When Video Essays Lie to You

Do's and Don'ts of Video Essays

Editor’s note: This is the first of a new ongoing series where I’ll be recommending video essays by others that I think fans of Too Much Film School will enjoy.

Part of what motivated me to start TMFS was watching great video essays, by the likes of Every Frame a Painting. They even made a video essay about how to make video essays—¹

Conversely, I was annoyed by bland CoNtEnT cReAtOrS, such as Studio Binder, and just plain bad videos, by Patrick Willems and his ilk.

But I had a strange experience recently, when a very popular video went from the former category to the latter.

Saved in the Edit

At USC, I learned to edit in the Marcia Lucas Post-Production building, which is no longer there. (It’s since been replaced by much nicer editing facilities.)

I missed it by about 5 years.

We always heard stories of how great Marcia Lucas (George Lucas’s ex-wife) was, helping reshape Star Wars from a mess of cool concepts into a coherent, thrilling story. Marcia’s legend was built up in everything from the official record, The Making of Star Wars: The Definitive Story Behind the Original Film, and the unofficial but no less definitive The Secret History of Star Wars.

So when Rocket Jump published a video called “How Star Wars was Saved in the Edit,” it reinforced a lot of my biases—

It was well-researched, informative, funny…

And completely wrong.

Some years after that original video had amassed millions of views, an anonymous YouTuber going by the name “Nerdonymous” published a response video refuting RJFS point-by-point—

It’s an amazing illustration of the basic principle behind F is for Fake: we can’t always trust what we see. Without sources and direct quotes, and through omitting key details, Rocket Jump was able to mislead millions of people into believing Marcia, not George, was primarily responsible for one of the most beloved and significant films of all time.

I’m glad Nerdonymous took the time to create a feature-length refutation, but only a fraction as many people have seen it. And so the legend persists.

The above is often attributed to Mark Twin, but that’s unlikely.)

1. If you haven’t seen F is for Fake, you should. It’s quite an experience.