Week 8 — Film Essay: Thinking with Images

Group Project: Planning Session

Settle on script and shooting schedule.

Essay Film / Video Essay

The film or video essay is not a written essay illustrated with images. It is a way of thinking through images, sound, rhythm, and montage—a form where ideas emerge through the shaping of audiovisual experience. Building a film/video essay is a process that involves:

• using cinema as a tool for exploring and discovering an idea, rather than simply presenting one
• an iterative, nonlinear practice that moves between writing, shooting, and editing
• a personal and reflective engagement with the world out there, but shaped by perception and thought
• a productive skepticism toward both fiction and nonfiction as fixed or stable modes of understanding

“The film essay enables the filmmaker to make the ‘invisible’ world of thoughts and ideas visible on the screen. The essay film produces complex thought–reflections that are not necessarily bound to reality, but can also be contradictory, irrational, and fantastic.”
— Hans Richter

Michel de Montaigne — “Essai”

1. An attempt or effort
2. Personal writing on a particular subject
3. Open-ended and exploratory

To essay is to question, wander, speculate, and reflect:

• Subjective ↔ Objective
• Evidence ↔ Imagination
• Documentation ↔ Speculation

Forms of the Video Essay

Visual (Wordless) Essay

Rain, by Joris Ivens (1929).

City Symphony

Man with a Movie Camera, by Dziga Vertov (1929).

Poetic Essay Film

A poetic film or video essay is a film that thinks through images, sound, and montage, using association and reflection rather than plot to explore ideas.

Sans Soleil (1983), by Chris Marker — a nonlinear meditation on memory, history, travel, and image-making.

Personal Film/Video Essay

Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018) is an Oscar-nominated documentary by RaMell Ross that blends poetic observation with everyday life in rural Alabama. A nontraditional documentary style built from fragments—light, gesture, duration, and atmosphere—rather than linear narrative. His work is deeply concerned with how images shape perception, particularly of Black life in the American South, offering an intimate, contemplative alternative to conventional representations.

Watch: Hale County, in the Morning in the Evening (76 min)

In-Class Exercise

Brainstorm Video Essay Project

1. Diagram your ideas visually: thoughts, images, sounds, and connections
2. Write a short paragraph describing the central question or tension
3. Describe your stylistic approach:
   • Original footage, archival media, AI-generated content?
   • Montage or continuity?
   • Voice-over, text, sound design?

Video Essay Project (15%)

DUE Monday April 7

Project Overview

Create a 1–2 minute video essay exploring a subject of your choosing. The project should integrate visual, textual, and sonic elements to form a coherent inquiry or argument.

Project Development

• Subject: Define a central idea or question
• Materials: Combine original footage, found media, stills, AI, graphics
• Form: Decide on structure and pacing
• Editing: Assemble and refine in Premiere
• Audio: Use voice-over and/or text intentionally
• Credits: Cite sources and AI tools

Evaluation Criteria

• Conceptual strength and originality
• Effective use of audiovisual language
• Clarity and coherence of inquiry or argument