In a career that spans over 250 video essays and one and a half decade, an 8 minute Nerdwriter video about the shot of a vase inspired me to take a 12 week course on Yasujirō Ozu's filmmaking.
And I became fascinated by the creator of that expertly-crafted, visually pleasing and sexily narrated short video essay.
His name is Evan Puschak, better known as Nerdwriter.
His consistency in putting out videos for the last 10+ years has clearly paid off, both in audience building (3+ million subscribers on YT) and in refining the quality of his craft.
He’s become the master of visual shiny dimes.
The shiny dime is a writing concept that invites you to focus on one specific idea per article instead of trying to explain your whole worldview. That yields very focused and clearly articulated pieces, while getting your message across instead of losing the reader trying to include everything.
Nerdwriter is the master at visually creating shiny dimes.
In a video essay on Bon Iver, he focuses on how moods are created in music by deconstructing a single song. He uses pictures, videos, diagrams, and voiceovers to talk about the singer, his life, instruments, song structures, and universal human feelings. The thread of mood creation is never lost through the entire video, making for memorable learning.
I was already a big Bon Iver fan and music plays a huge role in my life, which is inversely proportional to my ability to distinguish between the sound of a flute from a bird. By focusing on one specific idea, Nerdwriter’s video gave me a whole new level of appreciation of both Bon Iver’s and music in general.
Watching his videos is the difference from freely roaming through a big museum to hiring a good tour guide that picks, guides and explains to you specific artists and themes.
Either one has its benefits, but the latter gives you more intentionality and direction.
For me, Nerdwriter's videos have been a stepping stone into intimidating, prolific artists through which I've then been able to slowly climb their big mountains of work.
In a video essay on how Nathan Fielder undresses people, Nerdwriter made me not only clearly understand another layer of a deceptively simple TV show, but watch everything Nathan has done, all the Abso Lutely production company has put out and adjacent series and movies that Nathan either inspired or was inspired by.
It opened the door to a different side of television that perfectly aligns with the absurd, surreal kind of humor I love.
Coming from a business background and now naively attempting to dip my toes into filmmaking, the importance of being able to represent and convey my ideas visually is evident.
And I realize it goes beyond that, because in the end, the ideas we remember are not the best ones but the ones clearly articulated.
I recently needed a change of energy from my team while introducing a few new concepts to manage both client and internal setbacks. Due to my hate for meetings, we've always been a writing-first company, but I felt this needed more than a well-crafted email or Notion page.
Nerdwriter's videos were on my mind while preparing the presentation: narrowing on a specific topic, using a few memorable examples, great visuals, sexy voice.
My team was clearly entertained, and mostly: it accomplished the desired results. Weeks later they kept quoting the phrases and examples I used when touching on those topics.
I might start doing a video essay when I need to convince my wife on the plan for the weekend.
Nerdwriter’s videos referenced in chronological order:
The shiny dime is a concept by David Perell.
"sexy voice" OSCAR 😂