Every Frame a Painting


Every Frame a Painting is a series of 28 video essays about film form, film editing, and cinematography created by Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou between 2014 and 2016. They were first published on YouTube but have also been released on Vimeo.

Format

Each essay explores one particular topic, often a single creator, with many organized around a scene that illustrates the idea. For each essay, Zhou would do principal writing and research, Ramos would organize the thesis and make animations, and they both worked on the final editing process. The editing style, use of film clips, and remixing of audio were developed in response to YouTube's Content ID system, with the goal of meeting the criteria for fair use and to avoid being flagged by the copyright violation algorithm.
Zhou lamented that the format imposed by Content ID prevented them from making videos about creators like Andrei Tarkovsky and Agnès Varda, as they would require longer clips.

History

The first video was published on April 16, 2014 about Bong Joon-ho's Mother and the use of side-on profile shots. The final essay was published on September 12, 2016 about the use of orchestral sound in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In total, the creators made 28 essays between 2014 and 2016. They published the script of the final, unproduced essay on Medium on December 2, 2017 as both a farewell and explanation for the series' end, as well as a postmortem with advice for future essayists.

Post-EFaP

Since then, Ramos and Zhou have produced video essays released as special features for The Criterion Collection and FilmStruck.

Reception

Kevin B. Lee, a film critic and video essayist, called the series "the standout newcomer to the video essay scene" in 2014. Many critics point to the essay on Jackie Chan and action comedy as among the best.