The Nerdwriter made YouTube his dream job
Out of those 300 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, have you ever wondered whether there are more interesting videos than cats, babies, movie trailers or interviews? Or are you one of those 30 billion visitors that’s there just for the “free” music? (source)
Well, out of those uploaded hours, leaving behind the old court case type of essay, “The motif of whiteness in Moby Dick”, The Nerdwriter (Evan Puschack) brings forward video essays, which are, as he personally describes them: written essays blended into an article, reportage, photojournalism, or documentary.
Posting every Wednesday, he’s constantly experimenting with video styles, creating stories out of any subject that he found interesting during the week.
Reading as much as he can, diving completely into the bubble of the subject, the process undertaken to the final product is divided into writing the script, filming, and editing. How long does it take? A week. Is this ideal or sufficient? Not necessarily, once he is done with his research, the script and editing ideas pop up once he feels confident with the subject. He may sound pretentious, but with his calm timbre, he’s coming with a lot of information comprised in 6 minutes of video content. Finishing with an open statement, suggesting his position, however, you have the option to choose. Thinking this kind of essays have a huge reach, 65% of views being visual learners, he just presents the facts.
Who is he in real life? Evan Puschak, who studied film production at Boston University, but then his whole presence was exclusively online and that brought him his jobs for MNSBC and Discovery Channel, creating online video content (source). He’s living the happier period of his life, enjoying the growth and outreach provided by YouTube. With over 1 million of subscribers, he considers himself on a film set where the lighting looks completely different than on the final product presented on the screen, but he is the director who knows exactly just how to put the lights.
His channel is divided into case studies about art, “Understanding Art”, essays about science and social sciences. The most popular video made by him is “ How Donald Trump Answers A Question”, with more than 5.5 millions of views, it’s an analysis of how the elected president manipulates people when responding to a question. The structure is simple, starting with the transcript of the speech, followed by a syntactic and vocabulary analysis, finishing with the impact of the speech on the audience. He did not state it directly, but he was considering Trump controlling people’s beliefs the way he wanted.
His overall online presence is on all the social platforms. With constant updates on facebook, twitter, and Instagram. As his whole life is online, he includes his audience into his life through these platforms and creates the emotional context of his videos. He made his life out of the Internet itself, and his next steps are merchandising his brand, getting revenue out of advertising and Patreon.
The love for Internet and YouTube is endless and the reason behind everything he’s doing is really simple, helping himself while helping the others: “only by articulating in words, in a video, or in both, do we really find our point of view”.
