Episode 30. Jordan Schonig

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?" Support the podcast on Patreon. Follow the show on Twitter. Learn more at the pod's website. Get the free newsletter. Music access via Free Music Archive here and here.