Every Frame a Painting

Every Frame a Painting is a series of video essays about film form, editing, and cinematography created by Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou between 2014 and 2016, published on YouTube and Vimeo.

[4] Ramos and Zhou published the script of the final, unproduced essay on Medium on December 2, 2017, as both a farewell and explanation for the series' end, as well as a postmortem with advice for future essayists.

[2] The editing style, use of film clips, and remixing of audio were developed in response to YouTube's Content ID system, with the goal of meeting the criteria for fair use and to avoid being flagged by the copyright violation algorithm.

[2][15] Zhou lamented that the format imposed by Content ID prevented them from making videos about filmmakers such as Andrei Tarkovsky and Agnès Varda, as they would require longer clips.

[46][47] Wired's Brian Raftery credited Every Frame a Painting for kicking off "a dramatic growth spurt" in YouTube-based movie criticism and stated the channel's "astute, patient, visually assured film essays...help[ed] push the medium past its ranting-rando-with-a-camera phase".

[48] Allison de Fren called the series "a master class on film form" with consistent style and tone; she found Zhou's "chummy, upbeat performance" a stark contrast to previous essays such as Los Angeles Plays Itself (2004).