Episode 30. Jordan Schonig

The Video Essay Podcast

Today's episode begins with perhaps the most important news in show history: Emily Su Bin Ko has joined The Video Essay Podcast as associate producer! The show starts with a conversation between Emily and Will and an introduction to Emily and her work.

The episode also features a conversation with Jordan Schonig, a lecturer at SUNY Binghamton. Schonig's work is particularly interesting in the ways it bridges divides between academic and popular videographic criticism. In 2020, Schonig founded the YouTube channel, "Film & Media Studies with Jordan Schonig," which features lecture-style videos that sometime dip into the essayistic to explore concepts in Film and Media Studies.

Schonig has also published academic video essays and is the author of the new book from Oxford University Press, The Shape of Motion: Cinema and the Aesthetics of Movement, which features audiovisual criticism in addition to the written text. We discuss his video, "The 'Wind in the Trees' from Early Cinema to Pixar," and Grace Lee's "What Isn't a Video Essay?"

0:00 - Introducing Emily Su Bin Ko

18:50 - Jordan Schonig's Origin Story

21:44 - A Brief Encounter

27:23 - Video Camp & Working With Pretty Images

35:55 - Creating Videographic Criticism as an Early Career Researcher

41:06 - Starting a YouTube Channel

53:56 – "Lev Manovich's 'What is Digital Cinema' and 'Compositing'"

1:02:47 – Deciding Whether to Upload a Work to Vimeo

1:06:55 – "The 'Wind in the Trees' from Early Cinema to Pixar"

1:21:20 - Zooming in On the Marginal

1:25:40 - "What Isn't a Video Essay?"

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