high school video essay

5 Steps for Scripting a Video College Application Essay

Students only have a few seconds to hook the viewer with a compelling story.

Script a Video Application Essay

Robert Daly | Getty Images

Think of the video essay as a brief advertisement for you and your skills.

If you had mere seconds to change the course of your life – what would you say?

If you are submitting a video admissions essay as part of your college application, that question should be at the forefront of your mind. Research has shown that opinion, favorable or unfavorable, is largely determined within the first seven seconds of an interaction. An amazing finish can sometimes compensate for a poor introduction, but first impressions are crucial in all aspects of life.

While the video format promises an immediacy and degree of connection that is lacking in written essays, many students will be tempted to point their cameras at themselves, press record, and reel off a video essay that begins with "Hi! My name is…"

Rather than doing that, consider these tips, which can help you write a script for a winning video essay:

1. View the video essay as an advertisement:  Your video essay is, in some ways, a brief advertisement for yourself. Your audience is the admissions committee that is attempting to select a capable and diverse cohort of students.

Starting your video by stating your name is like beginning an advertisement by saying, "This is a pencil." In other words, you are devoting the all-important first impression to sharing information that is already in your application. Instead, aim to do what advertisements do – establish the necessity of having you on campus next fall.

One of the benefits of compiling a college application is that it prompts you to list all of your accomplishments. Thus, before you start your video essay, you should already know what makes you a strong applicant.

You do not need to be better than the other applicants – you just need to add to the student body in a unique and interesting way. Allow your application data to speak for itself on paper, and instead concentrate on what makes you valuable beyond high test scores or a perfect average.

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2. Hook your viewer: Begin your script with a short sentence that captures your viewer's attention. The ideal hook is a concise introduction that suggests a larger story.    For example, "My love of science started when I assisted on an ecology research project at Mount St. Helens," is not a compelling hook – although it is better than a generic introduction.

Instead, set the scene in such a way that your viewer wants to find out what happened next. A sentence like,  "In the summer of 2014, I was standing on the slope of a dormant volcano when a storm rolled over our research camp," leaves several open questions that can only be answered by watching the rest of the video.

3. Explain why you chose this school: You will have a very small window to build your hook into a case for why you belong at a given school. Use your introductory sentence as the basis for the lesson that set you on the course toward college.

Think about questions like how this school will help you achieve your goals. Why is it on your short list ? What do you hope to do during your time as a student, beyond simply earning a degree? Use positive terms like "curiosity" and "service" in your script.

4. Share your true motivation:  Some people might define advertising as a form of lying. Certain advertisements certainly fit this mold, but the best ones present the truth in the most favorable light possible.

Your video should demonstrate real passion. If you are not genuinely motivated by a desire for public service, do not claim you are. It is absolutely all right to be motivated by a desire for excellence, a desire to build a secure future for your family or a desire to make a new life for yourself.

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5. Resist memorizing your script:  The script you prepare will be your guide to the video you ultimately create. However, when you are filming, it is imperative that you do not read from a script.

If you must memorize your script word-for-word, ensure that you can recite it with life and energy in your voice. If you continually pause to remember your next word, take a break and start over. Regardless of how much practice you complete, it is important to sound fresh when you record.

Every person has a story to share. Even if you feel like an ordinary, boring high school student, you have a story. Your goal, in your video essay, is to share that story. Even if you do not have a key moment like a foreign exchange trip or a summer research expedition, there are still moments that are uniquely yours.

Choose an event that is meaningful to you, such as success or defeat in sports, the birth of a younger sibling, or a time when a teacher took special notice of your work. Then, use that moment to set the context of your video. 

Tags: education , colleges , college applications , students

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Why and How to Use YouTube Video Essays in Your Classroom

February 09, 2018, common sense media, by educator innovator.

In a world of nearly ubiquitous YouTube viewership, watching and making video essays in the classroom is not only a great platform for close reading and digital composition, but a media literacy imperative, argues Tanner Higgin from Common Sense Education .

Like many of you, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we can better prepare students to be thoughtful, responsible, and critical consumers and creators. While I don’t have all the answers, I’ve come to one conclusion: Media-literacy education must deal with YouTube. Ninety-one percent of teens use YouTube . That’s 30 percent more than use Snapchat (61 percent), the next closest social media competitor, and even more than use tech we think of as ubiquitous, like Gmail (79 percent).

What’s more, YouTube is a unique beast and can’t just be tacked on. It has its own celebrities, culture, norms, and memes and has even given rise to the dreaded “ YouTube voice .” But what I find particularly fascinating is that YouTube has its own genres and types of videos. One of these—the video essay—is something I think can be a great tool for media-literacy education. Here’s why…

What Are YouTube Video Essays?

YouTube video essays are long-form (relative to many other internet videos) critical videos that make arguments about media and culture. They’re usually meticulously narrated and edited, juxtaposing video footage, images, audio, and text to make an argument much like a writer would do in a traditional essay. As former YouTube talent scout Jeremy Kaye puts it , video essays “take a structured, in-depth, analytical, and sometimes persuasive approach, as opposed to the quick ‘explainer’ video style.”

Why Are They Great for Learning?

It’s easy to dismiss a lot of what circulates on YouTube as frivolous, silly, or even obnoxious, but video essays are the opposite. They demand students’ attention but not through cartoonish gesturing, ultra-fast editing, and shock value (which even some of the more popular educational YouTubers fall prey to)—there’s room to breathe in these essays. To capture attention, video essays use a time-tested trick: being flat-out interesting. They present compelling questions or topics and then dig into them using media as evidence and explication. This makes them a great match for lessons on persuasive and argumentative writing.

But what I really love most about video essays is that they have something at stake; they ground their arguments in important cultural or political topics, exposing the ways media represents gender or race, for instance, or how media evolves over time and interacts with the world at large. Most importantly, video essays model for students how YouTube can be a platform for critical communication.

How Can They Be Used in Classrooms?

First, a caveat: Most of the channels below offer content that’ll work best in an upper-middle or high school classroom. Some videos can also be explicit, so you’ll want to do some browsing.

• Conversation starter or lesson hook : Many of these videos serve as great two- to 10-minute introductions to topics relevant to classrooms across the curriculum.
• Active viewing opportunity : Since video essays present often complex arguments, invite students to watch and rewatch videos and outline their theses, key points, and conclusions.
• Research project : Have students find more examples that support, or argue against, a video’s argument. Students could also write a response to a video essay.
• Copyright lesson : Video essays are a great example of fair use. Show students that by adding their own commentary, they can use copyrighted material responsibly.

Channels and Videos to Check Out

• Nerdwriter — This is an eclectic channel that’s hard to pin down. Basically, the video topics focus on whatever intrigues the channel’s creator, Evan Puschak. There’s everything from an analysis of painting to MLK’s “ I Have a Dream ” speech to film to the history of the fidget spinner .
• Vox — Vox runs the gamut of issues in politics, culture, and pop culture. Their explainer-style videos can serve as conversation starters, and since they publish multiple videos a week, there’s no shortage of choices. Also, make sure to check out their playlists offering essays on everything from music to climate change .
• Noisy Images — This channel does a masterful job of uncovering the layered meaning—social, political, and cultural—in hip-hop and other music. While most of these videos are mature and only suitable in very particular high school contexts, there’s brilliant work on everything from the poetic rhythms of the hip-hop group Migos to Kanye West’s stagecraft to music video minimalism . Any one of these videos could inspire a great lesson or unit.
• Lindsay Ellis — Video essays are just one thing Lindsay does on her channel, and she’s really good at them. Her videos often deal with heady topics like “ the other ,” but she boils them down in accessible ways. She also isn’t afraid to throw in a few jokes to keep things interesting.
• Genius — There’s tons here focused on music, with a specific emphasis on hip-hop lyrics. One of my favorite series is called Deconstructed . While Deconstructed videos aren’t typical video essays, they present color-coded breakdowns of the rhyme schemes in hip-hop tracks. Students could apply this technique to their favorite songs or poems.
• Every Frame A Painting — This now-defunct channel has 30 videos with some of the best film analysis on YouTube. If you’re looking to help students analyze the language of film, this is the channel to check out. One of my personal favorites focuses on the work of a film editor .
• Kaptain Kristian — Kristian focuses a lot on cartoons and comics, which is a nice entry point for younger kids. Each of his videos touches on big ideas in storytelling. For instance, his examination of Pixar movies delves into their rich themes that break the often rote themes of other animated movies. This video would pair well with creative writing lessons or literary analysis.
• CGP Grey — One of the more long-running essayists on YouTube, CGP Grey has a fast-talking style with a lot of animation but does a good job of answering head-scratching questions like, “ What if the electoral college is tied? ” or explaining complex issues like copyright in a digestible way .
• Lessons from the Screenplay — While this channel focuses on how screenwriting underpins film, the lessons offered in each of this channel’s video essays are broadly applicable to the craft of writing in general.
• Kogonada — I saved this one for last because it’s the least traditional. Kogonada is a former academic turned filmmaker who gained popularity through his Vimeo video essays that, for the most part, elegantly edit together film clips without any narration. These videos are great if you’re teaching a video- and film-editing class or film appreciation/criticism. Creating a narration-less video would be an excellent final project for students.

By Tanner Higgin Originally Posted at Common Sense Education

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