Explainers videos just happen to be one of my favourite genres of video on the internet. To me they are like mini documentaries, another film genre which I love. The type of aesthetics in video explainers that stand out to me are bright, infographic style videos or well made mini documentary style with archival footage and high quality script and audio. The YouTube channel Vox leans heavily into the infographic style of video by using clean and contemporary animation along with colourful assets within the video, to me this draws in the viewer and enables the topic of the video to become easier to digest. On the other hand I find the slower paced mini documentary style video explainers to be engaging in their own right as they use more traditional film techniques such as specific music and voice which illicit a certain mood and even specific archival footage which only works to highlight the mood of the video. I think that explainer videos are incredibly useful at allowing anybody from anywhere in the world to quickly learn a little more on a specific topic in an engaging way. To me they are the more exciting versions of Wikipedia pages. I for one would not be surprised if a large chunk of my general knowledge simply came from watching such videos over the course of my life.
One example I would like to look at is Vox’s “How fan films shaped The Lego Movie” which explores how early fan made stop motion lego films shaped the creation of the 2014 hit movie “The Lego Movie. The creators of the videos were able to employ archival footage, animation, real life footage or their own, piece to camera interviews and footage from the film itself to create an engaging piece. Their use of music at the beginning couples with footage from an early offical Lego licensed movie and The Lego Movie to create a sense of intrigue which the ends with a question of how did they go from a poorly made movie which shared little characteristics with the toy itself to a movie which often felt like it was made using the toys and not animated. Thus, immediately I was drawn into the video within the first 5-10 seconds as they had already outlined the question they were answering. They then switch to an interview with one of the animators of the film to provide and introduction to how the movie was made before back tracking to provide a brief history of Lego and Lego films which enable context within the video for the viewer to better understand the topic. Their constant switching of the background music however is what I found to be most successful as it made the video feels fresh as it transitioned through the different “chapters” of the video. I am hoping that I will be able to use music similarly in my piece to match the mood and the current talking point of the video to ensure that the viewer is always engaged.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVe5XPU10Zc