Ranging anywhere from 12 minutes to upwards of an hour, video essays have emerged as a popular form of video content, thriving in the TikTok era among their short-form counterparts.
Amid an epidemic of shrinking attention spans, the media industry has seen a rise in popularity in short-form content that are in tune with the average Gen Z and Millennial attention span of eight to 12 seconds. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram have optimized their models to provide quick shots of entertainment. Even YouTube, which long prioritized watch time over views, recently pivoted to promote their version of short-form content, YouTube Shorts.
PV graduate Caroline Sierk is a freshman at UCLA pursuing a film, television and media major and recognizes the effects of audience retention on the media industry. “As a result of society’s perpetually declining attention span, active learning and listening have become lost talents. Not only observing but retaining information has become increasingly difficult because of the massive intake of content we consume daily,” Sierk stated.
However, video essays have found their way back into popular culture, providing audiences with a refreshing change: nuanced content that doesn’t cause viewers to walk away regretting the time they spent consuming it.
Like the name suggests, video essays follow a logical progression of ideas that advance an argument, a structure similar to that of a written essay. The medium takes advantage of the organization and language of film, relying on research, editing and visual effects to draw viewers in and convince them to adopt a certain idea.
Sierk added, “Video essays are really unique because they don’t feed into the cycle of short-term entertainment- instead, they embrace the opposite. Research-based storytelling and lecturing is one part of it, but the reason why successful video essays are so good at teaching is the captivating host imparting the info.”
What exactly makes a piece of content a video essay is loosely-defined. Often, video essays delve deep into a specific topic, philosophy or trend and relay that information to the viewer in a noticeably scripted format. Voiceovers are typically played over images and video footage, rather than following the visual format of other common styles of YouTube media such as vlogs, video podcasts and reaction videos.
Video essays are educational in nature. They don’t have to uncover a completely novel idea, but rather, they focus on helping audiences understand the larger cultural context of a social phenomenon — whether it be an analysis of “stan culture,” how Phoebe Bridgers took the indie genre by storm or what makes a good plot twist in film.
Sierk attributed the rise in video essays to their accessibility to a wide range of audiences. “Most of these creators are extremely young compared to collegiate professors and people regarded as ‘scholars,’” Sierk continued. “Current references, vernacular, and even memes make serious concepts like ‘the infantilization of women’ or ‘colorism in media’ easier to understand. It’s so much easier to relate to a grad student sitting on their bedroom floor sharing their dissertation than relating to a professor as one of 200 students in a lecture hall.”
In any piece of media, there will always be an early drop-off point among viewers — the first few minutes that either succeed in hooking a viewer or cause them to click out of it. Video essays have demonstrated that—depending on the subject matter, production quality and creator— long videos too can be hits among viewers. For instance, last month, YouTube creator oliSUNvia published a 34-minute video essay titled “is love a social concept,” which has garnered more that 500 thousand views.
As video essays make their long awaited return on Youtube, other social media platforms have also adapted their model to accommodate the call for long form content. TikTok extended their maximum video length from three minutes to 10, Instagram extended their story length to a full minute rather than 15-second clips and Spotify introduced a video podcast feature.
As video essays continue to rise in popularity and cement their position in the multimedia sphere, many eagerly await what the future of video content will hold.
