Kurzgesaut — In a Nutshell

For this assignment, I chose to analyze one of my favorite YouTube channels, Kurzgesaut — In a Nutshell. The channel’s mission is to explore the universe and inspire a love of learning in its viewers. They call themselves a “sciency” channel, which I think is an accurate way to describe them. They have a wide range of topics including social issues, philosophy, biology, physics, and engineering. While their videos are highly informed and researched, they often are very oversimplified or theoretical, with a focus more on a “wow factor” rather than realism. Despite this, they still discuss many thought-provoking questions in their highly-produced videos. I wanted to do my LEAP 1 project about Kurgsegaut to learn more about their channel. I always loved their videos but had never looked into their accuracy or if there was much research done at all. I was pleasantly surprised to find their videos to be very well-researched by a team of scientists and writers. I also was surprised to find that they have videos sponsored by the United Nations and the Red Cross. This goes to show the influence of their channel and the online video format in general. In my video, I wanted to focus on the positives and negatives of the channel and a background into the history of the organization and its mission. I wanted to make clear the different techniques that the channel uses to gain the attention of viewers. Most notably, the thumbnails and the narrator. In my opinion, their thumbnails can sometimes go too far and border clickbait.

Some challenges I faced in the making of the video were mostly in the recording. While I found writing a script difficult, I feel that being able to present the information in an interesting fashion is even more difficult. For future projects, I want to improve my ability to speak clearly and quickly. I also found the screencast format to be interesting as I just used different tabs like a PowerPoint presentation which made recording the video with interesting visuals easier.

Check out my video here:

Check out the channel: https://www.youtube.com/@kurzgesagt

Thank you