How to find the best video essays
Haya Kaylani curates video essay recommendations in her newsletter “The Deep Dive.”
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
Can you tell I’m starting to think about making video essays? —Kate
Take one quick look at what’s trending on YouTube, and you can easily lose faith in humanity. As I write this, it’s all Grimace shakes and people either giving or spending thousands of dollars for different viral stunts.
But underneath all that, a genre of creators is playing a long game. Video essays might seem totally incompatible with today’s internet of fast short-form content and flashy clickbait. But inexplicably, hours-long videos on topics ranging from modern femininity to the history of Disney’s FastPass system consistently receive millions of views. The genre is becoming so popular that people like Haya Kaylani have emerged to help viewers sort through it.
Kaylani writes The Deep Dive, a newsletter in which she curates five video essay recommendations every week, although I discovered her on TikTok, where her videos highlighting recent stand-out essays have received millions of views of their own.
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Kaylani worked in the PR industry for six years, but after she lost her job in a round of layoffs, she was inspired to try something new. She had been a longtime consumer of video essays, but no one in her IRL friend group was interested in them.
“They weren't anything that I could talk about with my friends or the people in my life,” she says over Zoom. “But every time I would watch these videos, I noticed that they would have hundreds of thousands of views, if not millions. So it was this feeling of like, ‘Okay, they're out there. People are watching these.’”
The Deep Dive has since gained over 6,500 subscribers since it launched in February of this year, and another nearly 57,000 follow it on TikTok. In this interview, Kaylani and I talk about the video essay explosion, how TikTok is (ironically) boosting long-form content, and where people should get started if they, too, want to become video essay obsessives.
What’s the appeal of a video essay versus a written essay?
I love that question because honestly it's what got me to be interested in video essays. As much as I've always been the kind of person that always wants to get new information and wants to learn new things, sitting and reading something has always been something I've really struggled with. I glaze over. I'll just be reading words at a certain point and miss something entirely and then I have to read the same paragraph over and over.
So many of these videos, there's a variety of production value, but some of them are incredibly produced, almost like something that you would see on TV or in a documentary. And then for others it's just people that did their research and they're just kind of talking about it to the camera. And what's so nice about video essays is that either one can be a great video that is engaging and that teaches you something new.
How has TikTok played a role in The Deep Dive’s growth?
TikTok has been such an incredible tool to reach the audience of people that appreciate video essays in the way that I do, and it really has been the main driver of growth for the newsletter itself. I have a following on TikTok and that's kind of translated to subscribers of the newsletter as well. And I think the really cool thing about TikTok is that it really allows you to build an audience outside of your immediate network. And I think that was something that was really helpful for me because I think so many people when they get started in building an audience, they start with their circle. And for me, even though I very much appreciate the love and support from the people in my life, they were never the target audience because they didn't really know much about it. So I knew from the start I needed to go wide and find the people who were watching these videos in the same way that I was.
Have you noticed any differences in what video essay recommendations do well on TikTok versus the newsletter?
Even in the short amount of time that I've been doing the newsletter and the TikTok, I have been able to figure out what the differences between the two are. I think so many times with the newsletter, people get the newsletter, they see it, they get the roundup of recommendations, and they kind of choose which ones they wanna watch. And the way that I set up the TikTok is that the newsletter goes out Wednesday and then later in the day on Wednesday I'll post one highlight video on TikTok. And then on Thursday or later on in the week, I'll kind of post a roundup of the remaining. So the people that get the newsletter, they always have first access.
With the newsletter, sometimes I'll watch a video that is just really incredible. Some of my favorite video essays are ones that make me care about something that I wouldn't otherwise think about. And in the newsletter I'll really do my best to be like, "Look, I know this doesn't seem like something that a lot of people would care about, but definitely do not make the mistake of skipping this just for that." And I can do that in the newsletter, but when they see it all together, people will click on what they want. But what's so nice about TikTok is I can really kind of translate that in a way that's a little bit more dynamic and engaging. I recently posted a TikTok about a video that was about a WWE superstar character arc. And like, what do I know about the WWE? But this video was incredible. It really blew my mind and I was able to talk about that on TikTok. And what was so great about it is that it didn't just reach people who liked video essays and wanted to watch them, but it also reached WWE fans. They were so supportive and they were so excited that somebody was interested in learning about this thing that was so important to them.
How do you go about curating your recommendations?
In terms of topics that audiences are into, it really depends on what's being talked about at the moment. I think that's something that I always try to be aware of, too. I think with video essays what's interesting about them is whatever is the hot topic of the moment, video essays always tend to be a little bit delayed because of the time it takes to put in the research and the filming and editing and everything. It's not like a TikTok where you can just kind of hop on and start talking about it. So that's always something to keep in mind. But I think typically videos that are about pop culture, media, film, TV, those always do really well. Internet culture nostalgia tends to do well.
In terms of how I curate, something that I always try to be really aware of is picking the topics that are interesting to me, but also expanding a little bit and seeing what else is out there. Through my years of watching video essays and through the newsletter and the TikTok, I've gotten so many names of so many incredible creators. It's really just a matter of going through everything in my feed and all the people that I'm subscribed to with a fine-toothed comb. And I'd say most weeks I watch upwards of like ten videos, definitely more most weeks. And then I use that group of videos that I watched and tune that to the five that I end up recommending. I always categorize my video essays in the newsletter and I also try to choose a range of run times. Some people are a little bit newer to the space, they can't fathom watching a video that's longer than 20 minutes. But there are some people who love video essays and they refuse to even click on one that's less than an hour.
Speaking of creators, do you have any favorites?
God, I feel like there are so many. The one that I always recommend for people who are trying to get into video essays is Defunctland. The guy who runs it, his name's Kevin I believe, and he basically does videos about Disney properties, but not necessarily Disney. They can even be like different theme parks or different media companies and the properties within those. And those are some of the most fascinating videos I've ever seen. And the one that I would definitely recommend is the one Defunctland has about the Disney Channel theme, like who came up with the Disney Channel theme, a story that you wouldn't think is nearly as incredible as it is.
As far as other creators, there's Shanspeare that I really like, F.D Signifier, Broey Deschanel, Friendly Space Ninja, Rowan Ellis. There's so many. For the most part, from what I've seen, if somebody makes video essays on YouTube, that's what they do. There are some creators who can churn out a video maybe once every few weeks, once a month. But then there are some creators, like I think I would say Defunctland is an example of this, where it's once every six months. The turnaround time for some of these creators can be really long, but a lot of the time the payout is more than worth it, it's something that you go back and watch again and again.
I feel like we’re seeing a YouTube resurgence, specifically with video essays. Video essays have existed for a while but I do feel like I'm hearing about them more now. Why do you think that genre has endured even when there's all these apps like TikTok that are making our attention span worse?
I've definitely noticed that there's a demand for long form content and honestly increasingly long form content, especially on YouTube. And even if you notice on TikTok, it started out with 15 second videos and they've been incrementally raising that amount of time.
When video essays first started to be a thing, I wanna say about like five, six, seven years ago with creators like Lindsay Ellis, ContraPoints, a lot of their videos were 20 minutes long and that was unheard of for the time, and YouTube is definitely prioritizing that kind of content just 'cause it's ad friendly, but that's a separate conversation. That was how they started, but nowadays it's not uncommon to see videos that are over two hours long. One of the most common requests I get are, "Can you share your favorite videos that are over two hours long?" I do think that it's something that has been consistently growing in the YouTube space and now I do think it is one of the dominant forms of content on YouTube. And I honestly think TikTok has played a big role in that. I think TikTok has made it possible for those people to connect with each other and that was what inspired me to take the newsletter onto TikTok to begin with.
TikTok is almost more of a discovery tool, and people can use it to find longer content off-platform.
Totally. TikTok fulfilled the space of like, “I wanna know what's happening in the moment.” And I think video essays appeal to this crowd that I identify heavily with, which is like, I wanna see all of that in the moment. Like when the submersible thing was happening, that was all I was doing. That was all I wanted to hear about. But then in weeks, months down the line, we want video essays that are like, "Okay, this is what happened, this was the discourse, this is what that discourse means." So I think between TikTok and video essays, you really just kind of have like a continuum of content about a topic. Like, to give you an idea, I'm now starting to see videos pop up about the submersible.
The job of the video essay is to get everything all in one place. It's a little bit what you're doing. There's an appetite for curated content right now because the internet is so big. It's like, "Just tell me what I should watch."
There's just so much content out there. How do you know where to start? And I think that was my question that got me into this. Something that happened specifically on YouTube is this idea of having a comfort video, of not knowing what to watch so you just kind of go back to your comfort video, the same video that you've watched a thousand times. I think those are definitely important. But I think people just wanna know, okay, what should I watch though?
My last question is obviously you're deep in the video essay space, have you ever considered making your own?
I feel like watching video essays, you really get such a respect for the amount of time and research that goes into it. I can't even imagine the amount of work that goes into it. And so I think at this very place in my life right now, I do think I'm more of a consumer. Who knows, that might change. But I think you really do need to have that ability to sit there and read research after research. And that for me is hard and that would take me a long time. Bless them for doing what they're doing. It's a lot of work.