YouTube

As you can see, there are many reasons why the video essay has become an increasingly popular means of communicating information. Its ability to use both sound and picture makes it efficient and effective. It also draws on the language of filmmaking to express ideas through editing. But it also gives writers the creative freedom they love. 

Writing video essays is a new art form that many channels have set high standards for. What is a video essay supposed to be about? That’s up to you. 

Organize Post Production Workflow

The quality of an essay largely depends on the quality of the edit. If editing is not your strong suit, check out our next article. We dive into tips and techniques that will help you organize your Post-Production workflow to edit like a pro. 

Up Next: Post Production →

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The best video essays of 2020

A year of physical separation and isolation was, not coincidentally, a year of unprecedented outreach and collaboration amongst the artists, critics and scholars at work in the burgeoning form of the video essay. Our poll of 42 of those essayists highlights 170 recommendations.

26 December 2020

By  Ariel Avissar , Cydnii Wilde Harris , Grace Lee

Introduction

As with any retrospective article, newsletter or GDPR -compliant email this year, we must begin with the unavoidable acknowledgement of: wow… what a year.

But while many essayists may have understandably been less prolific than in previous years, this year’s turmoil may have incited an even stronger drive towards the ways we can connect with each other virtually. Last year, the word ‘community’ was suggested as an overarching theme for the poll, and if a theme has emerged through this year’s results it would be an evolution of that same communal spirit into one of collaboration. It has repeatedly been collaborative projects that have helped inspire new ideas in a time when motivation wasn’t easy to find and allowed us to feel closer when we physically cannot be.

The Video Essay Podcast, created by Will DiGravio, has expanded its scope this year, co-curating The Black Lives Matter Video Essay Playlist (along with Cydnii Wilde Harris and Kevin B. Lee), launching the Notes on Videographic Criticism newsletter to further share news and promote interesting new work, and introducing experimental homework assignments to encourage creativity and new methods of working. Response from the video essay community has been overwhelming: the BLM Playlist (selections of which have already been screened in several online events, discussed and written about) has grown to include over 130 video essays and related audiovisual materials, and nearly 70 videographic exercises have been submitted thus far in response to the various homework assignment prompts.

Another collaborative video essay project, Once Upon a Screen , organised by Ariel Avissar and Evelyn Kreutzer, was published in the latest issue of The Cine-Files, and consists of a series of fantastic essays responding to a singular theme: how formative, traumatic experiences of cinema go on to impact our lives. Meanwhile, Nando v Movies gathered over 180 essayists on YouTube to come together and create the One X-Cellent Scene playlist (a sequel to 2019’s One Marvellous Scene ), collectively exploring the X-Men franchise.

These efforts were matched by increased institutional engagement, with further venues for the production and circulation of video essays joining the fold, such as the Netflix UK commissions (with an emphasis on Black creators); the new online journal Zoom Out ; Monographs , a new series of commissioned essays on Asian cinema by the Asian Film Archive ( AFA ), which premiered at the Dharamshala International Film Festival; and Thinking Images , a new videographic program at the Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival.

Trends and numbers

An overview of the poll, and some numbers and statistics: of the 42 contributors to the poll this year, 27 are male, 13 are female and two are non-binary. They submitted a total of 241 votes, for 170 unique entries which span online video essays, essay films, documentaries, installations and an HBO series; also a Kanye West music video! These works were made – or published – this past year, by both established essayists and newcomers to the field; they range from 24 seconds to 14 hours in length; some were viewed only once or twice prior to appearing on this poll, others had up to 10.4 million views, and everywhere in between.

Unsurprisingly, some prominent trends that emerged in the poll results this year included video essays related either directly or indirectly to the COVID -19 pandemic and its consequences (with 21 mentions); the presence of the BLM movement was also felt (with 22 mentions), as well as a more political slant to this year’s picks in general. The Once Upon a Screen collection was also featured prominently (with 25 mentions), and included the two top-mentioned videos in the poll.

The top-mentioned videos were: Once Upon a Screen: Explosive Paradox by Kevin B. Lee (12 mentions); My Mulholland by Jessica McGoff (ten mentions); Forensickness by Chloé Galibert-Laîné (nine mentions); and Feeling and Thought as They Take Form: Early Steadicam, Labor, and Technology (1974-1985) by Katie Bird (eight mentions). Catherine Grant and Luís Azevedo each had five different videos mentioned on the poll.

The videos are overwhelmingly presented in English (91 per cent) and are predominantly from the US (41 per cent) and the UK (28 per cent), while France makes up 6 per cent of the remaining votes, followed by 18 other countries (mostly in Europe). The dominant focus in terms of medium remains film (71 per cent of videos), with television (five per cent) and gaming (circa two per cent) coming in at distant second and third.

Of the essayists whose work is featured on the poll, 33 per cent are female (up from 24 per cent last year!) and 57 per cent are male (down from 68 per cent last year), with the remaining ten per cent made by mixed-gender teams or non-binary essayists. We did not parse – neither contributors nor picks – by race (among other reasons, as this would have been somewhat challenging), but hope that everyone is thinking more critically about whose voices they’re choosing to listen to and endorse.

We hope this poll continues to contribute to the ongoing conversation among creators and lovers of video essays worldwide, and that next year will see even more opportunities and venues for collaborating on, making and sharing this form that we are all so enthusiastic about; and also, you know, fewer fires and plagues?

Here are the results…

Table of contributors

(click on a name to jump to their picks.)

Film theorist and curator, Charles University in Prague & Národní filmový archiv

Forensickness

Chloé Galibert-Laîné

The author’s ongoing investigation of online communities and desktop interfaces continues to yield fascinating results. This time, it takes the form of a detective story which makes sure that no revelation waits for us at the end, but also, more importantly, that our cultural and technological mechanisms of knowledge-seeking are fundamentally flawed. Instead, it guides us through an endless road of detours whose diversity can surprise even a know-it-all desktop cinema aficionado. Not only a poignant contribution to videographic film studies but also a work that gives the adjective ‘essayistic’ a truly contemporary meaning.

Feeling and Thought as They Take Form: Early Steadicam, Labor, and Technology (1974-1985)

While examining film technology and its impact on the image content, I often wonder how to make these material interventions visible and open to reflection at the same time. Katie Bird’s exploration of the Steadicam and Panaglide camera devices indicates that videographic scholarship can be employed to overcome this dilemma. By understanding the camera operating as, first and foremost, an affective, embodied experience, many supposed ‘imperfections’ and ‘instabilities’ can be revealed as things that make the films tick. Moreover, the essay shows that the application of digital tools in archival research may have a more playful, creative side.

Crossings. On Freak Orlando

Johannes Binotto

This essay resurrects a relatively overlooked cinematic trend – the German queer cinema of the 1970s–80s and the wider tendency of stylistic and bodily excess in avant-garde cinema. What is crucial is that the author uses the short scene from Ulrike Ottinger’s Freak Orlando in a way that renovates the contemporary videographic practice as well. By putting his own body on display and overlaying the action on screen with his performance, he enables us to take the haptic visuality of the shot literally, and not just through the usual analog/digital manipulations. More of this, please.

The Wind in the Trees from Early Cinema to Pixar

Jordan Schonig

I have stumbled upon Schonig’s work thanks to Shane Denson’s new book Discorrelated Images (highly recommended, by the way), and I was happy to find out that he also makes accomplished scholarly video essays. This piece focuses on the contingencies (“rippling waves, rising dust, and fluttering leaves”) in early films and CGI animation, highlighting how digital algorithms make the distinctions between accidental qualities and careful calculation blurrier than ever. Schonig effectively demonstrates the divergences and affinities between the pre-cinematic and post-cinematic modes of staging accidents while also opening ways for addressing this complicated dialectic in the videographic form itself.

There Must Be Some Kind of Way Out of Here

Rainer Kohlberger

This year has seen the completion of a brilliant experimental film essay The Philosophy of Horror: A Symphony of Film Theory (Péter Lichter and Bori Máté). Nevertheless, as I have already mentioned this project in the last year’s poll, I would like to give a shout to another experimental work. Kohlberger’s film brings the spectacular world of disaster movies into contact with the dance of coloured dots on the surface of the image. This unpredictable humming occludes the well-worn explosions and catastrophes in Hollywood cinema and exposes them as mere paltry things compared to the horrors of filmic matter.

Live at Appleville

It may not be a videographic essay per se, but… In this video, as far from a traditional music concert as possible, the American hyperpop duo is goofing around in a dark room with a laptop showing scenes from Ratatouille. This disturbing yet strangely funny exercise creatively exploits the limitations of Covid and opens yet another place where cinema can be relocated. Somehow it could even fit as an unlikely addition to the Once Upon a Screen videographic project – a childhood cinematic trauma turned into a liberating performance. And I am not even a fan of the band…

Thinking Audiovisually

Department of Film Studies, Charles University

This is clearly a biased choice, but I still feel obliged to mention three student video essays. A workshop with Kevin B. Lee saw the birth of many short videographic exercises, some of which were developed into full-length pieces. As the videographic practice in the Czech Republic is being invented practically from scratch, I was surprised how accomplished, original, and funny the videos turned out. Thus, Lucie Formánková’s essay on her fascination with Tom Cruise’s acting, Valerie Špuláková’s work on a failed Czech dubbing of Twin Peaks, and Otto Urban’s look on the synecdochic character of trailers deserve a shout.

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Ariel Avissar

Media scholar, video essayist and lecturer at the Steve Tisch School of Film and TV , Tel Aviv University

What begins as a personal account of the experience of watching Chris Kennedy’s Watching the Detectives evolves into so much more; part essay film, part desktop documentary, part conspiracy thriller with a twist ending, this epistemological audio-visual meditation expertly weaves together some of my favourite preoccupations – cultural depictions of counter-terrorism intelligence efforts, John Carpenter’s They Live!, conspiracy boards, Game of Thrones fandom and Chloé Galibert-Laîné – into one jumbled, coherent, meandering, beautiful whole. My favourite media object of the year.

A Very Long Exposure Time

This silent visual poem was produced for the Time Complex exhibition at the Yerevan Biennial 2020. While aesthetically the polar opposite of Forensickness, it similarly develops Chloé’s ongoing fascination with images – how we see them, what they reveal, what they leave out, what can we use them for. Simple, stimulating, sublime.

To The Lighthouse

Kevin B. Lee

How do you make a video essay about a film you have no access to? Lee has previously wrestled with the challenges of inaccessibility. Commissioned for the 2020 International Film Festival Rotterdam Critics Choice, this enthralling mashup of 36 different films starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe, described by Lee as his ‘fanfic version ’of The Lighthouse by Robert Eggers, will make anyone who hasn’t seen the film feel as though they have. Arguably more enjoyable than the original, and with considerably less flatulence.

Extreme Is My Name

Johanna Vaude

Made for ARTE ’s online magazine “Blow Up”, this impressive montage is both a tribute to and a study of the works of one of my favourite directors, Kathryn Bigelow. Vaude takes Bigelow’s raw, adrenaline-fused energy then dials it up to eleven. Her video grabs hold of you from the get-go, and doesn’t let up until it’s – regrettably – over.

The Age of Emptiness

Oswald iten.

Iten’s lovingly-edited video recuts the lush imagery of Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence, focusing on shots devoid of human presence, and excluding human faces entirely. Fittingly accompanied by Bernard Herrmann’s score from Scorsese’s own Taxi Driver, this tale of Edwardian-era New York aristocracy is recontextualised for our current day and age. The result plays like an annotated relic of the Age of the Coronavirus, such as might be uncovered by future historians seeking to make sense of this bizarre period in human history.

Catherine Grant

This moving epigraphic tribute to the late Irrfan Khan merges Khan’s performance in Vishal Bhardwaj’s Maqbool with excerpts from Laura Mulvey’s Death 24x a Second to powerful, touching effect. Another example by Grant of what the videographic epigraph can achieve at its purest and most potent form.

House – Everything but the Kitchen Sink

Jesse Tribble

This ambitious six-part series on House MD , clocking in at four hours(!), is one of the most comprehensive analyses of a television series I’ve seen, certainly one devoted to a network medical procedural (in its early seasons, anyway). House remains one of my favourite (semi-guilty) pleasures, and while this episodic, narration-led effort by Tribble, highly impressive in its intimate familiarity with the show’s eight seasons, might not be ground-breaking in form or content, I found it extremely enjoyable and ridiculously watchable. Try the first part then see if you can resist the urge to keep on going; I certainly couldn’t.

Luís Azevedo

Filmmaker for hire. Maker of direct-to-video essays for Little White Lies , Mubi, Fandor, Amazon Prime &  Barbican

6ix9ine GOOBA except theres no music

Rob Lopez ( RØB )

Christopher Nolan | Doing It For Real

Julian Palmer (The Discarded Image)

Women Make Film

Mark Cousins ( watch trailer )

Cliff Booth Drives Home

Philip Brubaker

The Visual Architecture of Parasite

Thomas Flight

The Movies Behind Your Favourite GIF s

Leigh Singer (Little White Lies)

What Gordon Parks Saw

Evan Puschak (The Nerdwriter)

Filmmaker/writer

Expands the notion of what a video essay is and can be. Fascinating, even suspenseful. Blends performance in with videographic criticism in a way I had not seen before. Because of Binotto’s video, the way a critic can interact with a film is not what it was even a year ago.

From screening to (live) streaming

Davide Rapp & Andrea Dal Martello

An incredible marriage of past and present culture. Rapp & Martello have made a drop-dead hilarious critique of pandemic-era social media that is precisely funny because of how it recontextualises the movies that we grew up watching. It is an in-joke that richly rewards those who get it; how would these movies we loved in the past translate in today’s world?

Francisca Lila

A breathtaking, thorough taxonomy of flowers, plants and trees from the film canon. Lila’s brilliant, seamless editing makes the transition from Antichrist to Pather Panchali flow naturally, and part of the joy of this video essay is spotting and identifying the films she draws from.

In the Kitchen with Pedro Almodóvar

Luís Azevedo (Little White Lies)

Azevedo makes videos that are so sensuous and nimbly edited that he breathes new life into the clips on his timeline. Here his sensibility finds the perfect match: the kitchen. He finds captivating gestures from Almodóvar’s films and his speaking voice strikes just the right chord between his ideas and the visuals. Bravo.

Bad Vacations

The Criterion Channel

Criterion makes many great, concise supercuts to advertise the films on their streaming service. I wish they would credit the editors more generously, or at all, even. This is one that I have rewatched many times, because I love the arc; how a promising vacation can turn into a nightmare. This was a year full of miserable events that caused me great dismay, but somehow I delight in the pessimism of this teaser.

Change Needs to Come

Nelson carvajal.

Using simple, unadorned straight cuts set to an iconic song of the civil rights movement, Carvajal says what needed to be said. And oh, is it painful. A collection of cell phone imagery of black people murdered in contemporary life is juxtaposed with archival images dating back to slave times to show that in many ways, nothing has changed. We saw coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement throughout 2020, so I would be remiss not to include what I believe to be a very strong entry in this significant genre. I hate watching this video essay.

Video Artist and Founder of Free Cinema Now

Transcending Heidegger – The Cinema of Terrence Malick

Tom van der Linden (Like Stories of Old)

I was surprised by how moved I was by this video essay. Even with the voiceover element, van der Linden never hits the snooze button; his voice inquires, wonders and keeps insisting. By the end, I was floored by this work’s sincerity, the messaging, and its revelations about the human condition. Malick himself would be proud. It’s the best video essay of the year.

The Unloved – The Siege

Scout Tafoya (RogerEbert.com)

Part of the charm of Tafoya’s The Unloved series is that it gives us all a chance to beat our chests about our sentimental favorite films or guilty pleasure movies. When this entry on The Siege came out, it was a couple of months into the pandemic here in the States. I, like many people, was working from home, and felt really disconnected from the outside world. The way Tafloya injected socio-political urgency into his thesis for Zwick’s film, was like a bolt of electricity; it woke my senses, and reminded me of the very real world outside.

Wash Us In The Blood

Arthur Jafa

It was released as a music video but as soon as the appropriated images hit the screen and it was revealed to be created by video artist Arthur Jafa, it became, for me, a video essay. The striking juxtapositions Jafa creates between images and Kanye West’s music is thrilling. This is a vital work disguised as a music video. As I write this, it has 10,370,226 views on YouTube. That’s a really good turnout for a video essay if you ask me.

Andris Damburs

Cinefile, creator and moderator of 35 MM – A GROUP FOR CINEPHILES

Nothing at Stake

Everything is a remix: reality.

Kirby Ferguson

Aspect Ratio – The Changing Shape of Cinema

Leon Barnard

Physical Storytelling in Céline Sciamma’s Coming-Of-Age Trilogy

Why do you love cinema.

Ignacio Montalvo

Czechoslovak New Wave

Jonathan Keogh

Ian Danskin

Writer/editor/creator of YouTube channel Innuendo Studios .

Children of DOOM

Errant Signal

Errant Signal’s Children of DOOM is a dissection of the first-person shooter, wherein Chris Franklin takes what he considers to be the most important/interesting FPS from a given year and analyses it, planning to do one for every year of the genre’s existence. Chris has long been one of the most thoughtful voices in games criticism, and he’s always at his best discussing FPS . (His video on BioShock Infinite is what set me on the path to becoming a YouTuber.) In a year when watching political deep dives of the kind I typically make felt exhausting, this was my comfort food.

Coronavirus and America’s Death Cult

Carlos Maza

This is the year Carlos Maza – having previously been the main reason to subscribe to Vox’s YouTube – went solo and launched his own channel (he picked a heck of a year). He’s done excellent videos on the primaries and police brutality, but my fave is his video explaining the government’s response to the pandemic through the lens of neoliberalism and slowly devolving into a horror film. It does what all great political essays do: helps you understand a current event while also teaching you something fundamental that will help you understand much else about our world.

In Search of a Flat Earth

Dan Olson (Folding Ideas)

What at first appears to be a feature-length dissection of flat earth conspiracy theories telescopes out into the first comprehensive explanation of QA non I’ve seen, a distillation of the nature of conspiracy theories, a list of what other thinkers tend to overlook about conspiracists, and a sprinkling of love for the pursuit of knowledge. “Ultimately, it’s not about facts, it’s about power” is one of the most important takeaways of 2020.

Is Vine Cinema?

Kyle Kallgren (Brows Held High)

As he did two years ago with his video on bisexual lighting, Kyle Kallgren takes a seemingly innocuous subject – the life and death of Vine – and makes a video about EVERYTHING . About the essential units of filmmaking, about media that crosses social boundaries, about the speed of modern life and the formats best able to capture it, about race uprisings and cultural appropriation, about what happens when every so often The Youth are allowed to dictate culture. And all while montaging together his favorite Vines.

The $150,000 Banana

Sarah Urist Green (The Art Assignment)

Sarah Urist Green’s The Art Assignment didn’t end this year so much as go into low-power mode. The channel is still updated sporadically, but Sarah has refocused her attentions on other work. But, back in January – remember January? – she discussed Maurizio Cattelan’s then-trending art piece in which he duct taped a banana to a wall. Sarah employs her talent for taking strange, pretentious works on their own terms, digging into the banana’s surrounding contexts, the artist’s history, and the movement it’s part of, without ever claiming the work is ‘good’. This is her in her element.

we’re already ded || Zack Snyder, Part 2

Maggie Mae Fish

This year, the criminally under-appreciated Maggie Mae Fish started a series on the works of Zack Snyder, starting with a 15-minute look at how Snyder’s Superman contrasts with Supermen past, and then this 42-minute dive into how Snyder’s calcified, objectivist worldview manifests first in Dawn of the Dead and then across all his films.

Hamilton and the right mess it’s gotten me into

Grace Lee (What’s So Great About That?)

Grace’s dense and kaleidoscopic style proves a perfect match for the captivating yet self-contradictory musical that is Hamilton. The video goes back and forth over what makes Hamilton compulsively likable and also frustrating as heck, with every progressive idea undercut by something that seems to say the opposite, and every troublesome moment looking like it might be commentary on itself. Grace proves up to the task, providing not so much answers as a whole lot to think about.

Steven E. de Souza

It’s a Christmas movie. Bylines: @nytimes @LosAnglesTimes @FadeInMagazine @EmpireMagazine @SightSoundMagazine

How the Safdie Brothers Lie in Uncut Gems

Nehemiah Jordan (Behind the Curtain)

Never has a film essay had so disingenuous a title – but then N.T. Jordan’s essay is all about the art of misdirection. In truth, the brothers dissect as much as they dissemble, revealing more truths about the filmmaking process in 11 minutes than a semester of screenings. From the unanticipated dominoes that fall with casting changes (for instance, from a contemporary setting to a period one and back again), to unexpected sources of inspiration (spoiler alert: a colonoscopy) to the brutal marathon of 160 drafts over 10 years, the Safdies provide an unflinching portrait of the grind that is art.

The Most Important Filmmaker You Haven’t Heard Of

Jack Nugent (Now You See It)

Since silent days, women have been present in the editing suite, far too often unheralded (though not, of course, here). Starting with Margaret Booth in the 1930’s, then turning to Dede Allen and the late Sally Menke, Jack Nugent makes a strong case for these three artists as the midwives of modern film cutting. Both insightful and long overdue, Sight & Sound readers are urged to overlook the essay’s click-bait title… as they undoubtedly have.

Orson Wells a la Cinematheque Francaise

Pierre-André Boutang, Guy Seligmann

This month’s release of a major motion picture from an important filmmaker like David Fincher directly to a streaming platform sent a shock wave through Hollywood…. no, not the potential end of theatrical distribution as we know it, along with the shattering of the livelihood of exhibitioners and the shuttering of countless venues…I mean the impossible-to-shutter endless debate over Orson Welles: Boy wonder, or one-and-done-er? Found by Francois Thomas in the archives of the Cinematheque Francais only months ago, Welles gets another one hour 33 minutes with us… and we, with him.

Every Stormtrooper In Star Wars, Explained by Lucasfilm

Madlyn Burkert <@alohamaddy> and Doug Chiang

Call it classic or kitsch, revolutionary or rehash, but after 14 theatrical pictures and seven television series over 43 years for a total running time of let’s see, the original trilogy, six hours 20 minutes, then in chronological order Star Wars: Droids that’s 13 episodes x 23 minutes, plus 121 episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars… oh wait damn it, between the time I’m typing this and when it gets eyeballs, two more episodes of The Mandalorian will have been out, God knows what their running time will be, @jonfavs and @TaikaWaititi can’t even agree. Anyway, a long overdue taxonomy.

Steven Spielberg’s Use of Reflections

Shera Junushev

Like Bogart, this screenwriter is in a lonely place here with this one: I come to praise it, not critique it – but as observant as this essay is in recognising a signature Spielberg technique, in defining its effect as “allowing the audience to examine the details of a scene without losing connection to the character” it reduces psychology to geography. Rather, the subjective reflection shot’s true dynamic lies in flinging the filmgoer literally headlong into the protagonist’s shoes, bonding the viewer’s sense of self to the character with subliminal power.

The Irishman and the Death of the Gangster Film

In 1992 Francis Fukuyama declared The End of History. In 2020, Luis Azevedo is here to tell us that when we weren’t looking, Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992) declared the End of the Western, and in 2019, Martin Scorsese… hmm, how to best put this? Let’s just say that Luis thinks we got a real good genre here, it’d be a shame, a real shame if something happened to it…

Doctor Who and The Fourth Wall

Samuel Davis

From Justus D. Barnes’s gunshot in The Great Train Robbery in 1903 to Michael Caine’s seductive asides in Alfie (1966) to Joe Pesci bringing us full circle in Goodfellas (1990), breaking the fourth wall has been a key part of the motion pictures tool box. But those heralded films aren’t where we oh-so sophisticated Cineastes first encountered that jarring technique now, was it? And it wasn’t O Lucky Man, Amélie, or Fight Club, either. Come on, kiddies, fess up, you know the answer: here’s Samuel Davis to refresh your memory.

Monica Delgado

Peruvian film critic, director of Desistfilm.com

Presence: Call Me By Your Name

Fabian Broeker

I really liked this video: the search for a new topic in the treatment of a very hackneyed film.

On Contamination

Jessica McGoff

I felt interested about the political view of McGoff, because in this video she establishes correspondences between the filmmaker universe (animals and humans coexisting together) and social-environmental context.

Notorious Wavelengths

A Wave of the Hand. A way to the photo. An analysis of the use of the zoom in two opposite films, as a provocation. I never imagined watching this strange duel between Snow and Hitchcock.

Can any Johnny Guitar fan be indifferent to this?

Mariana Dianela Torres

There is a musical intention in this montage that attracts me a lot, that recovers a sensation of movement in the films of Chantal Akerman.

The Other Side of the Street

Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin

I’m interested in the way in which Adrian and Cristina edit the images, research and voices, in an exact timing and leading us to subtle endings.

For some video essayists it’s a problem to work without complete films (for different restrictions). Kevin finished this challenge in a very playful and fresh way.

Will DiGravio

Host, The Video Essay Podcast ; Creator, Notes on Videographic Criticism ; Contributor, Film School Rejects

Follow the Cat

If there is one video essayist whose style and sensibility I most try to emulate in my own work, it is Johannes Binotto. His videos are rigorous and scholarly, yet deeply personal and emotional. In this video, like much of his work, Johannes turns his cinephilia into a shove which, like Lisa Fremont, he uses to dig deeper and deeper into the fabric of Rear Window. Follow the Cat gives us a new way of understanding familiar images, and thus gets at the heart of what videographic criticism is and what it can do and be.

Jazmin Jones

I think about Unlocked by video artist Jazmin Jones often. In an interview, Jones described the way she shifted the focus of the appropriated videos away from the white people at the centre: “It was a matter of zooming in… trying to reframe so that we’re really focusing on the pleasure and the experience of the black fems.” Jazmin may not have set out to make a ‘video essay’ when she created Unlocked, but the way she manipulates the footage is among the most powerful examples of the form I have seen.

cops ordering food

Manny Fidel

I can’t do justice to Manny’s video in 100 words. It’s hilarious and deeply insightful. I also love his follow-up tweet: “I made this in like four mins do NOT comment on its quality.” Manny’s video was made three weeks after the murder of George Floyd, at a time when a narrative emerged in the United States that police officers were somehow the real victims in society. The video makes a mockery of that absurd notion and, in the process, shows that a definition of ‘quality’ as it relates to videographic criticism is far more nuanced than one might think.

My First Film

Zia Anger ( watch trailer )

My First Film debuted in 2019 as a live film performance; an innovative desktop documentary that earned high praise in last year’s poll. Unable to perform in person this year, Anger began streaming live performances throughout the spring. The work continued to break ground and morphed into something new, a film that reflected Anger’s own pandemic experience. During the performance I saw, Anger texted her dad to say she loved him. Watching “My First Film” during such frightening times was a cathartic experience, one that made me briefly feel like I was back at the movies among friends and strangers.

Indy Vinyl: Records in American Independent Cinema: 1987 to 2018

Ian Garwood

Another ground-breaking work this year came in the form of Ian Garwood’s Indy Vinyl: Records in American Independent Cinema: 1987 to 2018, a project that features a range of video essays and written works. One aspect of video essay-making that often gets overlooked is the amount of time dedicated to making each and every video. Ian’s project, both in size and scope, but also given the fact that he released parts of this project as they were finished, beautifully captures the labor of love that is video-essay making, all while pushing the boundaries of what the form can be.

Tear away Turn back Breathe

Martina Probst and Chantal Hann

Over the past nine months, I have tried to relive my favourite pre-pandemic moviegoing experiences through video essays. This video by Martina Probst and Chantal Hann, two students at the Lucerne School of Art and Design, is among the finest analyses of Portrait of a Lady on Fire I have seen. But what I find so compelling about their essay is their willingness to at times forgo images entirely and embrace a blank canvas: the black screen. Video essayists often feel the need to fill every second with images. Perhaps we should allow our work to, like Marianne, breathe.

It’s Bad Luck to Compare Hands

Alex Slentz

Meshes of the Afternoon is one of those films that I rewatch all the time, just to try and understand how it works; how it was assembled. I feel the same way about Alex Slentz’s video, which blends together footage from Maya Deren’s film, Persona, and Un Chien Andalou. Similar to the video by Probst and Hann, I am inspired by the way Sletz allows us to see the canvas on which the video essay was created. The fluid movements of the images and their interactions with one another blend together in a beautiful collage and insightful analysis.

Video Essayist and Filmmaker

How Edgar Wright Uses Sound

Sound tends to be an underrepresented subject in the world of video essays. Julian’s essay mimics Edgar Wright’s editing and sound design to move effortlessly between his films, showcasing Wright’s unique approach to sound.

The Strange Reality of Roller Coaster Tycoon

Jacob Geller

Jacob Geller expertly ties together internet culture, video game design, and physics in this profound examination of the existential unease that can be found in a theme park simulation game from 1999.

Lies of Heroism – Redefining the Anti-War Film by Tom van der Linden (Like Stories of Old)

Weaving together examples from 49 films during the course of this nearly feature-length video essay, Tom thoughtfully and thoroughly examines depictions of war in cinema and whether it’s truly possible to make an anti-war film.

Dinner with Brad Pitt

Video essays can also just be a lot of fun. I’m not sure who had more fun, Luís Azevedo sitting down to edit this video, or Brad Pitt sitting down to dinner in all these scenes.

Researcher and filmmaker

The Viewing Booth

Ra’anan Alexandrowicz ( watch trailer )

An incredibly careful and thorough examination of the spectatorial mechanisms of two protagonists (a filmed spectator, and the filmmaker who is filming her) that exposes how much our beliefs and ideological convictions determine how we make sense of online images. Though rather pessimistic in its conclusion (no image can change a person’s political opinions – so long for a century-long history of activist media and political filmmaking), the film advocates convincingly for the political power of building respectful interpersonal relationships with our political opponents, and for the potential of images to serve as the basis for such conversations.

Il n’y aura plus de nuit

Eléonore Weber ( watch trailer )

This essay film looks at thermal imagery produced by helicopter pilots in a war context. We hear only one voice, but the words it speaks contain the gazes of many: from the pilots themselves, to the judges in military courts in charge of examining these images to determine retrospectively the legitimacy of the pilots’ decisions to kill, to the filmmaker who questions her mixed fascination for these images, to our own uncertainty about what these images expect from us – their probably unwanted, surplus witnesses.

On Contamination and My Mulholland

I equally love these two videos by Jessica McGoff. Re-watching On Contamination at the end of this year of sanitary crisis gives the video an uncanny, definitely prescient quality, but it is a great work independently from its unfortunate topicality. Like My Mulholland (which McGoff produced in the context of the video essay series Once Upon a Screen ), On Contamination explores an intimate form of narration in which the discussed film becomes not so much the limiting frame of the essay, but the substrate from which it grows in unexpected directions.

Elie Ga ( watch excerpt )

This essay – very much like my other picks – proposes a very personal, partly autobiographical, partly fictional narration, loosely based on a collection of images figuring objects found by ‘beachcombers’. Images come in waves onto the filmmaker’s table, who tentatively combines them into spatial arrangements and explorative superpositions, until the surf of the narration prompts their replacement with other images – some we discover, some we see again and again, constantly re-invested with new meanings.

I know very few video essayists who are willing to implicate themselves as much in their videos as Binotto does in this performative, wistfully celebratory and intensely personal short video piece. I admire the growing abstraction of Binotto’s work (such as in his video Trace , another strong candidate for this poll) for it opens up the possibility of unexpected, sensual engagements with the films with which it dialogues. These are video essays where images burgeon with news meanings and unlikely sensations, rather than being pinned down or constricted by the analysis.

Amel Alzakout and Khaled Abdulwahed

This year I’ve seen a number of video essays reflecting on images of migrants on their way to Europe, and this film is by far the one I found the most inspiring. It recalls Philip Scheffner’s Havarie in its focus on a single, arguably illegible image, and its investment of the soundtrack as the lieu of meaning production. But the perspective is reversed: Havarie watched a ship sink from afar, Purple Sea plunges us in the water. The presentness of the image serves as the loam from which the story unfolds, made of the narrator’s uncertain memories and hopes.

Wild Heart 1981 / 2020

Zach Dorn ( watch excerpt )

From randomly filming contemporary online media flows to carefully re-animating on paper a decades-old improvised piece of footage (that was later uploaded to YouTube), this short essay deploys an impressively wide, and very personal narrative arc. The diversity of visual techniques that are employed in this virtuoso single-shot speaks to Dorn’s attempts to grasp his digital object and materialise it in the space of his home – a gesture that is fascinatingly articulated as one of self-care and compensation for the anxieties triggered by contemporary online media.

Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies, University of Glasgow

Desegregating the Two Shot: The Use of the Frame in The Defiant Ones (1958)

Henry Rownd

This finely detailed audiovisual commentary operates in the best tradition of close mise-en-scène analysis – a surprisingly marginal genre in the academic video essay world. Rownd demonstrates astutely how the image construction of the film tells a nuanced and complex story about race and space in the Civil Rights era, even as the surface narrative hammers home a more heavy-handed message.

Lisa Hanawalt: Being Human by Being Animal

This year I taught a dedicated video essay course for the first time in a while and Grace Lee was the go-to for examples of incredibly smart, quick-witted, well-researched and audiovisually engaging work. Lee’s awareness of the possibilities of animation shines through in this video, an awareness developed through both her critical and filmmaking practice.

Satis House

As is often the case with Catherine Grant’s work, Satis House is an exemplary act of collaboration. Firstly, it invites collaboration from the viewer by giving them more and more visual information to compare, without authorial commentary, as the video proceeds. Secondly, Grant’s accompanying writing refines and deepens the viewing experience, collaborating with it rather than simply describing it. Finally, the collaboration through writing is extended by the inclusion of a reflective piece by the cultural historian Lynda Nead, whose thinking about Great Expectations inspired the video in the first place.

My Mulholland

From my admittedly partial perspective, skewed towards video essays published in academic journals, a turn to the overtly personal seemed evident in a number of examples this year. Maybe it was fitting, then, that the year closed with the publication of the Once Upon a Screen collection in the Cine-Files, where video essayists reflected on formative film-viewing experiences. I’ve had a little more time to watch and think about Jessica McGoff’s contribution than the others, and it’s a wonderful reflection on the allure and perils of online media consumption, funnelled through a memorable first encounter with Mulholland Drive.

”Who Ever Heard…?”

Like Catherine Grant’s Satis House, Payne’s video uses an additive multi-screen compositional process that draws attention to repetitions in the source material – in this case a scene from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Payne’s approach is more overtly manipulative than Grant’s, repeating each shot from the scene to create a visual and aural montage that builds then recedes in intensity. The looping effect of the soundtrack, in particular, is mesmerising.

The Before Sunrise Waltz

This was the act of virtual film tourism I needed in the early months of lockdown. By orchestrating a Google Earth tour of the locations visited in Before Sunrise, Stone re-envisages the film from a panoramic perspective, thereby offering a completely different take on the original, which stays determinedly tied to Jesse and Celine’s ground-level progression through Vienna’s streets.

A Machine for Viewing

Richard Misek, Oscar Raby, Charlie Shackleton

Of course it’s a shame that the pandemic put a (temporary?) stop to the VR -video essay roadshow envisaged as part of Machine for Viewing, but the three videos published in NECSUS demonstrate that the project’s potential has already been realised. Whilst the demonstration of the technology is impressive, I related most to the videos’ use of VR to reflect on a traditional 2-D cinema-going experience. Who would have thought that the sight of a packed auditorium, witnessing the live VR presentation and commentary at the Sundance Festival, would now seem so poignant?

Hailey Gavin

Video essay creator

Yorgos Lanthimos’s Absurd Worlds

This is an excellent articulation of the questions Lanthimos asks and the visual and structural tools he employs. This is a must-watch for anyone who loved Nimic and conveys the power of shorts to reframe our understanding of auteurs’ work.

How Portraits Lie – What to be aware of in your portrait photography

Jamie Windsor

I love this clear exploration of a nuanced topic, supplemented by beautiful motion graphics and fluid editing.

This piece illustrates the sometimes inextricable nature of nostalgia and trauma. I also loved the way the essay draws points of connection between media of different formats from different times.

Audiovisual essayist and Professor of Film at the University of Reading.

Slap That Bass Zoomed

The elephant man’s sound, tracked., the original ending: the last acts of black horror heroes.

Cydnii Wilde Harris

Music and Point of View in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Patrick Keating

Once Upon a Screen: Explosive Paradox

Video essayist; founding co-editor of [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film & Moving Image Studies ; Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, and elected member of Academia Europea. Currently completing https:screenstudies.video

One of my all-time favourite videographic works by foundational artist and essayist Lee, or indeed by anyone. Part of a brilliant project recently published in issue 15 of the Cine-Files in the collection Once Upon a Screen , commissioned and curated by Ariel Avissar and Evelyn Kreutzer.

Another astonishing work by one of the most innovative and significant of video essayists. Published online in December 2020, this video also deservedly garnered huge festival success, screening in competition at the Marseilles Festival of Documentary Film as well as at the Festival dei Popoli, the Kasseler Dokfest and the festival Caminhos do Cinema Português.

One of my all-time favourite pieces that we have published at [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Studies this last (or any) year. A wonderfully ambitious exploration of the first decade of stabiliser technologies and techniques. In surveying the industrial histories of two competing devices, the Steadicam and the obsolete Panaglide, Bird demonstrates, powerfully and movingly, how “now codified norms of craft labour practice around stabiliser’s aesthetic and generic forms emerged amongst a diverse range of media and eclectic techniques”.

Maryam Tafakory ( read synopsis )

I love Tafakory’s essay films and video essays, and this brilliant piece by her was one of the excellent new series of commissioned essays on Asian cinema, Monographs by the Asian Film Archive ( AFA ).

”Drawing upon histories and archives, both personal and regional, these works reveal new vistas of inquiry; ruminations that evince the essayists’ personal connections to [Asian] cinema, made more poignant by the fact that they were created during various states of isolation and solitude.”

The series had its world premiere at the Dharamshala International Film Festival held online from 29 October to 4 November 2020.

The latest work by hugely talented video essayist and film McGoff; her video was also part of the high quality collection Once Upon a Screen .

One of an outstanding collection of audiovisual essays devoted to explorations of gesture published in NECSUS : European Journal of Media Studies , curated by the wonderful video essayist and scholar Tracy Cox-Stanton, in December 2019. This video was also added to the essential Video Essay Podcast Black Lives Matter video essay playlist , curated by Cydnii Wilde Harris, Kevin B Lee and The Video Essay Podcast founder and host Will DiGravio.

Indy Vinyl, Interrupted

This video, published in 2020, is the tip of the amazing videographic iceberg that is Garwood’s work on his hugely original videographic/monographic project Indy Vinyl, as set out here and here .

Reader in Film and Sonic Arts, Liverpool John Moores University.

This audiovisual essay marries form and content in such an affecting manner that I was completely drawn into the essayist’s world. The universality of the space that Lee re-enacts/re-presents urged me to think back to the complexity of early childhood memories. The camera shot and movement choices coupled with the voice (which is sometimes masked) allows for an intimate story that perfectly reflects this particular moment and the trauma of early childhood.

If I could have made any other audiovisual essay, I wish it could have been this one! I love everything about it, from the voiceover, with its centrality of the cat, to the essayist’s own cat watching the screen. It is beautifully paced and offers an insightful point of entry to Hitchcock’s camera moves. It prompts a personal way into questioning cinematic spectatorship and image-making, and draws from an array of interesting representations of cats in cinema.

This audiovisual essay makes me think and feel differently about camera movement in cinema. It details a rich history drawing from technical manuals, instructional videos, film tests and experiments and other archival material to present an embodied argument that allows me to feel the moves of the Steadicam/Panaglide operator(s). The extent of the research is significant, but this is not merely a dissemination of research – the entire essay builds movement into its shape and form. It is truly inspiring work!

Forensickness is a longer audiovisual essay/experimental film that considers Chris Kennedy’s film, Watching the Detectives. Much like Galibert-Laîné’s earlier work, it deconstructs Kennedy’s film, goes to the online archive of material (this time on Reddit) to consider both the news footage circulating around the Boston Marathon bomb attack in 2013 and the Hollywood depiction of these events. This work is about how we see, how we consume images, and how we think about and through images.

McGoff’s My Mullholland is a poignant consideration of traumatic film viewing. The desktop format is most appropriate for examining the online consumption of film, and here the essayist’s own adventures on the internet and into the cinema of David Lynch are richly depicted through this approach. The audiovisual essay details some darker areas of the internet whilst also re-presenting the edgier moments of Lynch’s, Mulholland Drive. It is often fun and playful and the use of text is brilliantly deployed.

Garwood has had a prolific year creating audiovisual essays and has made a number that are inspired by the Zoom app as an aesthetic device, reflecting these recent months and how we have been collectively engaging online. He has created a showcase of this work which is available to audioview here . In a year where Black Lives Matter is at the forefront of political discussion, “Slap That Bass Zoomed” offers a timely de-centring of the white appropriator, instead offering an array of Black artists (named and unnamed) to take their rightful place onscreen.

Paris Bagdad: Fantasies of America(na) in German-American Cinema

Evelyn Kreutzer

Paris Bagdad: Fantasies of America(na) in German-American Cinema offers a personal route through Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984) and Baghdad Café (Percy Adlon, 1987). This essayistic approach includes the use of superimposition, which is beautifully rendered and speaks to the sense of place and wanderlust that Kreutzer narrates her way through. This feels like a logical follow on from her earlier inspired work on German cinema, Berlin Moves (2017).

Chiara Grizzaffi

Postdoctoral Fellow at IULM University – co-editor of [in]Transition

MADELEINE / JUDY

The philosophy of horror: a symphony of film theory.

Péter Lichter, Bori Máté ( watch trailer )

Once Upon a Screen: Titanic

Victoria Wegner

Safe Bodies, Safe Environment: The Atmosphere of Todd Haynes’s Safe (1995)

Kelsey Draper

Film scholar and video essayist

That she was able to commute the cinematic trauma of Lynch’s work to the universal trauma of growing up during the Wild West years of the internet was a sublime insight. From the choice to take her audience on a journey through her desktop, to her recreations of jump scares and the IMD b message boards, this piece resonated with me on so many levels.

It’s one thing to understand that your colleague is brilliant. It is another experience entirely to watch an artist, independent of your relationship to them, so handedly exceed their own boundaries. Kevin’s piece on his childhood experiences with the film Platoon are an example of the very power of cinema to shape our relationship with the world, and the world’s relationship with us. Include that footage, and his deeply personal voiceover all combine to create an experience of childhood trauma so visceral, that I haven’t just gained new insight on the war epic itself.

This piece redefined what I believed to be the parameters of the video essay. By making manifest his own desire to enter a film, Joannes transcends the medium technically, and does so by seamlessly immeshing his own visuals, music, and handwriting into the groundbreaking work, Freak Orlando. He uses the style of his piece to supplement both that of the existing property and what the essayist has to say about it. Johannes didn’t just redefine how I’d like to create video essays. He redefined the limitations of how I can enter a film itself.

The greater focus of Dan’s essay, distilled what I’ve found so troubling about conspiracy theories, from the Illuminati to QA non, and how more often than not, their unstated purpose is to oppose my very existence. By laying bare the historical context of these theories and their creators, Dan articulated the harm these theories stand to enact, and makes them far less easy to laugh off.

As far as works responding to or including elements of our current reality, Ian’s use of Zoom is perhaps one of the most hopeful. This may also be a standout for how it combines both the Zoom revolution with the Racial Equity revolution, and may be one of the most effective ways I’ve seen the Zoom framework employed. Add to that, the editing is impeccably timed, and I left the video with a healthy list of performers to whom I was newly introduced.

Coco’s Feel-Good Oppression

Eliquorice’s video essay on Coco was my gateway drug to the rest of his works. His analysis of the film’s depiction of immigration within the narrative is poignant, but his comparisons between the failings of the immigration system in Disney’s magical realm to the failings of the system in our reality make a compelling case for how political ideology is communicated in family films. The inclusion of his own experiences with the immigration system come at just the right moment, thereby narrativising his analysis, while giving a human face to an issue often overshadowed by the enormity of the system.

The Satirical Resurgence of Reefer Madness

Yhara’s recent video essay on Reefer Madness delves into the historical context that lead to the film, its reception upon release, and its place in the canon of midnight features. Her candour, humour, and personality transcend what could have been a simple history lesson into an engaging conversation about the mutability of everything from social attitudes about cannabis to the constantly shifting legacy of a specific film alongside those attitudes. It’s Yhara’s deft balance of humour and context that reveals to her audience the absurdity that is racial stereotyping and discrimination.

Film scholar, video essayist, animation artist

When was the last time I found myself enjoying a supercut for almost seven minutes? Conforme has a relentless urgency thanks in large part to the driving score by Vaude herself. For me, it captures that contradictory state of frantic stasis that was and is 2020.

Johannes Binotto keeps exploring the possibilities of the video essay in all kinds of directions sidestepping technological wizardry by relying on household items. In Trace he creates tactile sensations from a single film still on a tablet. Seeing it again now, I wonder if it was about that one question all along: what does physical contact feel like?

With her well paced self-reflective long form essays, Chloé Galibert-Laîné has more than once managed to entice me into agreeing then disagreeing with her narration before finally realising that I had been too immersed to “pay attention to that woman behind the curtain”, so to speak.

With his entry in the Once Upon a Screen collection, Kevin B. Lee confirms that he is an incredible storyteller. Explosive Paradox looks deceivingly simple, but works on so many levels. Most importantly, I found it a deeply moving experience.

Black Lives Matter Video Essay Playlist

Curated by Cydnii Wilde Harris. Kevin B. Lee and Will DiGravio

As our field becomes ever wider, curated lists have become crucial to make sure that notable video essays and voices do not go unnoticed. Among them, the Black Lives Matter Video Essay Playlist is an essential contribution, has a clear-cut profile and is co-organised by three widely connected practitioners.

Nehemiah Jordan

Creator of Behind the Curtain , an online community of screenwriters

The Social Network – Ten Years Later

The Royal Ocean Film Society

The reason why I chose this was primarily its experimental form. Using the topic of Facebook and social media, Andrew Saladino (creator) builds the entire video essay off of the Facebook feed – scrolling from clip to graphic to clip. Something to watch for its inventiveness.

Brave was a Disappointment

This video does a great job of walking through the origins of making this film, breaking down how it’s structured, and finally, how it could’ve been rewritten to be stronger. A long video, but extremely entertaining and well-organised.

The Psycho Chord – Consonance vs Dissonance

Listening In

This channel takes a deep look into an unexplored section of filmmaking: the sound. Specifically, the music and how it’s an integral part of the storytelling. Also, the production quality of these videos are incredibly high.

How Martin Scorsese Integrates The Shadow: A Jungian Practice

Jillian Snead (Jilloms)

A deep but practical analysis of the Shadow, using examples from Martin Scorsese’s filmography to explore how it’s been utilised in different characters. What’s so great here is that she translates all of the analysis into practical application for ourselves. How does one begin integrating their own Shadow into their lives? This video gives you the steps.

Christian Keathley

Professor of Film & Media Culture, Middlebury College; Founding co-editor of [in]Transition

Santa y Teresa

Michelle Farrell

Tarkovsky’s Napes

Pavel Tavares

Miklós Kiss

Associate Prof. in Audiovisual Arts and Cognition at University of Groningen, NL /co-author of Film Studies in Motion: From Audiovisual Essay to Academic Research Video

One of the best audiovisual research essays of the year, through its presented information (a rich exploration of the first decade of film stabiliser technologies and techniques) and quality of presentation (technical skill, soundtrack, use of split-screen, etc.).

All Is Not Lost

Amy Rachlin

The video that managed to squeeze all the suspense of living in isolation during a pandemic AND one of the most goose-bumpy scenes of my favourite TV series into less than four minutes. Bonus: it’s also funny.

Davide Rapp and Andrea Dal Martello

Famous film scenes appear in TikToks, Skype calls, distance learning and online conferences. Another COVID -19 cinephile fun.

If you want to watch only one video about GIF s, it should be this one. [insert Robert Redford as Jeremiah Johnson nodding meme.]

Repeating Terror: Contemplating Death in Amat Escalante’s Heli (2013)

Niamh Thornton

A calm but powerful side-by-side reflection on the ethics of the slow depiction of hyper-realist violence in Amat Escalante’s 2013 Heli, using repetition and variation of the ‘same’ scene. A brilliant demonstration of the potentiality of videographic criticism.

“Parasites move from animal to human. Are we the parasites or the hosts?” An eerily prophetic video ‘on contamination’ (a response to Janis Rafa’s KALA AZAR ), made for the Critics’ Choice panel of the 2020 International Film Festival Rotterdam – thus released just weeks before the COVID -19 virus turned into a pandemic.

Contagion – Willy and Rutty

Luca Gentile, Sasha Quinlan Narciso, Romy Weggeman, Sam Klement

A naughty little video made by my Videographic Criticism students at the University of Groningen, mixing Soderbergh’s Contagion with the TV speeches of the Dutch king and prime minister during the first wave of COVID -19. It’s in Dutch, but you’ll get the point without understanding the language.

Jaap Kooijman

Associate Professor Media Studies, University of Amsterdam

Explosive Paradox undoubtedly is one of the most personal and moving audiovisual essays that I have after watched, and at the same time presents a convincing criticism of the way Hollywood glorifies violence, not only in films themselves, but also in the way these films are celebrated by film critics and Academy Awards. The essay contrasts the mundaneness of the cinema-turned-liquor-store where Lee first saw the film, back in the 1980s, and the seriousness of the trauma he experienced when confronted with this racially motivated violence. A wonderful piece of videographic criticism and art.

Mastering Dialogue: American Crime

Andreas Halskov and Previously on Perry Mason

Henrik Højer

I select these two audiovisual essays together, because they are the first two of a new series by the Danish 16:9 film journal which is based on a very specific parameter, a constraint in length. The audiovisual essays are 169 seconds (thus 2:49 minutes) long and described by the journal as ‘condensed audiovisual breakdowns’. Both take a US American television series as case study. The constraint in length forces the authors to focus on one specific element and to come straight to the point. Viewers are reminded of the short length as the seconds literally tick away.

Although I find the arguments of both audiovisual essays on, respectively, American Crime and Perry Mason, compelling and convincing, I am most fascinated by their shared form and how a relatively arbitrary constraint in length succeeds in condensing academic arguments about US American television into very seductive bites of television studies knowledge.

Days of Linda

One does not have to be familiar with Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978) to make sense of Days of Linda, a tribute to the actress Linda Manz, whose first film role was playing Linda. The audiovisual essay highlights Manz’s ‘central authorial contributions’ by combining Manz’s voiceover with footage from the film presented in split screen, with shots of a non-speaking Linda on the left and other scenes (some including Linda) on the right. In this way, character Linda does not only get a voice through actress Linda, but her original marginalised and silenced role is emphasised as well.

Adjunct lecturer and video essayist, Northwestern University

This year I was so short on time that I missed out on seeing a lot of videographic work, so even more than in other years, my suggestions are highly subjective. I picked three videos whose originality and/or currentness caught my attention this year.

Katie Bird’s video essay on early stabilisation technologies is a marvellously executed demonstration of videographic scholarship’s ability to simultaneously communicate historical film scholarship and evoke aesthetic, phenomenological experiences. Reflecting upon an under-researched, complex topic in a very accessible (and fun!) way, it’s also a perfect video essay to show in film classes.

Who Ever Heard…?

Matthew Thomas Payne

Payne’s short and playful videographic engagement with a single scene from John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance spoke to me because of its marvellous use of rhythm, repetition, and sonic layering. As a sound scholar, I often ponder on the possibilities and limitations of videographic methods to investigate and/or express one’s ideas via sound. Payne’s video certainly does both.

Before the End

Before the End is an interesting case in terms of its circulation and 2020-ness (rather than conceptual or formal novelty). It’s a very simple, short video that uses the basic principles of editing and the Kuleshov effect to join excerpts from separate zoom interviews with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy (without the audio) to suggest a narrative sequel to the Before film series. Stone’s video went viral, eventually reaching way more viewers than the original interviews had. It speaks to various intersecting technological, narrative, and communicative desires of this particular moment.

Video essayist

What Do I Want?

This video makes great use of the looping format of social media video and, originating from TikTok, an exciting addition to the ever-monstrously-expanding field of video essay.

For All Mankind: Is The Moon Landing Cinema?

Kyle Kallgren

I mean, if your video essay doesn’t have lego recreations of your subject matter… what are you even doing here? Get out of my house!

Sorry to Bother You – You can’t just tame people

Curio (Eric Sophia and Natalie)

Curio has made so many amazingly ambitious essays this year, but I especially liked this more low key video on white supremacy and capitalism in Sorry To Bother You which people may have missed amidst the excellent creative flair of their higher profile videos.

I’m sure this will be on many lists this year, but Kevin continues to be the most inventive, versatile video essayist out there and… come on… I couldn’t NOT mention this video (as well as the Once Upon a Screen project in general).

We Are Here Because of Those That Are Not

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley

I’m maybe stretching the definition of video essay more than I ever have but if there isn’t at least one pick on a list that makes you think “come on now, this is just taking the piss” then is it even a Sight & Sound video essay poll list? This interactive archive of black trans experiences may be neither strictly video nor essay, but it’s one of the most important, creative and emotional things I saw this year. It’s got audio, it’s got visuals and it’s going on the list!

Filmmaker, Director of the first Masters program for Video Essays and Desktop Documentaries (at Merz Akademie)

Purple Sea and Shipwreck at the Threshold of Europe, Lesvos, Aegean Sea: 28 October 2015

Amel Alzakout and Khaled Abdulwahed, Forensic Architecture

These are separate works, but together they encompass the vast range of possibilities that video essays can have in using the same source material. Explanatory in the best sense, Forensic Architecture uses Alzakout’s footage as part of a potent account of a disastrous shipwreck. Alzakout takes her footage in the opposite direction, with a deep exploration into the thoughts and experiences the footage does not reveal. In doing so the film offers a strong rebuke to the instrumentalisation that dominates image discourse.

More about Purple Sea can be found here .

Originally a VR video essay performed live at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, this virtual exploration of the cinematic experience is all the more poignant in a year in which cinemas face an existential crisis and so much of daily life has migrated to a digital simulacrum of itself. Along with Zia Anger’s live online performances of My First Film, it points to exciting new directions for the video essay – interactive and in real time.

Various Creators with the Asian Film Archive (detailed info here )

I should acknowledge that I served as editorial consultant on this, but there is simply no precedent for this massive series of video essays on Asian cinema commissioned by the Asian Film Archive in Singapore, involving an impressive roster of filmmakers, moving image artists and scholars. They premiered last month at the Dharamshala International Film Festival and will circulate over the coming months. I am especially enamoured of Ghosts Like Us by Riar Rizaldi, Spirit Film by Raya Martin, and Irani Bag by Maryam Tafakory.

The most thoroughly and impressively researched academic video essay I’ve seen this year, bringing a heightened and expanded awareness of the physical labor that goes into a shot and how different approaches to technology and craft yield different effects of cinematic embodiment. A video essay that deepens one’s appreciation for the bodily experience of film viewing and filmmaking alike.

Also: Sonic Chronicle Post Sound by Cormac Donnelly.

An experiment in watching propaganda leads to a wholesale reassessment of the assumptions behind progressive documentary filmmaking. A brave self-critique of one’s longstanding practices and ideals in the face of an emerging set of sobering realities.

See also: Indy Vinyl, Interrupted by Ian Garwood.

Part of the Once Upon a Screen series of video essays on childhood film viewing-as-trauma, published on the Cine-Files Journal – this particular entry brings the topic out of the past tense with an exceptional liveness and presence. As my other selections would attest, questions of spectatorship and an expanded cultural and technological framework for understanding cinema are the foci for the video essays that I find most exciting right now. This desktop documentary engages all those themes brilliantly.

Real Talk: Is Breadtube Discussing Race ‘Right’?

Professor Flowers

Working on the Black Lives Matter Video Essay Playlist was among the most significant experiences of the year for me, and through it I learned about several fantastic video essayists working in academia, YouTube and social media. I found especially noteworthy this careful consideration of the performativity of progressive racial politics on YouTube.

Eric Sophia McAllister

Video essayist working on YouTube covering media and cultural analysis, with a particular political focus on queer and leftist topics

I have to get this pick up front because it is the single greatest piece of video essay/documentary content on YouTube, not just this year. Olson has raised the bar absurdly high with this moving, insightful, well-researched, funny, well-shot and ideologically devastating look into the worlds of internet conspiracy theory. This isn’t just a YouTube video about conspiracy theorists, it is a phenomenology. What is always impressive about Dan Olson is how well he structures information for maximum impact, and the “mid point twist” of this video hits like an atom bomb.

A Prison of Our Own Loneliness

Sarah Zedig (let’s talk about stuff.)

This piece subverts the oft-derided talking head form of the YouTube video essay by having Sarah sit staring into the camera NOT talking while her pre-recorded voice-over delivers this essay about the pandemic, loneliness, nations, world politics and media, culminating in a silent scream and then breakdown into tears that is simply one of the most moving things I have ever seen on the platform. By the end of watching this you definitely will feel the catharsis of letting everything out with a ‘good old cry’, but most likely because you will actually cry.

Tyr & Grem (Pamphleteer)

It’s best to acknowledge up front that this video is aping off the style of a video that I made, simply because I want to say that I see how self-serving it might appear to select it but I had to anyway, because this video is simply so so SO good. Tyr & Grem had a double realisation earlier this year when Tyr came out as a trans woman and Grem realised they were, and always had been, a lesbian. This video takes the form of a “Martian Poem” inspired by Alan Moore’s Watchmen and will knock your socks off.

The Ideology of Apocalypse

Jack has been at the top of his game as a media analysis and political commentary essayist for a while – from his ‘Copaganda’ trilogy about police movies to his evolving series on cartoon animals as race metaphor and all the inherent problems therein – but this masterwork taking a broad survey across apocalyptic fiction to study its cultural and ideological trends is the tippy top of the tippy top. Not to mention that in the year of our Lord 2020 the cultural question of how we perceive and process the apocalypse seems uncomfortably relevant.

Twitter and Empathy

In the world of liberal and progressive politics, the notion of ‘empathy’ is often invoked as a virtue, but this essay is really special for questioning what we actually mean when we talk about empathy. Big Joel knocks it out of the park by dissecting the way we evoke this concept and the revelation that it’s actually several different, intersecting and nebulous concepts being crammed under the one umbrella.

Oblivion &  Women

Lilly (mothcub)

Did you know feminism makes games more fun, not less? Lilly knows this. While her channel doesn’t usually engage in media analysis or produce video essays, this was still one of my favourite media analysis essays this year. Lilly takes us on a journey through a quest in Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls IV : Oblivion and how it seemingly for no reason at all pulls the rug out from under itself and makes the quest less fun, when the obvious answer to any feminist gamer chad would be to go the other way entirely.

The Beginner’s Guide: This Is Not For You

Grace’s essays are always stunningly good. Shockingly good. Upsettingly good. Their essays are sharp, funny, insightful, well researched and paced so well that at the end of a ten-minute What’s So Great About That video I feel like I’ve just watched an hour, but in the best possible way. To paraphrase my esteemed colleague in political commentary, Mr. Rubin, Grace’s videos put my brain in recovery mode from all the high-level important ideas. This particular essay takes a hard look at the cultural, social, and personal implications of interpretation and when and how we should and shouldn’t do it.

Critical writer and video essayist

Days Passed: Lee Kang-Sheng Through the Eyes of Tsai Ming-Liang

Michelle Cho

Once Upon a Screen: On Psycho and The Witches

Daniel mcilwraith.

Video essayist and video editor

Blissfully Between Binaries with Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Carlos natálio.

Film Teacher and Researcher at Católica University (O Porto); Film Programmer at IndieLisboa Film Festival; Film Critic at À pala de Walsh website

One of the reasons why Kevin B. Lee’s work is ground-breaking in video essays because his imagination is always one step ahead. He is constantly reminding us that working with the body of cinema is working with your memories and affections, and circumventing material limitations. Here, childhood cinema is projected on a shadowy wall of a former movie theatre, Platoon is remembered between leaves and trees’ reflections. Violence of the past, violence of the present. An essay about memory and the permanence of racism. Video essays are tools to reedit the present.

Forensickness is a real detective story. Chloé understands the whodunnit potential of the desktop film form and the intellectual investigation of a visual construction. She takes us by the end through her own investigation processes, while making us realise that there are only combinations, versions of the truth. We’ve passed the moment where critical theory intellectuals would point out the ‘spectacle’ in images. At the moment, the faking and ‘unfaking’ of images is a two-way business, intellectuals go along with pastors and internet police works share regards with so-called police experts.

Some Visual Thoughts About Perceptions in Rebecca

Ricardo Vieira Lisboa

Lisboa is a very ironic and shrewd video essayist. Here he is fooling around with Hitchcock’s Rebecca, using cinema’s toolbox of directors and works – Kiarostami’s Copie Conforme, Lang’s Secret Behind the Door, Godard’s Adieu au Language, Cláudia Varejão’s No Escuro do Cinema Descalço os Sapatos. The essay dismantles Rebecca’s work from the themes of signature, drop/marriage, sea/see, idealisation, signature appropriation. In Lisboa’s works always expect the unexpectable: a laugh or an unhappy emoticon, next to a brilliant capacity for film analysis.

In Memoriam

Lucía Alonso Santos

2020 is a year of confinement, although we are able to film inside our homes, inside our heads, and travel virtually. In this honest video essay, Lucía Santos is ‘verifying’ what she knew of Thailand through Apichatpong’s films using Google Street Views. Memories of something not happening as she anticipates Memoria by the Thai director. In what way do the images we have access to replace the cinematic experiences we might have?

L’Assassinat Kennedy au cinéma

Editing together various films and also archive footage, this video essay signals the assassination of John F. Kennedy 57 years ago. More than just documenting and representing the tragic event, Luc Lagier aims at expanding our perception by combining several other films that confuse, momentarily, our perception and feelings towards the event. Suspense without graphic violence is also at play here.

I have always had a fascination with the idea that directors’ works and films can sensually meet and clash through video essays. Which beautiful monsters can be brought to life via these experiments? Ian Magor does this by joining an iconic shot from Notorious by Alfred Hitchcock to Michael Snow’s classic avant-garde Wavelength. The result is disquieting and this tells us how video essays, despite their analytical potentialities, might also look like Dr. Frankenstein’s experiment laboratory.

Shadows of Our Forgotten Montages

Dianela Torres

From watching films other films are born. Giving a form to our cinephile gaze, a body of montage made with what I see and what I make of that seeing. In this beautiful, oneiric video essay, on Sergei Parajanov’s film Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors, Dianela states she aimed for “interpretation and dialectical appropriation of rhythmic and metric”, “emotions and the fluid time-space, music and colours”. Montage unto montage, organic appropriations, essay convey aesthetics and we are reminded of Marcus Aurelius’ words: “all things are implicated in one another.”

Daniela Persico

Programmer, Locarno Film Festival / founder, filmidee.it

A video about the investigation as a drive of contemporary man and a gesture of cinematic love.

The expressive elegance of making the art of editing perceived in Parajanov (and in particular in the film Shadows of our forgotten ancestors) as a process of bringing shadows back to life. Fantasmatic and inspiring.

Once Upon a Screen

A collection of gazes on the evocative theme of traumatic childhood encounters: different styles and perspectives that articulate a critical and cinephile discourse open to different interpretations.

Managing Editor at No Film School

Kevin lays bare something you don’t often see in film analysis: a personal account of how a film traumatises. He takes us to the theatre, now a BevMo!, where he first saw Platoon and tells the intensely intimate story of how the film affected him as a kid. It’s a direct emotional connection between the film analyst and the film he’s analysing: the site of traumatisation may have changed but the trauma itself remains.

This video is a shock to the system of film analysis.

How Movies Prepared Us For Coronavirus

Answer: Surprisingly, they pretty much didn’t.

We’re living in a disaster movie.

No, in My Room | A desktop documentary on the making of a video essay

Beyond the Frame

Video essays make me feel dumb. This one makes me feel like we’re all dumb. I love it so much.

David Lynch | Movies As Therapy

The Discarded Image

Clearly there’s a pattern to my selections this year, you guys. I’m very obviously a nervous and emotional wreck or something because I really gravitated to this video essay by The Discarded Image about how David Lynch uses filmmaking as his therapy.

Why The Red Shoes Looked So Stunning

If you want to know how colour can be used to tell a story, watch The Red Shoes. Boom. It’s an absolute masterclass and it’s beautiful and it almost convinced me that ballet was kinda cooler than basketball. This video essay is an excellent primer into the film’s aesthetic and narrative use of red.

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Film critic

In alphabetical order:

L’Année Dernière à Dachau

Mark Rappaport ( read synopsis )

A look at the emotional and historical complexity of our aesthetic preferences.

Her Socialist Smile

John Gianvito ( watch trailer )

It offers some things we may not have known about Helen Keller, socialism, and ourselves.

A House is Not a Home: Wright or Wrong

Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa ( watch trailer )

It offers a lyrical and personal look at the relations between architecture and familial dysfunction by examining Frank Loyd Wright’s Rosenbaum house in Alabama. It isn’t my film, but I was interview subject, consultant, and camera assistant on it.

The Social Dilemma

Jeff Orlowski ( stream on Netflix or watch trailer )

It examines the corruption of communications via marketing, demonstrating how capitalism isn’t a victimless crime.

Sportin’ Life

Abel Ferrara ( watch trailer )

Ferra accurately calls it a documentary on the act of making documentaries.

Women According to Men

Saeed Nouri ( watch trailer )

An archival look at Iranian gender relations.

Charlie Shackleton

Filmmaker and sometime film critic

How To with John Wilson

John Wilson (stream on HBO Max or watch trailer )

I can’t think of anything that gives me greater pleasure than lo-fi on a hi-budget, and nobody’s fi is loer than John Wilson, whose sublime new HBO (!) show captured the beauty of the mundane with an ethereal grace made only more poignant by Wilson’s trademark fumbled voiceover. I didn’t expect the field of video essay to produce a more unexpected mainstream crossover this year than Theo Anthony getting an ESPN special (the excellent Subject to Review) but here it was.

Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another

Jessica Sarah Rinland ( watch trailer )

At one of the last social gatherings I attended before the pandemic, a friend told me that their favourite kind of film is one in which “nothing happens, many times”. That description stuck with me in Britain’s first national lockdown, as I rediscovered my taste for cinematic minimalism in newly streaming films like Ben Rivers’s Now, At Last! and – most memorably – this mesmerising study of archaeological restoration. As with all the best films where nothing happens, many times, Rinland’s work was a catalyst for a torrent of personal imaginative thought, and just when I was starting to feel incapable of it.

In a busy year for video essays on conspiratorial thinking (I also enjoyed Dan Olson’s In Search of a Flat Earth and Kirby Ferguson’s Constantly Wrong ), Chloé Galibert-Laîné’s characteristically probing and precise film was the only offering that seemed more concerned with asking questions than giving answers—surely a prerequisite of getting to grips with a cultural sphere increasingly dominated by conspiracy theories.

Leigh Singer

Film Journalist, programmer, video essayist

One of the saving graces of this awful year has been a greater involvement and engagement with student video work. The results across various courses and different countries has been a revelation – so much insight, originality and technical accomplishment. Though I advised on a couple of the videos below, the finished pieces are entirely the students’ own and I feel very fortunate to have watched the work take shape and then become so expertly realised. In the world of video essays, at least, the future looks bright.

Elizaveta Gushchynskaya

A brilliant, probing pop culture mash-up reflecting and refracting life under lockdown that doubles up as a superlative music video. It’s also the first video essay as part of a student course at the Polish-Japanese Institute of Technology, produced within five days, which makes the results even more extraordinary.

Ways of Looking: Playtime

Sergio Martínez Esqueda (password: Tati)

A dazzlingly original, present tense negotiation of Jacques Tati’s comic masterpiece that reveals so much about its multiple, often simultaneous visual delights and examines how different viewing experiences play a part in these discoveries. Another revelatory first time student video, made on the UK ’s National Film & TV School’s MA in Film Studies, Programming and Curation.

Mandy: The Film Concert

Too few video essays go into the audio textures of a film and its score. This one does a superbly effective, visually striking job at conveying complicated technical effects with great clarity. Yet another unbelievably accomplished student project, from the ever-impressive University of Warwick Film Studies department.

So simple, original, elegant, and strangely haunting.

Magnolia Zoomed

A terrific idea, beautifully executed, that resonates in a range of different ways in this most unsettling of years. Could be 2020’s video essay anthem.

Comedy and Tragedy in Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite

A video essayist whose growing sophistication and playful touch when examining serious issues gets better every year. Parasite is the video essay gift that keeps on giving, but this is up there with the best feeding off of Bong’s hits.

Let’s Repo! Repo Man’s Plate O’ Shrimp Logic

Miklos Kiss & Shant Bayramian

An inventive, pretzel-logicked (is that a word?), suitably anarchic blast from start to finish, a hit-and-run job that makes you want to (re-)watch the film it hijacks immediately.

Shannon Strucci

video essayist StrucciMovies

Street Cat Rescue: Lionel

Flatbush Cats

Every video by Flatbush Cats is its own touching, elegantly written and edited and edifying little story about a cat. Together they make up a channel that is both a tremendous educational resource and a series of charming vignettes about individual animals and their personalities. You know from the outset that Lionel’s video has an unhappy ending and that it will break your heart, but it’s worth watching anyway, and it’s a fantastic example of what makes this channel so unique and so worth celebrating.

Scout Tafoya

Video essayist, critic and filmmaker

There Are Not Thirty-Six Ways of Showing a Man Getting on a Horse

Nicolás Zukerfeld ( watch trailer )

The video essay casually makes it to the festival circuit. Hypnotic and funny.

last night i dreamt that somebody loved me , The Tale of Eurydice and a letter to adolescence

Haaniyah Angus

My new favourite filmmaker. She doesn’t make traditional video essays, so much as essays written in images. Heartbreakingly raw and emotionally open, even though she’s put barriers between her and her audience (footage from other movies), the connection between them is deeper for its distance. She reaches across mediums with a report on her melancholy, which becomes universal when painted with faces.

A Revolt Without Images (Una revuelta sin imágenes)

Pilar Monsell ( watch trailer )

What Makes a Movie Line Memorable?

Luís Azevedo & Mark Forsythe (Little White Lies)

Crystalline editing from Luis. Just soft as snow.

Milad Tangshir

Iranian filmmaker based in Italy

The Rising of the Moon

James Slaymaker

Surviving Memories

Alessandro Luchetti and Manuela Lazic

Irina Trocan

Lecturer in Film Studies, freelance film critic

Shipwreck at the Threshold of Europe, Lesvos, Aegean Sea: 28 October 2015

While there are many moving films trying to sway the audience into empathy with the perils of migration, few provide such a watertight demonstration: using footage and data from various sources, this video essay/installation follows the play-by-play of an avoidable tragedy. A visually coherent, meticulous and fact-based plea to put human lives ahead of national interests and structure competent institutions accordingly.

The crackdown before Trump’s photo op

Washington Post/Dalton Bennett, Sarah Cahlan, Aaron C. Davis & Joyce Sohyun Lee

Should We Still be Watching Gone with the Wind? Part 1 + Part 2

Cold Crash Pictures

YouTube-standard in form but amazingly communicative in content, this take on the racism of Gone with the Wind is the best chance for anyone on the internet to be heard by the other side. Serge’s imagined viewer is initially respectful of Southern legacy, the monumentality of the 1939 film, skeptical towards accusations of racism and historical inaccuracy. Approaching the film through various videographic means, he builds a case by tackling counterarguments one by one.

Clean with Me (After Dark)

Gabrielle Stemmer ( watch trailer )

A nightmarish vision of what lies behind the shiny surfaces of Cleaning Motivation YouTube, this desktop documentary is borderline-voyeuristic (most likely in tune with how YouTube is meant to be used) and heart-on-its-sleeve empathetic toward the socially isolated women broadcasting themselves (along with the daughters they raise to take on their role). Social media is performative, which is a surprise to no one except the performers themselves.

Repeating Terror in Amat Escalante’s Heli (2013)

Violence is always a tricky subject for videographic exploration – and this take on how the threat of bodily harm exudes from the screen outwards is guaranteed to make you uncomfortable, which is precisely the point.

Like Watching Paint Dry – Éric Rohmer’s My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend

Putting a cinephile spin on a famed diss of Rohmerian cinematic style, this video uses digital wizardry for emphasising individual blocks of colour in an ostensibly plotless film to show where the story really is located: it is to be found in the slow completion of the colour scheme, inspired by a Nicolas de Staël painting that fleetingly appears on a wall as if to confirm an inside-joke of a climax. Like watching paint dry, indeed.

Manual for a Disassembly of Cinema (A Machine for Viewing, episode 3)

A theoretical excursion from cinematic projection to VR interactive gear via North Korean mass gymnastics with a “broken human pixel”, it makes you think of how seeing is altered when mediated by man rather than machine.

David Verdeure

Creator, collector and curator of video essays under the nom de video Filmscalpel

Swings Don’t Swing

Leonhard Müllner

The visual regimes of video games balance between realism and absurdity, between aesthetic refinement and ethic crudeness. There’s a wealth of great video essays and machinima about games. YouTuber eurothug4000 fascinatingly focused on virtual photography within games . But I chose this piece by Leonhard Müllner which virtually visits children’s playgrounds in shooter games. Those playgrounds are used as innocent-looking backdrops to the violent mayhem. Müllner’s video uses the games’ mechanics against themselves to lay bare their visual cynicism. He enacts the revenge of innocence on gamified violence, not in the least through the elegant spatial arrangement of his piece.

I Can’t Stop Watching Contagion

Lockdown life boosted the output of some video essayists and made others sour on the form, but it left nobody indifferent. Several pieces poked fun at our Zoomified existence or lamented our Skyped interactions. Rob Stone fabricated a touching video call between Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. The fact that his Before the End went viral proves our need for comforting connections – even if they’re not our own.

Dan Olson watched Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion on repeat. The radical form of his confessional video essay visualises how a film can mark us and how it can serve as ‘emotional inoculation”.

Michigan Coronavirus Protestors Roots

The rhetorical strategies of the video essay can be applied to other subjects than film or television. In this US election year, I saw them being used for political purposes in a variety of ways. There were downright deceitful remixes (no, I won’t link one). There were revelatory side-by-side pieces . There were online experiments that made harrowing use of the absence of image and sound. But because politics (and 2020) can benefit from some levity, I chose a frivolous example for this poll. TikToker rebabeba used the desktop documentary format to get to the root of the problem .

Academic practitioners of the video essay served up some fascinating fare in 2020. It is especially great to see some practitioners confidently conduct formal experiments instead of sticking to tried and tested audiovisual strategies. Jill Walker Rettberg for instance enthusiastically embraced Snapchat technology in her video essay on the app’s biometrics .

Katie Bird’s video essay starts off conventionally with a mini-documentary on the early history of Steadicam and Panaglide. But her piece then builds on this historical research with a series of imaginative (and even speculative) visual experiments that make the most of the videographic form.

John Cleese + Anthony Braxton

Olivier Godin

Video essays and performance studies are a natural match. This piece for the Canadian website Zoom Out is another fine piece of evidence. Olivier Godin matches up the work of two performers: one an actor and the other a musician. Scenes from the legendary British sitcom Fawlty Towers are rescored using Anthony Braxton’s free-jazz composition For Alto. The music emphasises Cleese’s erratic physical comedy and brings out the unpredictable dynamism of his dialogue delivery. This counterintuitive combination prompts the viewer to consider Cleese’s dialogue delivery as a musical improvisation – one with the unpredictable energy of Braxton’s jazz.

Michael Witt

Professor of Cinema at the University of Roehampton, London

Characteristically sharp, inventive audiovisual film criticism from the great Mark Rappaport.

Illuminating audiovisual study of the history, uses and effects of the Steadicam and Panaglide.

Andrea Luka Zimmerman

Moving personal exploration of the terms of the film’s title.

Golden Gate

William Brown

Insightful audiovisual investigation of the cinematic representation of the Golden Gate Bridge from a post-humanist perspective.

Thought-provoking poetic study of the relationship between successive image recording technologies and what they capture and omit.

Against the Day

Succinct reflection on the role of light in Philippe Grandrieux’s Sombre (1998).

Further reading

The best film books of 2020, the best blu-rays and dvds of 2020, the 50 best films of 2020, sign up for sight and sound’s weekly film bulletin and more.

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Other things to explore

The best video essays of 2023.

By Queline Meadows

The best films of 2023 – all the votes

Martin scorsese on winning sight and sound’s best films of 2023 poll with killers of the flower moon.

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101 Crime Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Inside This Article

Crime is a prevalent issue in society and has been a topic of interest for many researchers, scholars, and students alike. Writing an essay on crime can be a thought-provoking and engaging task, allowing you to explore various aspects of criminal behavior, law enforcement, and the criminal justice system. To help you get started, here are 101 crime essay topic ideas and examples:

• The impact of social media on crime rates.
• Exploring the rise of cybercrime in the digital age.
• The relationship between poverty and crime.
• Analyzing the effectiveness of rehabilitation programs in reducing recidivism.
• The role of mental illness in criminal behavior.
• Examining the influence of media on public perception of crime.
• The effectiveness of community policing in crime prevention.
• The reasons behind the gender disparity in crime rates.
• The role of genetics in criminal behavior.
• The impact of drugs and substance abuse on crime rates.
• Exploring the connection between domestic violence and crime.
• The effectiveness of the death penalty in deterring crime.
• Analyzing the impact of racial profiling on crime rates.
• The psychological factors that contribute to criminal behavior.
• The relationship between unemployment and crime rates.
• The effectiveness of gun control policies in reducing crime.
• The role of technology in solving and preventing crimes.
• Analyzing the impact of organized crime on society.
• The reasons behind juvenile delinquency and how to address it.
• The relationship between education and crime rates.
• The impact of hate crimes on marginalized communities.
• Exploring the concept of white-collar crime and its consequences.
• The role of criminal profiling in solving crimes.
• The impact of the war on drugs on crime rates.
• Analyzing the connection between poverty and drug-related crimes.
• The role of restorative justice in the criminal justice system.
• The reasons behind the high incarceration rates in the United States.
• Examining the concept of vigilantism and its ethical implications.
• The impact of crime on tourism and local economies.
• The role of the media in shaping public perception of crime.
• Analyzing the causes and consequences of hate crimes.
• The relationship between mental health and criminal behavior.
• The effectiveness of community-based corrections programs.
• Exploring the impact of DNA evidence on solving crimes.
• The reasons behind the phenomenon of serial killers.
• The role of socioeconomic factors in shaping criminal behavior.
• The impact of criminal records on employment opportunities.
• Analyzing the causes of gang violence and potential solutions.
• The relationship between poverty and property crime rates.
• The effectiveness of surveillance technologies in preventing crime.
• The reasons behind the high rates of recidivism among ex-convicts.
• The impact of mandatory minimum sentences on the criminal justice system.
• The role of forensic science in solving crimes.
• Analyzing the causes and consequences of police brutality.
• The relationship between substance abuse and violent crimes.
• The effectiveness of community-based crime prevention programs.
• Exploring the concept of restorative justice and its application.
• The reasons behind the high rates of drug-related crimes in urban areas.
• The impact of human trafficking on global crime rates.
• The role of criminal justice policies in reducing crime rates.
• Analyzing the connection between poverty and juvenile delinquency.
• The effectiveness of rehabilitation versus punishment in the criminal justice system.
• The reasons behind the rise of terrorism in the modern world.
• The impact of drug legalization on crime rates.
• The role of forensic psychology in solving crimes.
• Exploring the causes and consequences of hate speech crimes.
• The relationship between addiction and criminal behavior.
• The effectiveness of drug treatment programs in reducing crime rates.
• The reasons behind the high rates of domestic violence.
• The impact of police discretion on the criminal justice system.
• Analyzing the connection between child abuse and future criminal behavior.
• The role of the media in perpetuating stereotypes about crime.
• The reasons behind the high rates of sexual assault on college campuses.
• The effectiveness of community outreach programs in preventing crime.
• The impact of race and ethnicity on sentencing disparities.
• The relationship between poverty and violent crime rates.
• The role of forensic anthropology in solving crimes.
• Exploring the causes and consequences of human rights violations.
• The reasons behind the high rates of identity theft in the digital era.
• The impact of mandatory drug testing on reducing workplace crime.
• The effectiveness of drug courts in addressing drug-related crimes.
• The role of environmental factors in shaping criminal behavior.
• Analyzing the connection between child neglect and future criminal behavior.
• The reasons behind the high rates of gun violence in the United States.
• The impact of community surveillance programs on crime prevention.
• The relationship between mental health treatment and recidivism rates.
• The role of forensic entomology in solving crimes.
• Exploring the causes and consequences of human smuggling.
• The reasons behind the high rates of cyberbullying and online harassment.
• The impact of restorative justice practices on reducing prison overcrowding.
• The effectiveness of drug education programs in preventing substance abuse.
• The role of social inequality in contributing to criminal behavior.
• Analyzing the connection between child exploitation and future criminal behavior.
• The reasons behind the high rates of hate crimes against LGBTQ+ individuals.
• The impact of community-oriented policing on crime rates.
• The relationship between mental health stigma and access to treatment for offenders.
• The role of forensic odontology in solving crimes.
• Exploring the causes and consequences of human organ trafficking.
• The reasons behind the high rates of cyberstalking and online harassment.
• The impact of restorative justice on the reintegration of ex-convicts into society.
• The effectiveness of education in preventing drug-related crimes.
• The role of social disorganization theory in understanding crime rates.
• Analyzing the connection between child maltreatment and future criminal behavior.
• The reasons behind the high rates of hate crimes against religious minorities.
• The impact of community-based rehabilitation programs on reducing recidivism.
• The relationship between mental health treatment and diversion programs.
• The role of forensic toxicology in solving crimes.
• Exploring the causes and consequences of human trafficking for labor exploitation.
• The reasons behind the high rates of online fraud and identity theft.
• The impact of alternative sentencing programs on reducing prison populations.
• The effectiveness of harm reduction strategies in addressing drug-related crimes.

These crime essay topic ideas provide a broad range of subjects to explore and analyze. Choose a topic that aligns with your interests and research the subject thoroughly to develop a well-informed and compelling essay. Remember to support your arguments with evidence, statistics, and relevant examples to strengthen your essay and provide a comprehensive understanding of the chosen crime topic.

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607 Crime Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

When writing a research paper about criminology or law, you have to consider your topic carefully. Our team came up with 465 titles, along with some crime essay examples to assist you in your assignment.

🏆 Best Crime Topic Ideas & Essay Examples

👍 good crime topics for essays, ✅ simple & easy topics about crime, 💡 most interesting crime topics to write about, 📌 useful crime topics for essays, 📑 interesting crime topics, ❓ crime research questions.

• Unemployment Leads to Crime Essay In the 1990s, the rate of unemployment was low and so was the rate of property crime. Crime rates increase steadily in society, and the rate of crime is connected to unemployment and low wages.
• Youth Crime as a Major Issue in the World The relationships that exist in the families of the youths could facilitate the indulgence in criminal activities for example when the parents are involved in crime, when there is poor parental guidance and supervision, in […]
• Applying Developmental Theories of Crime to Jeffrey Dahmer In the framework of this theory, Dahmer’s obsession with dissecting animals and necrophilic fantasies from a young age are not connected to the other events in his life but are simply manifestations of his latent, […]
• Impact of Crime on Wider Society Therefore, just as some organs in the body can be removed in order to improve the health of a person, the people who cause problems in the society can also be removed so that the […]
• The Effects of Mass Media Glorifying Crime and Criminal Lifestyle Crime has and will dominate popular media, ranging from the traditional police and detective shows/movies to documentaries, and more recently the ‘true crime’ genre or psychological thrillers attempting to tell the story from the perspective […]
• Technology for Crime Prevention With the modern computer technology and advanced software, criminal justice system has been in a capacity to compile data and store it as well as share its analysis with other agencies both in and out […]
• Three Pathways to Crime Identified by Loeber It encompasses an account of an individual’s past in the course of time of problem behavior in a continuing increment of seriousness of problem behavior.
• Chris Watts and His Murder Crimes Watts pleaded guilty to the killings of his children and wife. Watts concluded the interview by saying he was sorry and repented for his actions after seeking refuge in God.
• Frankston Serial Killer: Background, Crimes, and Motives At the time, the police noted that Denyer was with his girlfriend. The letter claimed that Denyer knows his whereabouts, and that he was planning to break out of prison to kill him.
• Types of Crime Analysis The goals of tactical analysis are to recognize crime trends and to develop the best suited strategies to address them. This is a matter of great concern and the department would inquire more into the […]
• Marxists and Functionalists’ Views on Crime and Deviance Also, the essay seeks to explain why people commit crimes in reference to a social and political transition, poverty, globalization of crime and state bureaucracy in order to evaluate the most effective conceptual approach to […]
• Solving the Issue of Crime As the director of the county juvenile court, the research question related to the problem at hand should state as follows: What are cost effective methods of solving the proliferation of violent street gangs in […]
• International Organized Crime: The 14K Triads in Hong Kong Being one of the largest transnational criminal organizations globally, the 14K does not depend on the strict structure, operates according to the principles of secrecy, and it is rather difficult to bring the organization to […]
• The Impact of Social Media on the Rise in Crime For example, Jones cites revenge porn, or the practice of publishing a partner’s intimate contact on social media, as one of the results of social media use.
• Infamous Crimes: Laci Peterson’s Murder Even during the war in Iraq, the search for her and the ultimate arrest of Scott Peterson led the news. Her cell phone and purse were still in the house, and a neighbor said she […]
• Displacement: Crime Prevention It refers to circumstances where crime intervention efforts make the cost of committing an offense greater than the benefits accruing from the crime.
• White Collar Crime Parties affected by the crime and how it affects them White collar criminals place more emphasis on their personal needs than their organization’s to the point of downplaying the real costs of their actions.
• Investigating Crimes against Property According to the Uniform Crime Report of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, there are about 9,767,915 cases of property crimes reported in America annually.
• Suspect, Crime Scene, and the Victim: Evidence Triangle In every crime investigation, it is mandatory that the evidence gathered be adequate to draw the link between the suspect, crime scene and the victim.
• White Collar Crimes From a Marxist Criminological Perspective Marxist criminologists interpret it in the following way: “…the crimes of the upper class exert a greater economic toll on society than the crimes of the ‘ordinary people’”.
• Crimes Against Person Cases of murder falls in the rule of felony murder which is well stipulated by the constitution of any given country and the penalty is administered depending on whether the case was committed in an […]
• Crimes Against Property, Persons, and Public Order The least in ranking is crimes against public order for they have no serious repercussions to lives and livelihood of the involved people.
• Youth Crime According to Conflict Theory The second one is that the youth might engage in criminal activities and violence due to misappropriation of resources, lack of jobs, and inadequate strategies to meet their social needs.
• Why Does Crime Exist in Society? Philosophically this is the equivalent of saying that without evil one would not recognize good, and while this is evident in the criminal world and the world of law, it only provides some explanation as […]
• Consequences of Committing Crime These factors affect the behavior of an individual and might lead them to criminal activities depending on the effect of the overall combination of the elements mentioned above.
• An Epidemic of Knife Crime in the UK In the case of the former, it is evident that social class plays a key role in the emergence of knife crimes across the UK.
• Parental Responsibility for Crimes of Children Parents should be held responsible for the crime of their children because in most cases criminal involvement of children is the result of lack of parental control.
• Crime TV: How Is Criminality Represented on Television? The public’s views and comprehension of crime are heavily influenced by television, the internet, and print media, which can spread the message about the exaggerated danger to society.
• Social Cultural Causes of Crime There is need to highlight the social cultural factors of crime and describe the necessary positive measures to prevent the occurrences of crime.
• Social Theories of Crime in Explaining Gang Violence This theory incorporates the strain theory as well as the social disorganization it points out that as a result of strain and societal segregation there is a particular culture that establishes for the low income […]
• Zodiac Movie: Crime, Media Reporting and Ethics The development of the events and the rise of the killer’s popularity began as soon as the reporters of the San Francisco Chronicle received and discovered the letter with threats to American society.
• Drug, Crime and Violence This essay offers a brief discussion of how the abuse of illegal drugs is related to both crime and violence. It is prudent to mention that drug and violence have been noted to be closely […]
• Capital Punishment and Deterrence of Crime For the case of murder or crimes that necessitate capital punishment, the incentive to commit murder is directly related to the uncertainties that punishments for the crime will generate.
• Youth Crime in Functionalism and Conflict Theories The analysis will focus on determining factors contributing to youth engagement in criminal acts, examining the types of delinquencies they are likely to commit, and establishing the socio-psychological facets associated with the teenagers in the […]
• The Major Theories of Crime Causation The survival of any civilization hinges on the establishment of laws and codes of conduct and the subsequent obeying of the same by the members of the society.
• Crime: What Modifies the Human Acts? A young man entering medical school has, as proximate and intermediate ends, the passing of his exams, and the advance from the first to the second class; more remote ends are the exams and classes […]
• “The Functions of Crime” by Emile Durkheim In the article “The Functions of Crime”, Emile Durkheim argues clearly that crime should be treated and analyzed as a normal aspect of a given society.
• Does Crime Make Economic Sense? Crime has great effects on the prices of the commodities being sold in the country; hence this will affect both the suppliers and the consumers which influences the income directly.
• The Influence of Peer Groups on Youth Crime The impact of youth crime on the community is profound, and so is the influence of criminal behavior on the lives of adolescents.
• Crimes and Criminal Tendencies: Cause and Effect The school makes demands of control, discipline, and accountability which are difficult for the low self-control student to meet, and, for this reason, early school leaving is a result of low self-control, not a cause […]
• Relationship Between Crime Rates and Poverty This shows that the strength of the relationship between the crime index and people living below the line of poverty is.427.
• Statistics of Crime Costs to the UK Healthcare The statistic is describing the claims by Labour that the NHS uses 500 million a year to treat wounds caused by knife crimes.
• The Cause of the Crime Since it takes a lot of time and resources to get involved in crime, it is evident that involvement in crime is entirely due to decision of the person to gain the rewards that are […]
• The Genre of Crime and Gangster Movies The gangster movies always tend to idolize the gangster figures with a relation to the sinister activities that always define crime and the lifestyles of the gangsters.
• Aileen Wuornos’ Background and Crimes Aileen Wuornos began her series of murders in 1989. For a short period, she killed seven people, and all of them were men.
• Developmental Crime Prevention Developmental crime prevention is a subsystem of special criminological crime prevention, the target of which is the pre-criminal forms of deviant and delinquent behavior of minors.
• Cyber Bullying and Positivist Theory of Crime Learning theory approaches to the explanation of criminal behavior have been associated with one of the major sociological theories of crime, the differential association theory.
• The Impact of the Internet on Traditional Crime How the Internet helps the criminals The advancement in the modern computer technologies and the Internet has put radical changes in the concept of information and the mode of exchanging the data.
• The Phases of a Crime and Their Importance in Psychological Profiling Attempt and accomplishment, the third and fourth phases of a crime respectively, differ in the sense that an attempt is a failed crime.
• Bernie Madoff Ponzi’s Crime Scheme The image of the American Dream and the Strain Theory works in reverse as well: if a person fails to possess lots of quantifiable treasure, then the social order will consider him as a disappointment.
• Social Disorganization and Crime Social disorganization can be conceptualized as the incapability of the community structure to attain the common values of its members and maintain effective social controls, or as the failure and degeneration of social institutions and […]
• Crime Scene Investigation in Criminal Justice In the process of controlling the crowd and maintaining order with the aid of the police officers, I took some photographs of the surrounding and then approached the main spot of event. I managed to […]
• Factors Influencing the Commission of Crime Some of the factors that contribute to the decision-making of the offender are based on time constraints, the ability of the information available, agreeing with the offender’s plans as well as the availability of favorable […]
• Actus Reus and Mens Rea Aspects of Crime These facts imply that there are different contexts in the analysis of the case, and trying to find a common ground for the application of men’s rea would be a futile exercise.
• Anti Money Laundering and Financial Crime There are a number of requirements by the government on the AML procedures to be developed and adopted by the firms in the financial service in industry in an attempt to fight the illegal practice.
• CCTV Cameras: Surveillance and the Reduction of Crime The present paper will seek to argue that greater surveillance is not a desirable answer to the problem of crime and that other solutions are required to reduce crime rates in the long term.
• Criminology: Application of Crime Theories For an action to amount to crime, there has to be a breach of law followed by the administration of punishment by the state to the accused.
• The Evolution of Behavioral and Cognitive Development Theories of Crime Behavioral theory is based upon the principles of behavioral psychology and is the basis for behavior modification and change. This theory is founded on the belief that the way in which people organize their thoughts […]
• Corporate Crime – BP Oil Spill The spill contributed to the disruption of the ecosystem and the wildlife, these included both aquatic and terrestrial wildlife. This contributed to the loss of life, environmental pollution and health issues among others.
• Functionalist Approach to Deviance and Crime This paper looks at the functionalist approach to the explanation of the causes of deviance and crime. Some level of deviance is however healthy as it leads to better adaptation of the society.
• Water Pollution as a Crime Against the Environment In particular, water pollution is a widespread crime against the environment, even though it is a severe felony that can result in harm to many people and vast territories.
• The Drug Crime Story of the Stickup Kids In the first part, Contreras situates the participants in the historical context of New York and the South Bronx, the epicenter of the rise of the crack-cocaine trade.
• Cultural Criminology: Inside the Crime To facilitate an understanding of cultural criminology, it is essential to consider such ideas as crime as culture, culture as crime, the media constructions of crime control and corruption, and political dimensions of culture, crime, […]
• Campus Crimes Types and Causes According to the college administrators’ records, crimes in campuses were minimal in the 19th century and in the early 20th century.
• Approaches to Crime Prevention The objective of the criminal justice system is to ensure proper enforcement of the standards of conduct in protecting the rights of the individuals and the community in a free society.
• Crime and Deviance Crime is an act that is against the norm of a society and the registered law of the entire country. A person is usually taken to the court of law where the offence is listened […]
• Andrew Luster’s Crime and Media Attention Henry Luster, a psychiatrist, and Elizabeth Luster, the parents of Andrew Luster. The film concluded with a snapshot of Luster and an appeal for witnesses to his whereabouts to notify authorities.
• The Theft of a Laptop in Various Crime Scenarios This paper seeks to evaluate different situations that involve the theft of a laptop with the aim of establishing the types of crime they represent and the differences between them.
• Medea’s Justification for Her Crime Medea felt Jason had betrayed her love for him and due to her desperate situation she was depressed and her normal thinking was affected that she started thinking of how she would revenge the man […]
• Cyber-Bullying Is a Crime: Discussion It is easy to see the effects of cyber-bullying but it is hard to find out who is the bully making it hard for authorities to pin the blame on the perpetrator of a crime […]
• Psychological Theories Explaining Violent Crime Genetic influences refer to the blueprints for behavior that are contained in a person’s chromosomes. It is theoretically possible for a person to carry genes that influence behavior; the behavior they express would be the […]
• The First Officer at Crime Scene One should perfectly realize the fact that the crime scene investigation is an extremely important and, at the same time, complex process that determines the success of the whole case and contributes to the improved […]
• Freakonomics: What Attributed to the Sharp Drop In Crime? This article focuses on these reasons that were thought to have led to reduction of the rising crime rates experienced in United States in the 1990s and refutes the claims flaunted by the theorists.
• Cybercrime and Cyber-Related Crimes The introduction of computer technology has created room for cyber crimes and cyber related crimes that have caused many people pain and losses to the society.
• White Collar Crimes: Bernard Madoff Ponzi Scheme A Ponzi scheme is a white collar crime in which the perpetrator encourages people to invest in a business and promises high dividends within a short period of time.
• Document Falsification Crime and Response to It The crime is often described as a white color crime as the modification of documents is primarily used for illegal monetary benefits and deception of others. The current response to falsified documents is sufficient and […]
• How Biochemical Conditions and Brain Activity are Linked to Crime Studies have shown that areas with high rates of homicide and other forms of violence had a lot of lead in the air.
• Crime Prevention Strategies and Quality of Life The aim of crime prevention strategies is to create conditions that cut the chances and motivation for crime, transforming the capability of the criminal justice system to handle crimes.
• TV Violence, Increasing Crime Levels and Child Aggression Most of the proponents of that theory state that by witnessing a certain behavior in fiction people become more prone to repeating it in real life. One of the powers these advancements have given us […]
• Anthropological Theory of Crime Criminal law is a division of law that elucidates crimes, describes their nature and defines available punishment for a criminal offense.
• Crime Scene Investigation and Evidence Classification They include the explanation of physical evidence to identify purposes, the discussion of the differences between class and individual characteristics of physical evidence, and the evaluation of the class characteristics’ importance.
• Crimes in Biological, Psychological, Sociological Theories With the course of time, people also started paying attention not to the very commitment of crimes but to the triggers that made a person act in a particular way.
• The Most Effective Crime Prevention Strategies in the Past Two Decades The conditions are; the desire of the criminal to carry out an offence, the opportunity to carry out the crime and finally the possession of skills and tools necessary for commitment of the crime.
• Organized Crime – John Gotti’s Analyze He argues that the American social structure and its structure of wealth distribution and that dream of achieving the ‘American dream’ all require crime to maintain social stability in the face of structural inequality.
• “Sisters in Crime: The Rise of the New Female Criminal” by Adler This includes the extent, nature, control and cause of crime in the society. It focuses on supernaturalism in the definition and address of crime in society.
• The Relationship Between Wealth Distribution and Crime Rates According to Anser et al, the levels of crime and violence in the community depend on the difference between the risks or costs and potential gains.
• The Community Policing Impact on Juvenile Crime Moreover, the involvement of the police when it comes to community activities and narrowing the gap between law enforcement and youth is also related to criminal activity in the region.
• Sentencing Philosophies in Crime That makes it difficult to know how severe the crime is in relation to the sentence. The objectives of sentencing are to protect society.
• Natural and Legal Crime Conceptual Distinction Natural crime is therefore described as a crime against the fundamental laws of nature as well as personal crimes which could or may sometimes not be against the laws of the land.
• The British Crime Survey’s Strengths and Weaknesses The British Crime Survey’s main purpose is to check the crime level and the number of affected people in England. The investigation performed by the British Crime Survey is in the form of an interview, […]
• Economy and Crime: The Relationship Economic crime is a serious problem for the business world, and it has become more and more aggravating with the development of technologies and with the growing availability of internet access.
• Organized Crime Investigation in Different Countries Such tools and strategies cover investigations into the organized crimes and operations, strategies to thwart planned crimes operations and preventions of the effecting, netting of criminals and affiliates of the groups as well as facilitating […]
• Prostitution as a Victimless Crime The association in the law and morality in the subject of prostitution is been a wide concern as prostitution can be considered as one of the oldest phenomena of humankind in a way of practicing […]
• Processing a Crime Scene That is why, for the effective investigation, it is important to take all the necessary crime scene processing measures correctly, and the role of the first responding officer is particularly significant.
• Crime Prevention and Risk Management This brochure will outline some basic notions of risk management and assessment and crime and victimization prevention; additionally, it will provide the reader with some basic strategies of daily risk management and include sources for […]
• Shoe Impression at a Crime Scene It is the transfer of material from the shoe to the surface. The print results from the static charges between the sole of the shoe and the surface.
• Social Implications of Computer Technology: Cybercrimes In reading the discussion above it becomes clear that the term cybercrime actually refers to computer-related crime; however, some consider computer crime to be a subdivision of cybercrime that warrants its own definition and understanding.
• Robert Merton’s Strain Theory Explaining Economic Crime Trends This theory states that “crime occurs when there are not enough legitimate opportunities for people to achieve the success goals imposed by the society”.
• Electronic Crime: Online Predators on Facebook Facebook, as one of the many social network sites, will be addressed in this paper and after looking at the dangers that such sites pose to the contemporary world, a conclusion will be arrived at […]
• Victimless Crimes: Definition and Types Again, the taxpayers are the victims in such a case as they have to contribute to the rehabilitation of the drug users. As such, some of the so-called victimless crimes have identifiable victims.
• Substance Abuse and Crime Logically, it is still not possible to prove the theories that correspond to criminal behaviour studies and consequently the correctness and relevancy of the theories vary in application depending on the strain of the situation, […]
• “Making Crime Pay” by Katherine Beckett The writer suggests that even if the call for tougher penalties is seen as the answer to the problem, those calling for these penalties are not necessarily affected by the rising crime. There is need […]
• Current Trends in Globalization of Crime Hence, the major cause of the drugs smuggling routes over the U.S.-Mexico border is still the discrepancies between the U.S.and Mexican drug enforcing legislation as well as the lack of cross-border cooperation.
• Transnational Organized Crime in Port Security Operations Transnational organized crime manifests in seaports across three primary trajectories of trafficking through the port, infiltration of the port structure and economy, and governance of the port management.
• “Legend” Crime Drama Directed by Brian Helgeland Helgeland revives the images of the Kray brothers, Reggie and Ronny that at some point become one of the leading players in the brutal games of the gangster side.
• Causes of Committing Crimes However, this is to ensure that the number of crimes committed decrease, as the number of crime manager’s increases. Boredom in many young people is by the lack of something constructive to do.
• The Crimes of Charles Manson In reality, based on the ghastly consequences of his actions and “teachings”, he is generally considered a pathological liar, a shrewd manipulator and a man guilty of not only coercing others to murder in his […]
• Crime Analysis Data Sources The National Incident-Based Reporting System is a technological method used by the government, still in the United States of America to monitor and assist in the gathering of the necessary information regarding the crime.
• The Three Strikes Law in Countering Crime The preceding level of severe felonies in the United States was critical, and the community considered the three strikes laws enrollment a necessity.
• The Self Control Theory of Crime In this theory, the level of self control exercised by individuals in the presence of a strong or a weak incentive to commit a crime explains why some people commit crimes while others do not.
• Does Drug Interdiction Increase or Decrease Drug-Related Crime? Thesis: Drug interdiction helps to reduce drug-related crime by reducing the flow of drugs into the country and by disrupting the flow of funds into the hands of the terrorists.
• Crime and Punishment in Texas As for the number of prisoners, Texas has the highest number of them, and this is due to the fact that it is one of the states with the highest population in the United States.
• Surveillance as the Answer to the Crime Issue One of the main features of the “surveillance society” is the use of closed-circuit television that allows for detecting and preventing crimes.
• Computer Forensics: Identity Theft The forensics process that is maintained in the framework of computer-related technologies provides professionals with the opportunity to gather, analyze, and report on the information.
• Crime Causes in Sociological Theories The former can be characterized as the outcome of the constructive or adverse influence of rewards/ penalties on the individual’s behavior.
• Nature of Crime in the UAE The irony of this phenomenon is that most embassies in the UAE advise their citizens to take normal security precautions while in the country, yet they are among the biggest offenders.
• Organ Trade: Legal Position and Crime The rise in demand for organs for transplant and the scarcity of organs to transplant have led to the rise of the organ trade with healthy persons putting up their organs for sale due to […]
• Analyzing Graffiti as a Crime Other types of graffiti such as the commercial graffiti are categorized as crimes because making use of graffiti as a form of advertisement is usually against the advertisement along with media laws established in most […]
• Social Issues; Crime and Poverty in Camden This has threatened the social security and peaceful coexistence of the people in the community. The larger the differences between the poor and the rich, the high are the chances of crime.
• Crime Control: Curbing Market Failures Since this study notes that crime is a direct result of the intrigues in the market, and the market is too diverse to control, the only solution to the reduction in crime is the control […]
• Concepts and Reasons of Violent Crimes in Modern Society The environment has specifically been pointed out to be influential in the case of corporate affairs whereby the risk of exposure of huge corruption claims may lead to elimination of the whistle blowers.
• Crimes and Criminal Law Therefore, facts on crimes and decisions of the judge is referenced from the constitution, which prescribes the nature and extend of the punishment or fine awarded to an individual found guilty of an offense. One […]
• Cyber Crimes: Court – United States vs. Ancheta Reasoning: The jury argued that the defendant conspired to violate the Computer Fraud Abuse Act as well as the CAN-SPAM Act, caused havoc to computer networks of the national defense department of the federal government, […]
• Age-Crime Relationships and Motivations Of the three major factors outlined by basis theory, opportunities availability is the most determinant factor of crime commission among the youths as lack of jobs makes them engage in criminal activities in order to […]
• “Crimes Against Humanity” by Ward Churchill Throughout the essay, he puts a lot of words and phrases in quotation marks to underline the unique and figurative meaning of these phrases.
• Society’s Response to Crime Impacts on Justice True, the decisions of the court are generally based on nature of the crime, evidence and the manner of the plaintiff and defendant.
• Street Crime in Australia As such, it follows suit that crime, and to be specific street crime, must be analyzed in the context of how it is related to the society as a whole but not in isolation5.
• Crime Reporting in Irish Media The impact of the increase in crime reporting is the rise in worrisome behaviors among the citizens. On the other hand, there is an increase in crime rates, especially cyber crimes and sexual offenses.
• American Serial Killer Joseph Paul Franklin’s Crimes The reason for changing his name as because he wanted to join the Rhodesian Army and due to his criminal background, he was forced to change the name. The couple were killed and Franklin confessed […]
• Design Theory in “Ornament and Crime” Essay by Loos One of the striking examples of this opinion is the desire to combine the interior and exterior decoration of the building, making them a logical continuation of each other.
• Sociological Perspectives on Crimes of Power: Enron Selfish ambitions of people are dangerous to the organization because this will lead to the downfall of the company in the long run as it happened with Enron.
• Hacking as a Crime and Related Theories The move to embrace the novel technology has led to the emergence of a new form of crime and behavior referred to as “hacking”. Today, the term is used to refer to individuals engaged in […]
• Petty Crime Offenses: A Case of Mary Lee It is easy for the prosecution, in this case, to request the judge to sentence the defendant due to her criminal behavior.
• White Collar Crime: Insidious Injuries This is one of the main issues that should be considered since it is important for understanding the dangers of these injuries and reducing their risks. These are some of the main challenges that can […]
• Generalisation of Persons Who Commit Crime The generalisation about the people who commit crime indicates flaws in the processes of thinking and possible outcomes. It appears that the society chooses to pay attention to crime committed by specific groups, such as […]
• Crime and Delinquency, Eric Smith’s Case Thus the psychological problems that smith developed were due to the experiences he had gone through the courtesy of his bright red hair, freckles, and speech problems.
• Relationship Between Unemployment and Crimes Agnew, argue that crime is caused by strain that a person face throughout life, and this can be contributed to the degree of educational inequality in society.
• Crime in Canada: Causes, Regulation and Legislation There are those activities that are universally accepted to constitute a crime, however, what might be considered the crime in one society is not necessarily applied in a different society; for instance, looking at a […]
• Effective Physical Security and Crime Prevention Therefore, for effective implementation of the defense-in-depth strategy for the protection of assets, it is important to address the following issues: knowing the enemy, understanding the external enemies, defending against an internal enemy, and knowing […]
• Situational Crime Prevention SCP focuses on deterring crime by increasing the risk and effort in committing a crime. However, they add that the effect of such measures varies based on the location and type of crime targeted.
• Problem‐Oriented Policing in Violent Crime Places In this study funded by the National Institute of Justice, the researchers investigate the impact of problem-oriented policing in Jersey City.
• Crime Prevention at the Workplace: Employee Theft Considering that any form of employee theft induces substantial harm to the financial performance of companies, the integration of adequate crime prevention procedures in the corporate security system is of great importance.
• Raskolnikov’s Crime in Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” Using the ingenuity of Fyodor Dostoevsky and his eternal masterpiece Crime and Punishment, the paper is going to prove the idea that the actual crime committed by Rodion Raskolnikov was the arrogance he had towards […]
• Fort Lauderdale’s Law Enforcement and Crime Rates 1 percent of French background, 1. 0 percent of Dutch background, 1.
• Hans Von Hentig’s Approach to Crime In order to discuss the male’s crimes in detail, it is important to focus on the relationship between the suspect and victims from the perspective of Hans von Hentig’s theory.
• Victims of Crime Act: History and Development The necessary part of the paper is the information about changes to the original policy. The discussion of this act and how necessary it is for the criminal justice system in The United States is […]
• Social Criticism Work in the Scandinavian Crime Fiction Novels The issue of revenge being a better option in the Swedish society is evident when, at the end of the novel, Blomkvists makes efforts to bring down the executive who worn the lawsuit mentioned at […]
• A Marxist Approach to Global Crime The capitalistic economic system fosters most of the global crimes by encouraging the exploitation of one group by another and promoting the self-interest of the individuals who engage in these forms of crime.
• Crime Theories: Psychodynamics and Rational Choice The rational choice theory explained the causes of crime to be the ability of an individual to commit the crime, their need for valuable possessions and money, their physical health and ability to commit the […]
• Forensic Psychology Role in the Investigation of Crime The use of the methods majorly depends upon the complexity of the crime, nature of evidence available and level of forensic technology available.
• To What Extent Are New Technologies and Organized Crime Linked? There are three major issues in the assessment of the crime and technology which will form the basis of our argument in this research paper; the level of information technology that is used by the […]
• Prohibition and the Rise of Organized Crime In the 1920s, the United States was facing worrying rates of crime that called for the intervention of the Congress to avert the situation.
• DNA Analysis: A Crime-Fighting Tool or Invasion of Privacy? This paper set out to demonstrate that DNA analysis offers a versatile tool for fighting crime and therefore ensuring the success of our civilization.
• An Inchoate Crime Under the conspiracy element in the Wisconsin Statutes, conspiracy is defined as the agreement or combination of forces by two individuals with the intent of committing a crime.
• The Connection Between Drugs and Crime The central viewpoint is that it is not an absolute truth that drug use is not an obvious cause of crime.
• Factors Affecting Losses From Property Crime The hypothesis of the present research is that country-wide losses from property crime are affected by gross domestic product per capita and the mean education and urbanization levels of the region.
• Extortion in Organized Crime Groups Blackmailing is a standard tool in organized crime, as it relies on one’s ability to threaten with severe consequences for non-compliance.
• The Crimes of Charles Manson, Serial Killer Even though his people did it himself, he was not involved in this, and the organization of a particular group of people is not in itself an immoral act but is prohibited in some places.
• Guidelines for Responsible Reporting on Hate Crimes The media is responsible for maintaining a balance between their interests and the needs and rights of crime victims, the public, and defendants.
• The Crime of Attempt: Adequate Punishment In this situation, it is necessary to cooperate with a lawyer to prove the absence of intent to harm or to verify the impossibility of committing a crime.
• Hate Crimes from a Biblical Perspective
• Categories of Crime in Current Justice System
• Impact of Cyber Crime on Internet Banking
• Crime Scene Investigation Techniques
• The Most Effective Crime Reduction Approaches
• Mental Health of Crime Offenders
• A Theoretical Perspective on Crimes
• Cryptocurrency Crimes in Financial Markets
• Discussion on the Role of Crime
• Crime Prevention With Rational Choice Theory
• Research in Criminal Justice: Crime Solvability Factors
• Terrorism and Transnational Organized Crime as Threats to Homeland Security
• Sexual Crimes and Behavioral Problems Treatment
• State Crimes: Strategies to Resisting Tortures in Prisons
• Police Administration Issue: Crime Victim Rights
• Hate Crimes and Biblical Worldview
• Sociology Can Be Applied to Offenders and Crimes
• Crime Problems and Criminal Justice
• Suitability of Electronic Monitoring: Crime Control Perspective
• Low Crime Clearance Rates in the United States
• Crime Control and Prevention Methods
• Crimes and Victimization: Gender Issues
• Transnational Organized Crime in the United States
• Police Corruption: A Crime With Severe Consequences
• Analysis of Crime and Punishment Bill
• Investigating and Reporting White Collar Crimes: The Case of Bernie Madoff
• Curtis Sliwa’s “The Guardian Angels”: Fighting Crime in New York City
• “Time and Crime: Which Cold-Case Investigations Should Be Reheated?”: Key Ideas
• “Hot Spots of Crime…” Article by Weisburd & White
• Crime of Ricin Using or an Easy Way Out
• The Crime and Justice Impact on New Media
• Legal Issues Related to Cyber Crime Investigations
• Crime Rates in the United States
• Processing a Physical and Electronic Crime Scene
• Criminalistics: Forensic Science, Crime, and Terrorism
• Crime Trends in the Jurisdiction
• Websites Against Cyber Crimes: Investigating High-Tech Crime
• Crimes, Future Challenges and Issues
• Juvenile Crime and Human Institutions’ Solutions
• Crime of Extortion and Potential Defense
• The United States Uniform Crime Report’s Aims
• Department of Justice Project on Organized Crime
• Illegal Immigration Policies and Violent Crime
• Major Crimes Committed by Women
• Finding a Crime Series: Murders Committed by John Wayne Gacy
• Review of High Tech Crime Investigation
• Analysis of Crime and Violence Trauma
• Crime Maps of Detroit and Michigan
• Criminologists’ Views on Crime and Justice Issues
• Napoleon Beazley: Analysis of Crime
• Case Study on Tax Crimes: Distributional Implications of Joint Tax
• Aspects of Sexual Crime Myth
• Analysis of the Social Context of Crime
• Criminal Justice & Security: Measuring Crime Statistics
• Overrepresentation of African Americans in Crime Statistics
• Business-Related Crime and Preventive Measures
• Reasons Why Women Are Often the Victims of Violent Crimes
• Hate Crimes and Implications
• Juvenile Violent Crime and Children Below Poverty
• Mens Rea and Actus Reus of Crime: A Case Study
• Increasing Level of Fear of Crime and Its Cause
• Criminological Theories Explaining Overrepresentation of African Americans in Crime Statistics
• The Crime Scene Investigation Effect Theory
• Profiled in Life & Death: Crime Victims’ Compensation and Young People of Color
• Prison Sentence Alternatives for Drug-Related Crimes
• Juvenile Crime of Lionel Tate: Causes and Effects
• Note-Taking and Crime Scene Photography
• Crime Commitment and Punishment
• The Federal Bureau Investigation Crime Statistics
• White-Collar Crime-Related Data Sources in the US
• Crimes Against Humanity – Genocide
• Ordinary vs. Hate Crime Activities: Key Differences
• Public Perceptions of Racial Crimes
• Rediscovery of Crime Victims
• Public Perceptions of Crime Analysis
• Crime and Violence: Modern Social Classification
• The New Perspective in the Management of Crime and Offenders
• Measuring Crime Within Lynfield Estate
• Restoring the Requirement of Mens Rea for All Crimes
• GIS Comparing to Areas in Baltimore in Comparison to Crime
• Comparing the Rate of Crime between the US, Japan, and Mexico
• Who Are the Two Partners in All Crimes?
• State Report: Crime Rates in Wisconsin
• Victimless Crimes in the United States of America
• Youth Crime Statistics in the US
• Hate Crimes – Bullying
• The Crimes of Sexual Assault in Canada
• Social and Cultural Inequalities Impact On Crime Experience: London
• Prison Reforms for Handling Crime Effectively
• The ‘Street Games’ Athletic Intervention to Reduce Youth Crime
• Conspiracies in Society: Power Elite and State Crimes Against Society Theories
• Asian Hate Crimes in the United States
• Disability Hate Crimes in England and Wales
• Close-Circuit Television: Crime Control vs. Privacy
• Victims and Crime Evaluation
• Hate Crime Problem Overview
• “Adventures in Crime” Book by Amanda Archer
• Managing the Hate Crimes and Preparing Officers
• Adaptations to Anomie. Theories of Crime
• Rape Theories and Policies to Minimize Crimes
• Federal Statutes: White-Collar Crime
• Juvenile Use of Drug and Committing of Crime
• Data-Based Analysis Approach in Preventing Crime at Dallas Police Department
• Researching Hate Crimes in America
• Crimes Against Unborn Children
• Crime in 2020 During COVID-19
• Evidence of a Relationship Between Crime and Economy
• Federal, State, and Local Hate Crime Laws
• The Costs and Benefits of Dealing With Juvenile Crimes in Boot Camps
• Drug Crimes and Merton’s Anomie
• Property Crime in Boston and Detroit
• Main Aspects of Organized Crime Models
• Crime Control Perspective & the Due Process Perspective
• History of Crime Measurement vs. Contemporary Situation
• Profiling and Analytical Skills in Crime Detection
• The Difference Between Media Depiction and the Reality of Crime
• The Use of Social Crime Prevention Techniques in the UK
• Lipstick Analysis in Crime Detection
• Effects of Community Policing Upon Fear of Crime
• Homeland Security: Digital Crime and Terrorism Activities
• Problem-Oriented Crime Intervention and Policy Analysis
• Affect of the Organized Crime in Australia
• Crime Challenges in the 21st Century
• Deviance and Deviant Crimes
• Human Consciousness Leading to Hate Crimes
• The Government Solutions of Violent Crimes
• Crime Statistics in United States
• Sexual Crimes: Criminal Liability
• Crime in Virginia: Nature and Trends
• Noble Cause Corruption – A Crime-Fighting Sub-Culture
• Insider Trading Crime and Sentencing
• Criminal Street Gangs as Organized Crime Groups
• Developmental Theories and Crime Prevention Programs
• Race and Culture Factors in Crime
• Analysis of Mental Health in Crime
• Isla Vista Mass Murder as a Hate Crime
• The Genetics of Crime: ‘Criminal Gene’
• The Links Between Gender and Crime
• Crime Prevention Strategies at Walden University
• Louisiana’s Crime Law: Victim Rights
• Crime Prevention, Law Enforcement and Correction Theories
• Applied Crime Prevention in Hollywood 20 Cinema Location
• White-Collar Crime: Importance of Awareness
• Factors Related to Crime and Their Influence
• The Effects of Campus Shootings on Fear of Crime on Campus
• Global Crimes Impact Assessment
• Improving Crime Policy in Canada by Using Criminological Evidence
• Computer Crime in the United Arab Emirates
• Hate Crime Statistics in Los Angeles and New York Metropolitan Areas
• Theories on Crime
• Criminology in Brief: Understanding Crime
• White-Collar Crime: The Notorious Case of Ford Pinto
• White Collar Crime Characteristics
• The Wire: A Crime-Drama Television Series
• The Crime of Robbing the Big City Bank
• Social Developmental Crime Prevention Programs
• The Crime Phenomenon: Victimization and Its Theories
• White-Collar Crime: An Overview
• “Thinking About Crime: Sense and Sensibility in American Penal Culture” by Michael Tonry
• Gender Crime Rates: The Role of Division of Labor
• Official Crime Statistics: ‘Criminal Activity’ Measure
• Organized Crimes: Review
• Types of Crime in Cyberspace
• A Research of the Crime in State Nevada
• Marriage and Crime Reduction: Is There a Relationship?
• Medical Crimes in the Health Industry
• Application of CompStat Crime Model in Los Angeles
• Problems Related to Defining and Regulating Crimes in the Home
• Copyright Implications: Crime Punishable by Law
• Crime in America: What We May Learn From Its Causes?
• Reducing Crime Rates by Analyzing Its Causes
• Crime and Family Background Correlation
• White-Collar Crime Conceptual Study
• How America’s Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic
• Impact of Economic Characteristics on Sex Crimes
• Juvenile Crime Statistics
• Factors Contributing to Gender Disparity in White Collar Crimes
• Comparison Between Organized Crime And Terrorism
• Mental Illness Relationship to Crime
• Models of Organized Crime Executive Summary
• White Collar Crime-Enron Corporation
• Houston City Demographics and Crime Profile
• Hate Crime Against the Jewish Community
• Anomie, Crime, and Weakened Social Ties in Social Institutions
• State of Crime in California
• The Highest Crime Rate: Metropolitan County of Jefferson
• Identifying Crime Patterns
• Increasing the Rates of Crimes in Modern World
• Corporate Regulation and Crime
• Understanding the Causes of Juvenile Crime
• White-Collar Crime Offenders and Legislation
• Strategic, Tactical, and Administrative Crime Analysis
• Methamphetamine Drug Crime Registration
• Crime Analysis Conceptual Study
• Classical and Biological Theories of Crime
• Property and Computer Crimes
• Increasing the Severity of Punishments Imposed for Crime
• Crime in the Suites Effects of Power and Privilege
• Causes of Organized Crime Analysis
• Mr. Charles Dempsey Court Case: Cause and Consequences of the Crime
• The Fears of Reporting a Crime: Why Witnesses Do Not Report Crimes
• Investigation Methods: Terrorism and Cyber Crime
• Neighborhood Watch Programs and Crime Prevention
• Impact of Globalization and Neoliberalism on Crime and Criminal Justice
• Routine Activities Theory of Crime by Lawrence Cohen and Marcus Felson
• Electronic Crime Scene Investigation & Good Practice Guide
• White-Collar Crimes: Prevention and Fight
• What Is a Crime? Is It Possible to Prevent Crime?
• Transnational Crime and International Policing
• Asian Crime: Different Cultures, Different Attitudes
• International White-Collar Crime
• Community Cohesiveness and Incidence of Crime
• Crime Theories: Intimate Partner Violence in the US
• Crime Factors & Levels in South Africa vs. Canada
• Processing the Crime Scene: Tools and Techniques
• Forensic Serology and Its Key Aspects in Investigating Crimes
• The Relationship of Drugs and Crime
• Detrimental Effects of Gender Influenced Crime and Interventions
• The Prevention of Crime and Community Justice
• Use of the Information Technology to Solve Crimes: DNA Tests and Biometrics
• Using the Internet to Solve a Crime
• Nature of Crime in the State of Virginia
• Crime and Social Learning Theory Concept
• The Future of Global Crime: Globalization and Integration
• The Parallel Between Crime and Conflicts in Africa, Asia and Latin America
• Globalization and the Internet: Change of Organized Crime
• War on Crime Influence on Power Shift Among Various Groups
• Trends in Police Recorded Crime in Northern Ireland
• Human Factor in Enabling and Facilitating E-Crimes
• Financial Crime and Employment
• Power Elite: Deviance and Crime Discussion
• The Crime of Sexual Violence Committed by Men
• Screening in Aviation: Prevention of Crime
• Salem Witchcraft Hysteria: Crime Against Women
• Depiction of White-Collar Crime: Toxic Chemicals and Effects of the Pollutions
• History of Crime in America Since the Early 1800s
• US Attorney’s Office Press Release on Birmingham Crimes
• Cyber Technology: Organized Crimes and Law Enforcement
• Crime Myths and Domestic Terrorism
• State or Federal Crime: Texas Kidnapping Study
• Recidivism Rates for Sex Crimes
• Prevention of Sex Offenders From Committing Crimes
• Impacts of the Society’s Response to Crime
• Policing Operations: Application of New Technologies to Combat Crime
• Drugs, Crime, and Violence: Effects of Drug Use on Behavior
• Hate Crimes in the United States: Bias Toward the Victim’s Identity
• The Nature of Crime: Underlying Drivers Making People Criminals
• Theoretical Impact on Sex Crimes Investigations
• Searching and Recording the Crime Scene
• Social Pressure and Black Clothing Impact on Crime Judgments
• Personal vs. Collective Responsibility in War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity
• Without a Trace: Crime Scene Field Notes
• Economic Recession and Crime Rates
• Criminal Justice System: Crime Scene Investigation
• Philosophical Theory of Law and Justice and Problem of Crime and Justice
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• Greater Surveillance Is Not a Desirable Answer to the Problem of Crime
• The Key Types of Crimes
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• The Crime of Innocence
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• Important Crime Scene Responsibilities
• Computer Forensics and Cyber Crime
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• Serial Killers, Their Crimes, and Stereotypes
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• Crime Theories Differentiating Criminal Behavior
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• Organized Crime and Current Laws
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• ”Crime and Justice in the United States” by Bohm & Haley
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• Hate Crimes and Anti-Discrimination Laws
• Crime Prevention and Control Effectiveness
• Crime Scene Investigation Stages and Protocols
• Race, Ethnicity and Crime in America
• White Collar Crimes Focus
• Terrorism, Hate Crimes and Racial Profiling
• Hate Crime Charge in Attack on Sikh Professor
• Los Angeles: Housing, Homelessness, Drugs, Crimes
• Death Penalty: Mistrial, Racial Bias, Crime Ranking
• Crime Causation and Diversion in the Florida State
• American Juvenile Crime Statistics in 2008
• Can Genetics Cause Crime?
• Are the Laws Propagating Crime?
• When Was the First True Crime?
• Does Capital Punishment Deter Crime?
• Does Crime and Violence Affect the Tourism Industry?
• Does Drug Use Cause Crime or Does Crime Cause Drug Use?
• Does Marriage Reduce Crime?
• What’s the Origin of Crime?
• Does Social Deprivation Relate to Crime?
• Why People Commit Crime?
• Why Crime Rates Will Drop?
• What Are the Social Causes of Youth Crime?
• What Causes High Crime Rate?
• What Are the Proper Steps in a Crime Investigation?
• What Are the Psychological Causes of Crime?
• What Are the Causes of Youth Crime in the UK?
• What Are the Major Problems with Regard to the Collection of Crime Statistics?
• How Accurate Are Official Crime Statistics?
• What Is the First: Crime or Law?
• How Did American White Collar Crime Transform?
• What Are the Seven Elements of a Crime?
• How Does Globalization Impact on Crime and Victimisation?
• How Can Crime Best Be Measured?
• Why Does Crime Change over Time?
• How Crime and Deviance Can Be Seen as Functional for Society?
• Computer Forensics Essay Topics
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IvyPanda. (2024, March 2). 607 Crime Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/crime-essay-topics/

"607 Crime Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." IvyPanda , 2 Mar. 2024, ivypanda.com/essays/topic/crime-essay-topics/.

IvyPanda . (2024) '607 Crime Essay Topic Ideas & Examples'. 2 March.

IvyPanda . 2024. "607 Crime Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/crime-essay-topics/.

1. IvyPanda . "607 Crime Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/crime-essay-topics/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "607 Crime Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." March 2, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/crime-essay-topics/.

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The best video essays of 2023

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Looking at the year’s notable video essays, many grapple with issues at the heart of contemporary media itself. There are dissections of video-playing tools, exposés of how corporations restrict access, contrasts between tropes and reality, and thorough investigations of trends in plagiarism and/or fabrication. As the essay landscape refines, it seems to peer inward as much as out.

On the making of this list: I’ve been trying to stay up to date on video essays for a while, and have been contributing to lists and/or voting in polls about the best videos made each year since 2018. Over this time, doing these kinds of roundups has gotten exponentially more difficult. As YouTube has grown to become a mega-business hosting powerful creators (part of the general trend of social media video sites becoming the new primary forum for cultural influence), I’ve seen essayists I once thought of as niche accrue follower counts in the millions. It’s been surreal. For this year’s list, I tried to shake things up by keeping the essayists who have appeared in previous editions to a minimum, along with the usual considerations about incorporating a diversity of creator backgrounds and video style. Once again, the videos are presented simply in order of publishing date.

[Also, I’m going to preface this with a mega mea culpa: It was absolute malpractice of me to not include Platformer Toolkit by Game Maker’s Toolkit in the best video essays of 2022 list . I don’t have a good excuse, either; I just straight up missed the essay at the time it came out, and then overlooked it during my catch-up phase at the end of the year. But an essay about game design that instructs you on its ideas by letting you actively engage with them through interactivity feels like a breakthrough in the form.]

Practices of Viewing by Johannes Binotto

Johannes Binotto is a Swiss researcher and lecturer who has been adding to his “Practices of Viewing” series for several years now, and every installment preceding 2023’s videos, “Ending” and “Description,” is well worth checking out. With each essay, Binotto examines a specific element of the media viewing interface, and how they affect an audience’s engagement with it. Some subjects, like fast-forwarding, pausing, or muting, may seem like obvious touchstones, while others, like sleep, are more out-there approaches to the conversation.

A History of the World According to Getty Images by Richard Misek

This technically debuted last year, making the rounds at film festivals, but it was made available online this past spring, so I’m including it here. A History of the World According to Getty Images is a great example of a work embedding its own ethos into its construction. Misek, another academic, is scrutinizing how for-profit companies (specifically Getty Images) mediate information that’s supposed to be available for all. In practice, a great deal of visual material that’s technically in the public domain can only be accessed in decent quality by paying an archive like Getty. Misek circumvents this by paying the fee to use select footage in this essay and then making this essay itself available for anyone to cite and clip from, putting that footage out into the world for real.

The Faces of Black Conservatism by F.D Signifier

I feel that video essays that consist mainly of the creator talking directly into a camera stretch the definition of the term – to me, the best cinematic and argumentative potential of the form lies in the power of editing. F.D Signifier’s contrast between fictional depictions of Black conservatives and the reality of how they appear across media exemplifies is what sets him apart in this genre: not just the depth of his thought (though it is considerable), but also the playful ways in which he presents the objects of his discussion. The running gag here in which he films himself holding hairstyling tools over the heads of various people on his screen had me laughing harder with each appearance.

Games That Don’t Fake the Space by Jacob Geller/Why We Can’t Stop Mapping Elden Ring by Ren or Raven

I don’t actually think this is the best essay Jacob Geller released this year (that would be either “Games that Aren’t Games” or “How Can We Bear to Throw Anything Away?” ), but it pairs so incredibly well with Renata Price’s essay (an impressive video debut building on her experience as a games critic) that it felt more appropriate to present them as a double feature. Both videos are sharp examinations of the ways that video games conjure physical space. Geller illuminates the shortcuts and tricks games often employ through examples of ones that, as the title suggests, don’t use such devices, while Price analyzes the impulses beneath what one could call the “cartographic instinct” in open-world games.

Why Do Brands Keep Doing These Crazy Influencer Trips?? by Mina Le

It’s been encouraging in recent years to see Le grow more confident in her mixing of media in her videos on fashion and film/television. You might remember the controversy around Shein granting influencers a limited hangout in a clothing factory this past summer. Le contextualizes this story by delving into the wider, supremely odd world of sponsored tours. If you watch this on your phone, the transitions between Le speaking to the camera and the clips of TikToks and other videos and photos flow together in a manner not unlike how one would scroll a social media feed, creating queasy resonance between message and medium.

Feeling Cynical About Barbie by Broey Deschanel / The Plastic Feminism of Barbie by Verilybitchie

I present these two videos not as a contrarian attack on Barbie (a film I enjoyed), but to highlight the important role of considered critical voices that dissent against prevailing opinions. Both Maia Wyman and Verity Ritchie unpack the issues with a heavily corporate product attempting to capitalize on feminist sentiment. Ritchie emphasizes the history of Barbie the brand and how the movie fits into it, while Wyman reads more into the specifics of the film’s plot. Together these videos do a good job of elaborating on legendary critic Amy Taubin’s Barbie reaction : “It’s about a fucking doll !’”

TikTok Gave Me Autism: The Politics of Self Diagnosis by Alexander Avila

There’s a lot of social media discourse over who can and can’t — and should or shouldn’t — claim the label of “autistic.” As someone who’s struggled with both the logistics and appropriateness of sussing out whether I’m on the spectrum, this video hit me hard. There are parts that feel like they veer so far into philosophical query that they threaten to obfuscate rather than elucidate the subject, but the essay as a whole is undeniably compelling. Avila’s own confessed stake in the question of self-diagnosis is itself affecting. This is the most searingly personal video on this list, uniting self-inquiry with rigorous research.

Chaste/Unchaste by Maryam Tafakory

This years shortest entry is a deceptively simple interrogation of the concept of “chastity” as defined by Iranian censorship standards. Takafory is a veteran of the academic essay scene, and I’m delighted by the opportunity to present her work to a wider audience. The video’s text is minimal, and its visuals are simply a montage of clips from Iranian films, but the implicit question of propriety grips the viewer with each cut.

Journey to Epcot Center: A Symphonic History by Defunctland

This is the most boundary-pushing essay on this year’s list. Completely lacking commentary, it instead emphasizes visuals and reenactment in telling the story of how Disney’s Epcot park went from concept to realization over the decades. Kevin Perjurer also provides a detailed set of notes that are meant to be read along with watching the video, further demanding one’s full attention. This is a direct acknowledgement of how we use the internet, the windowed experience of browsing and watching videos. I don’t think everything works; many of the reenactments, while impressively professional, feel somewhat redundant. But I’d prefer a creator take big swings that result in a few flaws rather than play it safe, and I hope both Perjurer and others continue in such an experimental vein.

Plagiarism and You(Tube) by Hbomberguy

Harry Brewis is popular enough that he doesn’t need any boost, but even in the very brief period since this video’s release as of the time of writing, Plagiarism and You(Tube) has made seismic impact on the YouTuber scene . Does it need to be almost four hours long? Maybe not. Yet the sheer volume of evidence it pulls together to support various accusations of plagiarism does seem vital. The main focus of the piece, James Somerton, went into lockdown over the fairly comprehensive evidence presented against him (and has since attempted to apologize ). I’m seeing conversations flourish around the endemic problem of plagiarism on the internet and what is to be done about it, and a surge of creators recognizing and calling out others who have taken their work without credit. There’s a deeper issue at play here, which is that the growth of YouTube entertainment has come with a truly daunting mountain of crap content that nonetheless attracts views (and thus dollars).

On the subject of low quality standards on YouTube, beyond plagiarism, Todd in the Shadows’ recent exhaustive effort to fact-check various false claims Somerton has made in his work is a useful supplement to this video.

Polygon’s Best of the Year 2023

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How to do a Video Essay: The Video Essay Process

• Plan, Prepare & Create

Storyboarding

• Finding, Filming & Editing
• References & Credits
• The Video Essay Process

This section will give an introductory overview of the stages required to create a video essay.  Video essayers advice is to start simple and work through each stage of the video production process. Visit the Resources page of this guide for more.

Identify what is your argument? What is it that you want to communicate to the viewer? Write this down in a few sentences, refer and modify it as required.

Watch Video Essays

Watch a selection of video essays, read blogs and web pages from video essayers and decide what type of video essay you would like to create. Start simple.

A storyboard is a detailed outline (similar to an outline in a written essay) that helps you to organise and visualise the video essay as to what is on the screen, text, media, message and transitions between shots.

Storyboards assist in determining the length, message and meaning of the video essay and help save time with editing and post production processes.

• Free Storyboard Templates

Collect & Edit

Collect video material as downloads, ripping DVDs, screen grabs, mobile phone footage and create voice-overs. Use research skills to find information and statements to support your argument. Maintain a standard of quality and manage your videos by naming conventions and storage.

Use editing software and experiment with available functionality to enhance and support your argument. Add a voice-over, sound effects, music and other aspects of multimodality. Be sure to include references and credits to all sources used in creating the video essay.

Revisit elements of your video essay and modify as required.

Visit the Resources page of this guide for more.

• Where to find video and how to capture it
• Video Editing Basics - iMovie
• Software Guides

References & Credits

References to cite sources used in the Video Essay. Referencing is a formal, systematic way of acknowledging sources that you have used in your video essay. It is imperative that you reference all sources used (including videos, stills, music, sfx) and apply the correct formatting so that references cited can be easily traced. The referencing style used at ECU is the APA style, 6th ed. 2010. Refer to the ECU Referencing Library Guide for accurate citation in APA style.

Production credits Individuals: acknowledgement of individuals and their role in the production. Purpose: A statement for internal use, e.g. “This video was produced for [course name] at [institution’s name] in [semester, year]”

• Referencing Library Guide
• << Previous: What is a Video Essay?
• Next: Modes, MultiModality & Multiliteracies >>
• What is a Video Essay?
• Modes, MultiModality & Multiliteracies
• A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies
• Modes Of Multimodality
• Video Essay Journals
• Video Essay Channels
• Weblinks to Video Essay Resources
• Weblinks to Creative Commons Resources
• Titles in the Library
• Referencing & Copyright
• Marking Rubric
• Last Updated: Aug 28, 2023 2:57 PM
• URL: https://ecu.au.libguides.com/video-essay

Edith Cowan University acknowledges and respects the Noongar people, who are the traditional custodians of the land upon which its campuses stand and its programs operate. In particular ECU pays its respects to the Elders, past and present, of the Noongar people, and embrace their culture, wisdom and knowledge.

Scripting Video Essays: How to Write a Great Narrative

There are many ways in which you can write video essays. Some have argued that video essays are a new trend in the world of creative writing. There is so much emphasis on developing a story from visuals, photographs, videos, and music to tell an enduring tale or lesson in this day and age. 

So, if you want to join the video essay bandwagon as an artist, expert, researcher, or student, you must know how to write them first before creating them.

Writing a narrative video essay is a great way to share your ideas with the world. Narrative essays let you not only say something meaningful but also show it. A good narrative video essay is also about the art of visual storytelling.

But first, if you are wondering what exactly is a video essay. Let’s address it first.

What is a Video Essay?

A video essay is a form of a documentary-like video narrative film using film footage, video clips, and graphics to discuss an issue or topic. Academics and artists can typically use video essays to discuss their research. 

In addition to blog posts and magazine articles, video essays are a new type of storytelling in the digital world. They take one idea and meticulously construct a narrative on how it came to be, how it’s been used/applied, or what it means.

In its most popular form (one person talking head), a video essay is made up of between 3-7 minutes in length and usually presents one concept or topic.

It often looks at a film and demonstrates how it is engaging in meaning or does not. The video essay can also emphasize the acts performed by actors or directors, such as performance, staging, and editing techniques.

But today, it is not fixated to film subjects only.  You can also expand your visual stories about anything under the sun like history, politics, science, technology, etc. Just choose an idea and proceed with your essay writing.

Here is an excellent example of the best video essays –  Example: Best Video Essays by Vox

How do you Create a Narrative in your Video Essay?

To create a compelling video essay, you must know how to write an essay with a video component to produce a compelling story. A good video essay should have the following qualities:

• It should be insightful, thought-provoking, or informative.
• It should be argumentative and practice critical thinking
• It should be visual, formal, and well-structured.
• It should help the viewer understand and appreciate a topic/situation from various angles.
• It should inspire viewers through findings, vocabulary, and plot.

The best video essays also use candid footage and demonstrate the use of nonfiction or documentary filmmaking techniques . And the main reason why people gravitate towards narrative essays is that they let you show your ideas visually to your viewers.

How to Write a Video Essay Script?

Many people are starting to make video essays as a way of presenting their own thoughts and experiences. The problem is that these videos do not have any actual narration, leaving the viewer lost trying to understand what’s happening.

But to write a grand narrative, you must follow the following stages:

Brainstorming ideas is the first stage. At this stage, you should list a few interesting concepts in an organized way. You may want to use the topic form like: “A Case for Video Essays” or “How to Create a Story Using Text and Images?” So, while ideating, follow these:

• Begin by picking a topic ( mostly what you are passionate about).
• Think about your point of view and audience. 
• Set up the background and context for your essay or story (the “what”). 
• Reveal the turning point in your story (the “why”). 
• Provide evidence to support your account of events (the “where”) 
• Discuss how the incident relates to broader social concerns (the “what now?”).

Research is the next stage of writing a video essay. The moment you decide to make a video essay, you should have enough information about the topic. The more information and research you do in the ideation stage, the easier it will be for you as a writer and speaker to share your knowledge with the audience. Research may include:

• Finding out facts from books, interviews, or research papers.
• Finding out relevant video footage of the person, place, or event.
• Getting access to the video footage of a particular event (e.g., presidential speeches).
• Find audio or video files on the Internet and transcribe them into text format (e.g., podcasts, interviews).
• THE ESSAY STRUCTURE: 

Because the video essay is still relatively new, there are no definitive rules about structure and genre for these films.  But still, we should adhere to some basic rules while constructing the script structure. Your structure is the most crucial stage for a crackling narrative. 

The essentials of a great narrative essay structure are as follows :

• First, create a rough outline from your research material.
• Think about a compelling opening line with a single line answer to the question of the essay
• Begin with questions, then answer in a way to create an argument.
• The Argument then leads to the next question.
• The emotion and Tone of the script should be formal, thought-provoking, insightful, and informative, supported by relevant visual reference.
• The essay must represent a single point of view.
• But it should be a well-reasoned perspective.
• It must have the writer or creator’s personal touch.
• Good writing is about the economy of words articulated to the point.
• Don’t forget to mention the What is the Takeaway for the audience.
• Don’t make it lengthy. Video essays are also about documenting or reviewing videos. So the script should not eat it all.
• Once you have structured the script, go back to the beginning and review your work.

Once you have prepared a rough draft of your essay, read it out loud and find the rhythm in the story. Is it telling the theme visually?  Rewrite and get the tone right. Your first few scripts may not be satisfactory. Don’t worry about that. It is a learning process.

• WRITING THE FINAL DRAFT:

Now, once you have gotten all the ideas into a script, you will be eager to write the final draft. At this stage, make sure to follow the following tips:

• Make sure every line is comprehensible so that viewers can easily understand your point of view without missing anything important in it.
• Proofread and make sure that you don’t leave any unfinished work or broken sentences in the video essay structure.
• Check the length of the video essay and make sure to follow the minimum requirements.
• Once you are done with the script, check for the formatting of your work.
• Spend extra time on a great narration that helps explain your content effectively and concisely.
• Get a clear idea about what you want to say so that you know what kind of images to use in the final draft of your essay and how they should be arranged.
• Conclude the essay by providing the audience with everything they need to know about your subject.

For a compelling narrative, the first thing to do is identify what makes the story you are trying to tell unique and why an audience wants to learn about it.

Related Question:

Are Video Essays Popular Today?

Though the concept was coined in the mid-1990s, it has only become popular in the last five years or so. As of now, a considerable amount of video essays and short films are uploaded on Youtube. Some have even garnered millions of views.  The prominent mentions are the Nerdwriter, and Every Frame is a Painting.

check out – Best Video Essays of last year

How Long Does a Video Essay Take to Write?

If you are writing a long video essay, it can take you a considerable amount of time. However, if you aim to create a short film covering one event, it can be done in a day or two. 

But, you may take time if you don’t have the research material in your hand. 

Final words:

The video essay became popular because it is a way to engage with the writer rather than just “watching” them talk about something. But, to make a great narrative, you have to research a lot and put in your best efforts. 

We hope this write-up has helped you create a great video essay. Happy writing!

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Essay on Crime

Students are often asked to write an essay on Crime in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Crime

Understanding crime.

Crime refers to acts that violate the law. They are considered harmful and punishable by a governing authority. Crimes can range from theft to murder.

Types of Crimes

There are various types of crimes. Violent crimes include actions like assault, while theft falls under property crimes. White-collar crimes involve fraud or embezzlement.

Consequences of Crime

Crimes have severe consequences. They can lead to imprisonment, fines, or even death penalties. Moreover, they harm communities and individuals, causing fear and damage.

Preventing Crime

Preventing crime involves law enforcement, education, and community programs. Everyone can contribute to a safer society by obeying laws and reporting suspicious activities.

Also check:

• Paragraph on Crime
• Speech on Crime

250 Words Essay on Crime

Introduction.

Crime, a pervasive aspect of society, is an act that violates a law and is punishable by the state. It disruptively breaches societal norms, creating a sense of insecurity and fear. This essay delves into the nature of crime, its causes, and the role of law enforcement.

The Nature of Crime

Crime is a complex phenomenon, varying across cultures and societies. It ranges from minor offences like theft to severe ones like homicide. The nature of crime reflects societal values, as what is considered criminal is determined by the prevailing legal and moral code.

Causes of Crime

The causes of crime are multifaceted, involving biological, psychological, and sociological factors. Biological theories suggest genetic predispositions towards criminal behaviour. Psychological theories focus on the individual’s mental processes and their interaction with the environment. Sociological theories, on the other hand, emphasize societal structures and inequalities as major crime contributors.

Law Enforcement and Crime

Law enforcement agencies play a crucial role in maintaining order, preventing crime, and ensuring justice. They function as a deterrent, keeping potential criminals in check. However, their effectiveness is contingent upon their ability to adapt to evolving criminal tactics.

In conclusion, crime is a societal issue with deep roots in individual and social structures. Understanding its nature and causes is key to formulating effective strategies for prevention and control. As society evolves, so too must our approach to understanding and combating crime.

500 Words Essay on Crime

Crime, a social and legal concept, has been a part of human society since its inception. It refers to the actions that violate the norms and laws of a society, leading to harm or potential harm to individuals or the community. The study of crime, its causes, effects, and prevention, is a crucial aspect of sociology, psychology, and criminology.

Crime is a complex phenomenon, varying across societies and times. It is not static but evolves with societal norms and legal frameworks. What may be considered a crime in one society may not be in another, and similarly, what was a crime in the past might not be so today. For instance, homosexuality was once criminalized in many societies, but it is now widely accepted and decriminalized.

Types of Crime

Crimes are generally categorized into personal crimes, property crimes, inchoate crimes, statutory crimes, and financial crimes. Personal crimes involve direct harm or threat to an individual, such as assault or robbery. Property crimes involve interfering with another person’s property, like burglary or theft. Inchoate crimes are those that were started but not completed, while statutory crimes are violations of specific statutes. Financial crimes, such as fraud or embezzlement, involve the illegal conversion of property ownership.

The causes of crime are multifaceted, often interwoven with societal, psychological, and economic factors. Poverty, lack of education, substance abuse, and family violence are some common societal factors leading to crime. Psychological factors include personality disorders, low self-control, and aggression. Economic factors, such as unemployment or income inequality, also contribute significantly to crime rates.

Effects of Crime

Crime affects society in numerous ways, from creating fear and insecurity to damaging social cohesion. It impacts the economy by diverting resources towards law enforcement and away from other sectors. On an individual level, crime can lead to physical harm, psychological trauma, and financial loss.

Crime prevention strategies are as diverse as the causes of crime. They include social strategies, such as improving education and employment opportunities, and legal strategies, such as effective law enforcement and fair judicial systems. Psychological interventions, like counseling and therapy, can also play a significant role in crime prevention.

Understanding crime is essential to creating a safe and harmonious society. By examining its nature, types, causes, effects, and prevention, we can develop effective strategies to reduce crime rates and mitigate its impact on individuals and communities. It is a collective responsibility that requires the concerted efforts of individuals, communities, and governments.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Crime Against Women
• Essay on How to Reduce Unemployment
• Essay on Conclusion for Unemployment

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

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