Youtube’s success as a platform for uploading user-generated content is certainly remarkable, and many Youtube specific subcultures and aesthetics have been birthed along with its immense success. Some predominant forms of Youtube media uploads include gameplay videos, reaction videos, and compilations. Due to this nature of splicing, splitting, and mixing around both found and created media on Youtube from a diverse user base, it would make sense to view it as an assemblage (Marcus and Saka, 2006) of sorts – as well as an interesting example of how post-cinema has evolved and adapted with the digital age. 

Video essays are an interesting genre of Youtube content, mainly in the way a lot of video essayers include a cinematic element to their videos, in the way they dramatize content when necessary and also adapt a personal style of narration. Many queer creators in this niche of Youtube also add an element of performance, two strong examples of this being Youtubers Contrapoints and PhilosophyTube.

Both Contrapoints and PhilosophyTube adapt a very visual style of narrating, making use of specific props and sets to add on to the points they make in their videos and to match the tone of the content. They also include scripted content at times, elevating the experience of watching a video essay to something more in the vein of a short film. In the case of Contrapoints, several recurring characters also feature in her video essays, which span up to almost two hours at times – making the viewing experience very much like that of watching a mini television show.

This combination of short form film and Youtube niches further illustrates how Youtube holds a fairly revolutionary standard in uplifting user generated content, and could perhaps be further considered as a new way of showcasing the intersection of film and the internet.

Younghyun Kim

Citations:

Marcus, G.E. and Saka, E. (2006) ‘Assemblage’, Theory, culture & society, 23(2-3), pp. 101–106. doi:10.1177/0263276406062573. 

Transtrenders (2019) Youtube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdvM_pRfuFM&t=3s.