Notes on Jacob Geller's Video Essay Method

Here are my notes on Jacob Geller's method to create a video essay, as told in this presentation on Nebula

Ambient Research

• Ambient research: what you absorb from media you consume. It's like picoré everywhere. When you find the idea, you have a encyclopedia in your head from which you can pull links to the subject.

• Read people that write better than you, to improve your own writing.

Finding Ideas

Start from a detail, not a whole. This detail is the spark.

Why that moment triggered a reaction in me ?

For essays, also think about the question your essay is posing.

Because this is what brings people in.

I have a rule for myself which is, if I feel like I already have the answer to whatever question that I have posed, I as a viewer would not be interested in it, because I would think «I already know where this is going». I have to assume that

There should be some ambiguity about why it does make me feel the way that I do. Investigating that is hopefully where I find the rest of the essay.

Already at the beginning you should be formulating a title ? That is the core of the question you are asking.

Research (true)

University skill → use research paper's bibliography as a map to where I want to go with the essay.

Outlines and Intros

Outlines

Useful as a writing tool to scope out the breadth of your essay. It is less of a strict guideline. See it as a creative limitation which is good.

Going on tangents is the enemy of good pacing.

Intro

Here Jacob mentions the attention span metric for YouTube Video as an indicator of if the intro is good or not.

Tell a smaller story that ends at the start of the larger essay. It's a way to lead in the viewer/reader/player etc.

Pull the viewer in with a short anecdote that proves I know how to tell a story [...] but it does not require them to buy into the entire premise of the essay.

You need them to trust you, by giving them something right away.

Writing

• Your own voice, who you are speaking as ? personal perspective or not ? For whome do you speak to ?

• Are you writing about something or about you experiencing that something ? Meaning, are you a part of the story ?

Two perspectives are mentioned here:

• 2000 m view, pure facts

• your process getting to the 2000m view. How hard was it to find the information ?

• who you are writing for ? do the people understand (technical writing) or not (layman) what you are writing about ? What's the level of understanding ?

Jacob:

[...] What I want to do generally is let the hardcore committed fans know that I know what depth there is, I know all the nuances that are potentially there on the topic, but try to talk about it without using the terminology that can become so obvious when you are in that community.

The danger of excluding less knowledgable people. Sometimes you need to assume people are starting at level 0.

Think about:

• pacing (super important and the hardest to nail in video essays for Jacob)
• tone
• how it is going to be delivered ? This question is very relevant when it is not just text. Jacob mentions for his videos, the case where is he is filmed entirely, or when he is a talking head, or even a unseen narrator. All those cases and more are written differently.
• how emotional you are able to get with your delivery ? Pivots to certain emotions ? This comes down to the viewer considering you as a person or not.

My essays often end up being about their conclusions.

Use the conclusion to reframe the information stated in the essay, in a new perspective or context.

Make the end statement declarative in some way. [...] How do you want your essay to live on in your audience's memory.

Reward those that read to the end.

Polishing

Whever or not you plan on reading out loud your essay for the final delivery, Jacob states that you should try reading it out loud multiple times.

If you get out of breath in the middle of a sentence, then you should go back to it and improve it by cutting up, shorten it, transform it so that it is more fluid.

The polishing stage is also a good time to check if you have gone out of scope, if your idea got too big!

If you get bored in a section of your own sections/paragraphes, etc, then it has to change or go. You are your best (and worst) critic.

You want your essay to pull you towards you next point.

Take a couple of days away from your essay after you have written it and return to it with new eyes.

Final stage for Jacob, what music is going to accompany the piece.

Music for me, is an incredibly important tool both telling the audience how to feel and, once again, figuring out how the essay is paced. Audiences can't see paragraphs when you are reading them, and so that's how I use music: I will use it to seperat different ideas.

Words tell people what to think, music tells them what to feel.

Finding the music is [...] helpful for me [to find out if I'm conveying the correct emotion].

Preparing for Video

1st Challenge: Speaking out loud

It took Jacob year's to learn to talk in a microphone. Most helpful examples are from the world of radio.

Your voice can be a tool to make you found less monotonous. Jacob finds himself sometimes exagerating his vocal tones, saying some things faster, some slower, some things more or less emotional.

It's a way to remind the audience that you are not a robot and the things they are watching are thoughts coming out of someone's head.

He records his voice while listening to the music that is going to play. He makes the full track with each music piece first. Then, while listening to this first music track, he records himself. The first track informs him of the emotions to convey.

For recording the images (in video games and whatnot), he uses the script as a shot list. When he describes something, he knows then to go and record that in the video game.

alternatively, ask someone who has record a let's play. They are sometimes very gracious and let you take their footage.

Video editing

Jacob: it's as hard as you want to make it. Then two examples of video editing timelines:

• Hideo Kojima (very complexe and LAYERED)
• Jacob Geller (2 audio tracks, 3 video tracks.)

Trick for editing: video should follow speech patterns. You finish a sentence, you finish a video clip at the same time, and change clips for a new sentence ?

Speaking rythm first, video second in terms of priority. Slow down the footage, take another longer footage if need be.

IMPORTANT: When words come on screen, we automatically start reading them. Be mindful your use of subtitles etc.

Sound quality is also much more important than video quality !! Music louder than voice, big NO NO

The fundamental question you want to answer with editing is simply do you want the audience to notice it

The fundamental question you want to answer with editing is simply do you want the audience to notice it. Do you want them to think of it as an edited video or not. [...] Remember that you are telling a story and whatever you do, it should further this goal.

Thumbnail + title work together to tell a story