Great article, but misleading title. These YouTube videos do a good job of teaching armatures (like myself) small details of movie making, but they don’t come close to a film school education (which itself is far away from getting experience making films and working under world-class movie makers)
While the fast paced editing and tone of these videos are good at seducing the layperson into the looking under the hood of a popular film, they rarely venture beyond the last 30 years of Hollywood film-making.<p>I'd argue that videos like these could actually be kind of destructive to this new generation of 'content creators', as the narrow and populist gamut of films covered may give the impression that Darren Aronofsky created the jump cut and David Fincher was the first to use low-key lighting. That's perfectly fine for the casual hobbyist who just wants to make their Youtube videos better, but most great cinema is part of a dialogue with film history and you really need to dive a bit deeper and develop a personal relationship with the classics of the form.
Just rushed my way through a BFA from NYU Film. Got more valuable theory and guidance in my thinking from YouTube than most classes.<p>But learning to light a scene on 35mm and other nuanced technical work requires detailed hands on instruction. College also helped me grow thicker skin and a healthy cynicism. That's about it.
> As of December, Every Frame a Painting is no longer. Ramos and Zhou got busy with other work, and couldn't figure out how to keep doing what they wanted within the confines of both their channel and YouTube's systems.<p>Noooooooo!
Watch out for the film <i>Lumière</i>, which is reaching theaters worldwide. It's actually a commented compilation of 108 original reels by the Lumière brothers, but as an experience is so, so good.