Lavik Response (Video Essays in the Classroom) – Faith Mitchell

I’m not really sure if I think the video essay could replace traditional essays in other classes. I am pretty much on the fence about this one. I think in classes like this one, (like music classes, digital literacy classes, etc.) in which the work we are doing and the topics we are researching are very much catered to visual and auditory forms, video essays would be great. I mean, video essays are helpful for this reason: they provide a visual and auditory aspect to spoken words. They breathe life into essays and make essays more interesting and easier to follow along with, almost like a children’s book in a way. I’ve made one other video essay for another English class before, in addition to a written essay, and I think video essays worked pretty well for it. Other classes, though, like history classes or science classes, might not be quite as catered to this form of essay. As Erlend Lavik said in “The Video Essay: The Future of Academic Film and Television Criticism,” there are many obstacles, both practical and legal ones, that may stand in the way of video essays. A few that stood out to me were that some films aren’t available in a digital format and, of course, the problem of copyright. So, for example, if you were asked to create a video essay about The Canterbury Tales for your British Literature class and were trying to find footage from the time it was written, you would run into trouble because videos, cameras, etc. didn’t exist back then. For some classes, then, video essays may be more difficult and challenging to create. To that extent, I think there would be some issues with replacing traditional essays in other classes with video essays. However, I do think that video essays are “legitimate” academic works because they take the same amount of effort and thought as traditional essays, or maybe arguably even more. I mean, you basically have to do research and write the whole essay, like you would for a traditional essay, plus you have to gather images, videos, and audio and record yourself reading your essay. You also have to spend a bunch of time editing to put it all together and make the video essay accomplish what it is supposed to: “to contribute something that mere text on its own cannot” (Lavik).