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Comment by meowface | Hacker News Reader

Is anyone aware of other content like it on YouTube? Long-form , artistic, very high quality. Channels like 3Blue1Brown and Kurzgesagt are usually great, but I don't think they're the same kind of thing.

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Longer form than EFaP, but Lindsay Ellis has some great film/TV analysis videos. She's usually more focused on writing than anything else, though. Here's a postmortem she did on the Hobbit films, which was recently nominated for a Hugo award:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTRUQ-RKfUs

Other solid works by her include a postmortem on the last season of Game of Thrones and an analysis of themes in Michael Bay's Transformers. (I know that last one sounds weird, but it's really well done.)

Ellis' hobbit videos are absolutely wonderful. I love the unexpected direction she takes the videos when she [spoiler] visits New Zealand and talks to people involved in the films.

I follow a decent amount of video essay channels on YouTube, some better than others, here are a few that I think operate around the same level of quality as Every Frame a Painting:

Lessons from the Screenplay - Similar to EFaP but for screenplays (obviously)

Wendover Productions - Many topics but generally focuses on Logistics, Aviation, Economics, Geography, and their intersections

Ahoy - Video games, firearms, and their intersection

NoClip - Video games; Their format is more traditional documentary as opposed to video essay, but I feel compelled to mention them here due to their quality work (disclaimer: I donate to them via Patreon)

I like Lessons from the Screenplay and Wendover Productions, but Every Frame a Painting seemed to have something that those channels are missing.

I think it helped that the creator (Tony Zhou) is himself a filmmaker and editor. It felt like I was watching a well-done film about films, rather than a "video essay". A lot of these other media analysis channels seem to be from fairly ordinary people without professional experience.

Primitive Technology is a big one, turn on captions or you're really missing out

Other long-form movie content - Movies with Mikey (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEtB-nx5ngoNJWEzYa-yXBg) thought provoking movie commentary with a great visual style. Patrick Willems (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF1fG3gT44nGTPU2sVLoFWg) analysis of movie structure and technique.

Music Commentary - Middle8 (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfeppgcy70ERp4gQrsYijsg) Nerdwriter-esque content focusing on music.

Besides commentary there is also the whole maker community that produces fantastically produced videos for metal/woodwork - Clickspring (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCworsKCR-Sx6R6-BnIjS2MA), This Old Tony (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5NO8MgTQKHAWXp6z8Xl7yQ), DiResta (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiEk4xHBbz0hZNIBBpowdYQ), etc

Weirdly niche, but I love James Hoffman for coffee stuff. He's extremely thorough (he has a 12 minute video on the best V60 technique!) and has a great sense of style. Plus he's very careful about buying the products he reviews with his own money (well, Patreon) or disclosing if they've been sent.

If you want film stuff, Criterion's Observations on Film Art is fantastic but not on YouTube. They have short excerpts but the whole videos are far better. I do love Criterion's channel though for its closet series where famous film people pick out Blu-rays and DVDs to take home. Seeing what filmmakers pick and say about their picks is super interesting.

Cinema-related, you have CinemaWins (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL8h3ri2WN_-IbviBlWtUcQ) which is probably a spin off of CinemaSins, but you can tell the guy really loves his motion pictures. Take Coco, or take Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse, and you'll see what I mean.

Historia Civilis makes great videos on history and politics. The main focus is a series on Rome and Julius Caeser, but also had side videos like "Can animals commit crimes?" with notes from ancient philosophers.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv_vLHiWVBh_FR9vbeuiY-A

As a general case: academic lectures / lecturers on certain topics fill this bill for me. They're typically not episodic, as with channels, but if you're looking for deep dives into solid subjects, they're golden. This includes both current productions and old / archived materials republished on YouTube or other video distribution systems.

Nerdwriter: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJkMlOu7faDgqh4PfzbpLdg

I've come to feel nearly all of his content is just blogspam in video form.

Definitely not artistic or high quality.

Ben Eater is also top notch content: https://www.youtube.com/user/eaterbc

but it's not artistic

This might make a good "Ask HN" question / submission.

https://youtube.com/Polyphonic

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