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

Video essays could replace traditional essays for some purposes, but traditional essays need to remain for other purposes. After reading Erlend Lavik’s “The Video Essay: The Future of Academic Film and Television Criticism?,” I can see both ways. On one hand, video essays would be great for classroom settings of various disciplines. Video essays are likely more interesting for classmates and help works reach more people (perhaps outside of scholarly communities) because of platforms like YouTube that share videos, which tend to be easier to understand, more personal, and more interesting due to the use of visuals. As Lavik explained, visuals would be more helpful and accurate for explaining meaning to an audience, and these videos could “push thought further,” whether that be the original video creator or others. On the other hand, not everyone can access resources needed to make video essays, such as apps or the internet, and others may not even be able to view these essays. Also, video essays would be potentially more time-consuming because they require much editing and drafting in a visual field that traditional essays do not use much. Lavik even explains that some scholars (or students) may not have skills necessary for making video essays. Even if they learn how to make these videos, some courses themselves may not fit with the genre of video essays, and visuals may not always be necessary to get essays’ points across. Therefore, though video essays are very helpful, there are issues with trying to replace traditional essays with them. Still, I think that video essays are legitimate academic work because they are thought-provoking and require much effort from the creator, so they should still be used, especially in scholarly settings because of their benefits.