8 ms·

Postmortem: Every Frame a Painting (2017)

187 points by smacktoward 7y ago

dredmorbius 7y ago
Even as a non-cinemaphile, this channel, and the post-mortem essay, had resonated with me. Both are excellent, both provide far more than insights into a century of cinema, although if that's all that you take from it it's more than worth the time. I'd commented on the postmortem essay shortly after it was published with some additional thoughts of relevance to my own (very non-cinematic) work: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7hgb24/brilliant_failure_every_frame_a_painting/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7hgb24/brillia... (I'd also submitted the same link, a minute after smacktoward did, full credit to them it's a very worthwhile submission.)
- the_af 7y ago
  Same here. As a... let's say, cinema-newbie, I found the Every Frame a Painting channel simply fascinating. I devoured every chapter in a short time. To me this kind of channels is a triumph, what YouTube can be and should strive to be. I think they did overreach with some conclusions. For example, his "obvious" conclusion about the story told by the edition in the clip with the father and the two young daughters wasn't at all obvious to me (and judging by the comments on that video, a lot of other viewers didn't get it either). I suppose it's part of the subconscious knowledge someone in the industry has which someone outside doesn't.
  - meowface 7y ago
    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.
    - muzzio 7y ago
      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 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.)
      - ImaCake 7y ago
        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.
    - magashna 7y ago
      Primitive Technology is a big one, turn on captions or you're really missing out
    - davinic 7y ago
      Nerdwriter: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJkMlOu7faDgqh4PfzbpLdg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJkMlOu7faDgqh4PfzbpLdg
      - keiferski 7y ago
        Definitely not artistic or high quality.
      - meowface 7y ago
        I've come to feel nearly all of his content is just blogspam in video form.
    - naringas 7y ago
      Ben Eater is also top notch content: https://www.youtube.com/user/eaterbc https://www.youtube.com/user/eaterbc but it's not artistic
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      This might make a good "Ask HN" question / submission.
    - dredmorbius 7y ago
      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.
    - zbuttram 7y ago
      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)
      - meowface 7y ago
        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.
    - Qqqwxs 7y ago
      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 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv_vLHiWVBh_FR9vbeuiY-A
    - Jackim 7y ago
      https://youtube.com/Polyphonic https://youtube.com/Polyphonic
    - _hardwaregeek 7y ago
      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.
    - jvzr 7y ago
      Cinema-related, you have CinemaWins (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL8h3ri2WN_-IbviBlWtUcQ 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.
    - HappyRobot 7y ago
      Other long-form movie content - Movies with Mikey (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEtB-nx5ngoNJWEzYa-yXBg 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 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF1fG3gT44nGTPU2sVLoFWg) analysis of movie structure and technique. Music Commentary - Middle8 (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfeppgcy70ERp4gQrsYijsg 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 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCworsKCR-Sx6R6-BnIjS2MA), This Old Tony (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5NO8MgTQKHAWXp6z8Xl7yQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5NO8MgTQKHAWXp6z8Xl7yQ), DiResta (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiEk4xHBbz0hZNIBBpowdYQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiEk4xHBbz0hZNIBBpowdYQ), etc
  - egypturnash 7y ago
    > part of the subconscious knowledge someone in the industry has which someone outside doesn't Yeah, when you watch a lot of stuff with an analytical eye, you start to see patterns. Eventually you get to the point where you can pause it, make a prediction about what's gonna happen, and be right 90% of the time. Which is either super annoying to the people you're watching it with, or a really fun game if everyone involved is this genre-savvy. Getting close to that level is pretty much a requirement for getting a job like "editor" or "storyboard" or "script-writer".
- smacktoward 7y ago
  Apologies for stepping on your submission :-/
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    Not at all. I was very amused. Thanks for posting this, it really is a great piece.
dang 7y ago
Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15836782 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15836782
lunchables 7y ago
>There is no such thing as free content on the Internet [...] >Everything costs something to make. If a person is putting out content for free, that means they’re not getting paid for their time. First of all, remember when people posted things on the internet just out of our desire to share things? I certainly support Tony's decision to shut this down - it is his decision to make, and no one should feel FORCED to create content for free. But second of all, doesn't the second commend contradict the first?
- percentcer 7y ago
  My reading is that it's not "free" because it costs the creator something to make it, even if you get to consume it for free.
- andrei_says_ 7y ago
  Few "desires to share things" require 200+ hours per item, more than a work-month's worth of time. And, the authors did that amount of work for free for some time.
  - lunchables 7y ago
    Of course, and I agree, as I said in my original post: >I certainly support Tony's decision to shut this down - it is his decision to make, and no one should feel FORCED to create content for free.
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  the delightful ambiguity of English allows us to say such things as "Things that are simple should be simple" and in context of describing design of systems have it understood as Things that are simple to describe should be simple to do. In this case the ambiguity has allowed them to say That which is free is not free, meaning that which is free to consume is not free to make. I certainly remember people posting stuff on the internet for free out of their desire to share. I also remember lots of those people over the years shutting down their delightful sites because not having the time to keep doing things for free, nor the money to pay for the hosting or other things like that.
lonelappde 7y ago
Trying to read that made me appreciate Tony's work to create video versions of his essays. I watched every EFaP video and never noticed Taylor existed. :-(
autoexec 7y ago
> "Nearly every stylistic decision you see about the channel — the length of the clips, the number of examples, which studios’ films we chose, the way narration and clip audio weave together, the reordering and flipping of shots, the remixing of 5.1 audio, the rhythm and pacing of the overall video — all of that was reverse-engineered from YouTube’s Copyright ID." Copyright and the rabid defense of IP by corporations shapes so much of what we're allowed to see and talk about and how we have to address those things. There's no telling how much better these already great videos would have been if they weren't shackled by fear of censorship or attack by media cartels. These guys had the time, skill, and energy to figure out how to work around the problem, but I can't help but wonder how much stuff we're missing out on because a system designed to encourage the creation and propagation of creative works has been perverted to control and suppress it instead.
- nine_k 7y ago
  No. If system == YouTube, then it does exactly what it was designed: makes money. For it, it has to play by the rules of copyright. If system == the internet, it was not built to propagate creative works either, its purpose was reliable delivery of arbitrary data.
  - autoexec 7y ago
    in this case the system isn't youtube or the internet, but our broken copyright system. Many of youtube's problems are caused by their attempts to alleviate increasing pressure from powerful media industry organizations like the RIAA and MPAA who insist that youtube must aggressively enforce their copyrights for them. I think youtube should do better than they have in their efforts, but I also appreciate their position. The internet as a whole suffers in its own ways because of these company's abuse of copyrights to control our access to our own culture such as the inclusion of DRM in standards like HTML and the pressures placed on ISPs to act as copyright police and ban their customers from having any access to the internet based on nothing more than the unproven accusations that a subscriber has circumvented a corporation's copyrights.
- lopmotr 7y ago
GuiA 7y ago
> Nearly every stylistic decision you see about the channel — the length of the clips, the number of examples, which studios’ films we chose, the way narration and clip audio weave together, the reordering and flipping of shots, the remixing of 5.1 audio, the rhythm and pacing of the overall video — all of that was reverse-engineered from YouTube’s Copyright ID. Wow. Talk about “the medium is the message”.
VHRanger 7y ago
I've always seen this as a workflow/business failure. Obviously they had a great product -- everyone I've shown EFaP to loves it. They could have spun it into something of a personal brand (like, say, CGP Grey or Nerdwriter did). But instead killed it off because it felt like more of a burden than a reward. Might have been on monetization, or personal perspective. In the essay they seem uncompromising on quality, but there are probably ways to get similar quality output with fewer hours by improving the workflow. I imagine if they made tens of thousands of dollars per video, or built a large brand of the video's success, they wouldn't have felt like such a burden either.
- ronilan 7y ago
  This was no failure. “A thing isn’t beautiful because it lasts”.
  - taytus 7y ago
    Except that it is. They say so themselves and also mention that is totally OK with failing.
    - ronilan 7y ago
      Except that it isn’t. They say so themselves and also mention that “...Every Frame a Painting ended up being both a personal and a professional success.” Edit: and because “Vancouver never Plays Itself” (the phrase, the concept, the idea) has transcended.
- the_af 7y ago
  Money is not the solution to everything. A burden cannot always be overcome with money. Sometimes it's natural to kill something off when it has fulfilled its goal. Sometimes people get tired of their projects and want to move on.
- _hardwaregeek 7y ago
  Eh, they got hired by Criterion to do similar videos^[1]. That's not exactly a failure. Plus they no longer have to conform to the YouTube algorithm, play the subscribers game or deal with YouTube comments. I'd call that a success. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND_xkQ9j_A0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND_xkQ9j_A0
legitster 7y ago
>A huge percentage of the Internet is the same information, repeated over and over again. This is especially apparent on film websites; they call it aggregation but it’s really just a nicer way to say regurgitation. Man, what an apt way to explain my frustration with the monoculture of the web. But it's creeping into the world of books, where fewer and fewer writers know how to research anything. I cannot tell you the number of books I have picked up lately that cite things they saw on Twitter or gleaned from a Google search.
- pembrook 7y ago
  Ironically, even this very article has been posted on HN twice before.
  - BeeBoBub 7y ago
    HN aggregates, it has no illusions of creating original works. Occasional high-quality reposts are a virtue of HN, and I don't think HN suffers from the same regurgitation issues as film sites. The film websites often come with analysis or reviews of films where the regurgitation lies, whereas Hacker News provides no editorialized comment on the articles, only discussion. "Echo Chambers" etc... could be merely a distributed version regurgitated content, however I think the HN community tends to self-police groupthink
    - lonelappde 7y ago
      The comments on HN are quite often regurgitated, especially for the political topics rehashed every week.
      - hailk 7y ago
        Comments are not the main content that HN aggregates. They facilitate discussions around the main content, which are just either links or at best a question.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
open-source-ux 7y ago
What a shame this YouTube channel ended. The videos were insightful and so well put-together. Making a video that is both informative and entertaining at the same time is much harder than it seems. Are there are other film-related YouTube channels people recommend? Two I recently discovered: Mystery Clock Cinema: Film director Alex Proyas ('Dark City', 'I, Robot') talks on camera about independent filmmaking https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO7h2SOZjRah8bhyOXtGHw/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO7h2SOZjRah8bhyOXtGHw/vid... Ponysmasher: Film director David Sandberg ('Annabelle Creation', 'Shazam!') has a few behind-the-scenes videos and thoughts on filmmaking. The channel is not updated very often, but his most recent video 'Random Lessons Learned from Making Films' is very watchable and has a surprising (and very honest) revelation near the end of the video: https://www.youtube.com/user/ponysmasher/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/ponysmasher/videos
- smacktoward 7y ago
  Red Letter Media: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrTNhL_yO3tPTdQ5XgmmWjA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrTNhL_yO3tPTdQ5XgmmWjA Lessons from the Screenplay: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErSSa3CaP_GJxmFpdjG9Jw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErSSa3CaP_GJxmFpdjG9Jw
  - magashna 7y ago
    RLM is great for more casual and humorous views on film. Their "Best of the Worst" series is one of my favorite things to watch
- caf 7y ago
  Technique Critique - Erik Singer's videos on accent work in particular fall right into the 'informative and entertaining' basket for me, anyway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvDvESEXcgE&list=PLibNZv5Zd0dzmgAyav3R8SfXc-64Oly_k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvDvESEXcgE&list=PLibNZv5Zd0...
- slammm 7y ago
  I love these kind of channels as well. For me, the channel that most similarly resonates and has a similar level of quality to EFaP is Now You See It https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWTFGPpNQ0Ms6afXhaWDiRw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWTFGPpNQ0Ms6afXhaWDiRw
ljm 7y ago
Every Frame a Painting is what truly turned me on to Fincher, after I’d enjoyed Seven, Fight Club, The Social Network, Gone Girl, Zodiac. He’s on the same level as Lynch for me; they both found their favourite perversion. As for Fincher, Mindhunter is the spiritual successor to Zodiac. It’s fantastic.
_hardwaregeek 7y ago
What I love about Every Frame a Painting is the depth of its research. It's quite clear that the creators had an extensive knowledge of film. The videos always include wonderfully selected interviews with the filmmakers that emphasize the point far more than just a person talking. The Deakins interview in Shot | Reverse Shot taken from Cinematographer Style is a nice example^[1]. Or Sidney Lumet's interview in the Kurosawa video^[2]. Taking from film criticism solidifies the video's arguments, creates an amazing rhythm to the videos (Tony and Taylor are clearly great editors) and also prevents the "annoying person endlessly lecturing to me about film" feeling that I get with some other channels. I've thought about doing videos of my own on various topics (the usage of eyes and glances in Il Posto, Kieslowski's poetry, the reflexivity of In the Mood for Love, etc.) but the YouTube film criticism industry is pretty saturated. Perhaps a different format? [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UE3jz_O_EM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UE3jz_O_EM [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doaQC-S8de8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doaQC-S8de8

187 points by smacktoward 7y ago

Even as a non-cinemaphile, this channel, and the post-mortem essay, had resonated with me. Both are excellent, both provide far more than insights into a century of cinema, although if that's all that you take from it it's more than worth the time. I'd commented on the postmortem essay shortly after it was published with some additional thoughts of relevance to my own (very non-cinematic) work: https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7hgb24/brilliant_failure_every_frame_a_painting/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7hgb24/brillia... (I'd also submitted the same link, a minute after smacktoward did, full credit to them it's a very worthwhile submission.)

the_af 7y ago
Same here. As a... let's say, cinema-newbie, I found the Every Frame a Painting channel simply fascinating. I devoured every chapter in a short time. To me this kind of channels is a triumph, what YouTube can be and should strive to be. I think they did overreach with some conclusions. For example, his "obvious" conclusion about the story told by the edition in the clip with the father and the two young daughters wasn't at all obvious to me (and judging by the comments on that video, a lot of other viewers didn't get it either). I suppose it's part of the subconscious knowledge someone in the industry has which someone outside doesn't.
- meowface 7y ago
  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.
  - muzzio 7y ago
    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 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.)
    - ImaCake 7y ago
      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.
  - magashna 7y ago
    Primitive Technology is a big one, turn on captions or you're really missing out
  - davinic 7y ago
    Nerdwriter: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJkMlOu7faDgqh4PfzbpLdg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJkMlOu7faDgqh4PfzbpLdg
    - keiferski 7y ago
      Definitely not artistic or high quality.
    - meowface 7y ago
      I've come to feel nearly all of his content is just blogspam in video form.
  - naringas 7y ago
    Ben Eater is also top notch content: https://www.youtube.com/user/eaterbc https://www.youtube.com/user/eaterbc but it's not artistic
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    This might make a good "Ask HN" question / submission.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    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.
  - zbuttram 7y ago
    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)
    - meowface 7y ago
      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.
  - Qqqwxs 7y ago
    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 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv_vLHiWVBh_FR9vbeuiY-A
  - Jackim 7y ago
    https://youtube.com/Polyphonic https://youtube.com/Polyphonic
  - _hardwaregeek 7y ago
    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.
  - jvzr 7y ago
    Cinema-related, you have CinemaWins (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL8h3ri2WN_-IbviBlWtUcQ 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.
  - HappyRobot 7y ago
    Other long-form movie content - Movies with Mikey (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEtB-nx5ngoNJWEzYa-yXBg 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 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCF1fG3gT44nGTPU2sVLoFWg) analysis of movie structure and technique. Music Commentary - Middle8 (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfeppgcy70ERp4gQrsYijsg 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 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCworsKCR-Sx6R6-BnIjS2MA), This Old Tony (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5NO8MgTQKHAWXp6z8Xl7yQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5NO8MgTQKHAWXp6z8Xl7yQ), DiResta (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiEk4xHBbz0hZNIBBpowdYQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiEk4xHBbz0hZNIBBpowdYQ), etc
- egypturnash 7y ago
  > part of the subconscious knowledge someone in the industry has which someone outside doesn't Yeah, when you watch a lot of stuff with an analytical eye, you start to see patterns. Eventually you get to the point where you can pause it, make a prediction about what's gonna happen, and be right 90% of the time. Which is either super annoying to the people you're watching it with, or a really fun game if everyone involved is this genre-savvy. Getting close to that level is pretty much a requirement for getting a job like "editor" or "storyboard" or "script-writer".
smacktoward 7y ago
Apologies for stepping on your submission :-/
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Not at all. I was very amused. Thanks for posting this, it really is a great piece.

dang 7y ago

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15836782 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15836782

lunchables 7y ago

>There is no such thing as free content on the Internet [...] >Everything costs something to make. If a person is putting out content for free, that means they’re not getting paid for their time. First of all, remember when people posted things on the internet just out of our desire to share things? I certainly support Tony's decision to shut this down - it is his decision to make, and no one should feel FORCED to create content for free. But second of all, doesn't the second commend contradict the first?

percentcer 7y ago
My reading is that it's not "free" because it costs the creator something to make it, even if you get to consume it for free.
andrei_says_ 7y ago
Few "desires to share things" require 200+ hours per item, more than a work-month's worth of time. And, the authors did that amount of work for free for some time.
- lunchables 7y ago
  Of course, and I agree, as I said in my original post: >I certainly support Tony's decision to shut this down - it is his decision to make, and no one should feel FORCED to create content for free.
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
the delightful ambiguity of English allows us to say such things as "Things that are simple should be simple" and in context of describing design of systems have it understood as Things that are simple to describe should be simple to do. In this case the ambiguity has allowed them to say That which is free is not free, meaning that which is free to consume is not free to make. I certainly remember people posting stuff on the internet for free out of their desire to share. I also remember lots of those people over the years shutting down their delightful sites because not having the time to keep doing things for free, nor the money to pay for the hosting or other things like that.

lonelappde 7y ago

Trying to read that made me appreciate Tony's work to create video versions of his essays. I watched every EFaP video and never noticed Taylor existed. :-(

autoexec 7y ago

> "Nearly every stylistic decision you see about the channel — the length of the clips, the number of examples, which studios’ films we chose, the way narration and clip audio weave together, the reordering and flipping of shots, the remixing of 5.1 audio, the rhythm and pacing of the overall video — all of that was reverse-engineered from YouTube’s Copyright ID." Copyright and the rabid defense of IP by corporations shapes so much of what we're allowed to see and talk about and how we have to address those things. There's no telling how much better these already great videos would have been if they weren't shackled by fear of censorship or attack by media cartels. These guys had the time, skill, and energy to figure out how to work around the problem, but I can't help but wonder how much stuff we're missing out on because a system designed to encourage the creation and propagation of creative works has been perverted to control and suppress it instead.

nine_k 7y ago
No. If system == YouTube, then it does exactly what it was designed: makes money. For it, it has to play by the rules of copyright. If system == the internet, it was not built to propagate creative works either, its purpose was reliable delivery of arbitrary data.
- autoexec 7y ago
  in this case the system isn't youtube or the internet, but our broken copyright system. Many of youtube's problems are caused by their attempts to alleviate increasing pressure from powerful media industry organizations like the RIAA and MPAA who insist that youtube must aggressively enforce their copyrights for them. I think youtube should do better than they have in their efforts, but I also appreciate their position. The internet as a whole suffers in its own ways because of these company's abuse of copyrights to control our access to our own culture such as the inclusion of DRM in standards like HTML and the pressures placed on ISPs to act as copyright police and ban their customers from having any access to the internet based on nothing more than the unproven accusations that a subscriber has circumvented a corporation's copyrights.
lopmotr 7y ago

GuiA 7y ago

> Nearly every stylistic decision you see about the channel — the length of the clips, the number of examples, which studios’ films we chose, the way narration and clip audio weave together, the reordering and flipping of shots, the remixing of 5.1 audio, the rhythm and pacing of the overall video — all of that was reverse-engineered from YouTube’s Copyright ID. Wow. Talk about “the medium is the message”.

VHRanger 7y ago

I've always seen this as a workflow/business failure. Obviously they had a great product -- everyone I've shown EFaP to loves it. They could have spun it into something of a personal brand (like, say, CGP Grey or Nerdwriter did). But instead killed it off because it felt like more of a burden than a reward. Might have been on monetization, or personal perspective. In the essay they seem uncompromising on quality, but there are probably ways to get similar quality output with fewer hours by improving the workflow. I imagine if they made tens of thousands of dollars per video, or built a large brand of the video's success, they wouldn't have felt like such a burden either.

ronilan 7y ago
This was no failure. “A thing isn’t beautiful because it lasts”.
- taytus 7y ago
  Except that it is. They say so themselves and also mention that is totally OK with failing.
  - ronilan 7y ago
    Except that it isn’t. They say so themselves and also mention that “...Every Frame a Painting ended up being both a personal and a professional success.” Edit: and because “Vancouver never Plays Itself” (the phrase, the concept, the idea) has transcended.
the_af 7y ago
Money is not the solution to everything. A burden cannot always be overcome with money. Sometimes it's natural to kill something off when it has fulfilled its goal. Sometimes people get tired of their projects and want to move on.
_hardwaregeek 7y ago
Eh, they got hired by Criterion to do similar videos^[1]. That's not exactly a failure. Plus they no longer have to conform to the YouTube algorithm, play the subscribers game or deal with YouTube comments. I'd call that a success. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND_xkQ9j_A0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND_xkQ9j_A0

legitster 7y ago

>A huge percentage of the Internet is the same information, repeated over and over again. This is especially apparent on film websites; they call it aggregation but it’s really just a nicer way to say regurgitation. Man, what an apt way to explain my frustration with the monoculture of the web. But it's creeping into the world of books, where fewer and fewer writers know how to research anything. I cannot tell you the number of books I have picked up lately that cite things they saw on Twitter or gleaned from a Google search.

pembrook 7y ago
Ironically, even this very article has been posted on HN twice before.
- BeeBoBub 7y ago
  HN aggregates, it has no illusions of creating original works. Occasional high-quality reposts are a virtue of HN, and I don't think HN suffers from the same regurgitation issues as film sites. The film websites often come with analysis or reviews of films where the regurgitation lies, whereas Hacker News provides no editorialized comment on the articles, only discussion. "Echo Chambers" etc... could be merely a distributed version regurgitated content, however I think the HN community tends to self-police groupthink
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    The comments on HN are quite often regurgitated, especially for the political topics rehashed every week.
    - hailk 7y ago
      Comments are not the main content that HN aggregates. They facilitate discussions around the main content, which are just either links or at best a question.
- lonelappde 7y ago

open-source-ux 7y ago

What a shame this YouTube channel ended. The videos were insightful and so well put-together. Making a video that is both informative and entertaining at the same time is much harder than it seems. Are there are other film-related YouTube channels people recommend? Two I recently discovered: Mystery Clock Cinema: Film director Alex Proyas ('Dark City', 'I, Robot') talks on camera about independent filmmaking https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO7h2SOZjRah8bhyOXtGHw/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO7h2SOZjRah8bhyOXtGHw/vid... Ponysmasher: Film director David Sandberg ('Annabelle Creation', 'Shazam!') has a few behind-the-scenes videos and thoughts on filmmaking. The channel is not updated very often, but his most recent video 'Random Lessons Learned from Making Films' is very watchable and has a surprising (and very honest) revelation near the end of the video: https://www.youtube.com/user/ponysmasher/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/ponysmasher/videos

smacktoward 7y ago
Red Letter Media: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrTNhL_yO3tPTdQ5XgmmWjA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrTNhL_yO3tPTdQ5XgmmWjA Lessons from the Screenplay: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErSSa3CaP_GJxmFpdjG9Jw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErSSa3CaP_GJxmFpdjG9Jw
- magashna 7y ago
  RLM is great for more casual and humorous views on film. Their "Best of the Worst" series is one of my favorite things to watch
caf 7y ago
Technique Critique - Erik Singer's videos on accent work in particular fall right into the 'informative and entertaining' basket for me, anyway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvDvESEXcgE&list=PLibNZv5Zd0dzmgAyav3R8SfXc-64Oly_k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvDvESEXcgE&list=PLibNZv5Zd0...
slammm 7y ago
I love these kind of channels as well. For me, the channel that most similarly resonates and has a similar level of quality to EFaP is Now You See It https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWTFGPpNQ0Ms6afXhaWDiRw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWTFGPpNQ0Ms6afXhaWDiRw

ljm 7y ago

Every Frame a Painting is what truly turned me on to Fincher, after I’d enjoyed Seven, Fight Club, The Social Network, Gone Girl, Zodiac. He’s on the same level as Lynch for me; they both found their favourite perversion. As for Fincher, Mindhunter is the spiritual successor to Zodiac. It’s fantastic.

_hardwaregeek 7y ago

What I love about Every Frame a Painting is the depth of its research. It's quite clear that the creators had an extensive knowledge of film. The videos always include wonderfully selected interviews with the filmmakers that emphasize the point far more than just a person talking. The Deakins interview in Shot | Reverse Shot taken from Cinematographer Style is a nice example^[1]. Or Sidney Lumet's interview in the Kurosawa video^[2]. Taking from film criticism solidifies the video's arguments, creates an amazing rhythm to the videos (Tony and Taylor are clearly great editors) and also prevents the "annoying person endlessly lecturing to me about film" feeling that I get with some other channels. I've thought about doing videos of my own on various topics (the usage of eyes and glances in Il Posto, Kieslowski's poetry, the reflexivity of In the Mood for Love, etc.) but the YouTube film criticism industry is pretty saturated. Perhaps a different format? [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UE3jz_O_EM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UE3jz_O_EM [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doaQC-S8de8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doaQC-S8de8