It feels like we’ve all lived through multiple ages of YouTube — not to mention multiple ages of the world — since the last update on the channel “Every Frame a Painting” in September 2016. Video essayists Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou spent the better part of three years looking at specific aspects of filmmaking, from auteur preferences and fascinations to modes of action and comedy to stylistic trends; frankly, if you’ve read more than one piece on IndieWire, you need to watch more than one “Every Frame a Painting” video. Probably all of them.
It is possible to complete the set, given the channel’s long hiatus — due mostly to the trickiness of navigating the currents of copyright law and what’s legal to put on YouTube videos regarding film and television clips. Ramos and Zhou took their curious, compassionate film analysis to a much bigger canvas for the 2021 Netflix series “Voir” and were still dealing with the same issues that beset their “Every Frame A Painting” work. “Some of the things we had to do years ago to solve problems, we were still doing on [‘Voir’],” Zhou told IndieWire.
But the video essayists are back, for a limited run and a very exciting reason. The video itself on the sustained two-shot charts — in under six minutes — the technological and industrial trends that have put it more or less in favor with filmmakers and its utility in contemporary filmmaking as a showcase for two actors’ chemistry. This is standard. Zhou, who narrates the series, still can’t avoid feeling like an unseen character within the essay and also the film school TA we all wish we had.
But he and Ramos have put themselves more firmly into the narrative of this limited “Every Frame a Painting” run. “The Sustained Two-Shot” begins with behind-the-scene footage shot by Julie Ng of Zhou and Ramos’ short film, “The Second.” The video essay explores the two-shot as an answer to a real filmmaking challenge: needing to change coverage plans for an outdoor scene when you’re losing the light.
“Every Frame a Painting” has always armed viewers with ways to see the creative technical choices that filmmakers make and why they make them, but now this new series is taking that moment of decision and making it cinematic, too. When speaking about “Voir,” Zhou told IndieWire that video essays are hybrid creatures with elements of both narrative and documentary, and you can mix and match them in interesting ways. With the return of “Every Frame a Painting,” Zhou and Ramos are deepening the series’ connection with its audience and inviting us more than ever to think like filmmakers because that’s what Zhou and Ramos are doing, too.
“I like the feeling of learning,” Ramos told IndieWire. “I really like the process. I love all forms of storytelling.”
Watch “Every Frame a Painting,” and you will, too.
