Last summer Kevin B. Lee made a splash with his clever, thought-provoking short film
Transformers: The Premake, which documents the global production of
Transformers: Age of Extinction
through fan videos, news articles, online conversations, and other
media, including Kevin's own footage of the Chicago shoot. But is
Transformers: The Premake
a short film (the Berlinale Film Festival seemed to think so, screening
alongside other shorts a few weeks ago)? Or is it a video essay, a work
of criticism in audiovisual form? Can it be both? Is there a difference
between the video essay and the essay film? Kevin himself calls it "a
desktop documentary," describing the form in which it is presented
(through multiple windows opening and closing on what appears to be a
desktop computer) but he's open to multiple classifications. One of the
exciting things about a new form like the video essay is its ability to
cross and confuse boundaries, and this too is something Kevin is more
than eager to discuss.
Kevin B. Lee has been making
video essays for close to a decade, beginning on his film blog Shooting
Down Pictures, which sought to review every title on the They Shoot
Pictures Don't They Top 1000 list. In fact, he is often credited with
inventing the form (at least in its online incarnation), though he is
quick to note precedents ranging from Chris Marker (
Sans Soleil) to Thom Andersen (
Los Angeles Plays Itself).
Kevin is a unique founding figure in that, appropriately enough for a
form which mixes criticism and filmmaking, he doesn't just make video
essays - hundreds of them by this point - but also questions,
interrogates, and analyzes them. Indeed, one of his most recent videos
serves as a kind of meta-encapsulation to this entire approach.
What Makes a Video Essay Great?
explores its titular question with nuance and imagination, captioning
videos with further captions, alternating his own narration with others,
comparing clips of clips side-by-side...submitting video essayists to
their very own sword.
After Kevin returned from the Berlinale, he and I spoke for several hours over the phone, discussing the
Premake
as well as other videos (by him, me, and other essayists) and larger
issues with the video essay form. Here is our discussion, condensed and
reorganized, but I hope it will only be the beginning. I want to hear
what
you think, about the specific video essays we discuss, about
video essays in general, and about the relationship between criticism,
creation, and fandom in this complicated digital age.
I have embedded
Transformers: The Premake after the break, and it is recommended you watch it before reading Part 1 of the interview, which focuses exclusively on this work. Parts 2 and 3 of this interview, addressing broader topics in video essays, will appear tomorrow and Tuesday.
