Selected Work. Full archive on Vimeo.
2022
How Sergio Leone Perfected the Close-up. 15 min. Watch here.
Hired to write the script and conduct research for this video essay collaboration with Adam Tinius, who runs the popular YouTube channel Entertain the Elk.
2021
Rio Bravo Diary. November 1, 2020 - November 1, 2021. Archive on Twitter.
Watched Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks; 1959) over the course of one year and chronicled my journey via Twitter. Divided the film into 365 (roughly equal) parts and tweeted one clip per day and commented on what I watched in no more than the 280-character limit of a single tweet. I also made a number of videographic adaptations of the project. Find them all and more at www.riobravodiary.com.
"A brilliant innovation in film criticism" - Rob Stone, University of Birmingham
Cited by multiple voters in the 2021 Sight & Sound survey of the year's best work
"This is ‘video/essay’ as iterative performance rather than reporting of analysis and I like to think of it in the tradition of Barthes’ S/Z, where scientific method is pushed to absurdist (and intensely personal) ends." - Alan O'Leary, Aarhus University
"His transparency has been really revelatory to see, and I really appreciate how he’s invited us all to get to know him a little better through this year-long project. Further, the consistency and discipline of dealing with a single text for a full 365 is such an interesting experiment in the first place." - Cydnii Wilde Harris, critic & scholar
princesss [GRACE] kelly (in progress). 31 min. Draft here.
Draft presented at the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Annual Conference, 2021.
Film Thought 2. A Bus Passes By - On The French Connection. 3 min. Watch here.
Film Thought 1. Will the Plausible - On Five Card Stud. 3 min. Watch here.
Named one of the best video essays of 2021 in the Sight & Sound survey of the year's best work
"Skillfully produced (superb storytelling and rhythm), this video-essay takes full advantage of the form’s possibilities by centering in a simple perceptive observation. A little gem which marks the beginning of a promising new series by Will DiGravio." - Barbara Zecchi, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Sharing Stories: On Poupelle of Chimney Town. 11 min. Watch here.
Commissioned by the International Film Festival Rotterdam, June 2021. Screened on closing night of the festival with Poupelle of Chimney Town (Yusuke Hirota; 2020)
Raging Psycho. 4 min. Watch here.
seeing through Feast. 9 min. Watch here.
Commissioned by the International Film Festival Rotterdam for Critics' Choice VII: On Positionality, February 2021. Screened alongside the premiere of Feast (Tim Leyendekker; 2021).
2020
Rio Bravo, Bravo Rio. 140 min. Watch here.
Cary and Grace on the Beach. 2 min. Watch here.
Screened at the Cary Comes Home Festival, Bristol, UK, November 2020.
That Fabulous Lady. 3 min. Watch here.
2019
The Barber Approves. 10 min. Watch here.
One of the Best Video Essays of 2019 — Sight & Sound
"A small, fleeting and seemingly insignificant gesture at the border of one of film history’s most beloved classics is unfolded and spread out into the grand coordinates of this film and Western movies in general." - Johannes Binotto, University of Zurich
2018
A Form of Necrophilia. 5 min. Watch here.
Trespassing: From Manderley to Xanadu 5 min. Watch here.
How To Shoot A Film In One Room. 7 min. Watch here.
"If you’ve ever understood claustrophobia or the wall-scratching anxieties of cabin fever, you understand a bit of the psychology at work here, but this essay does a great job turning that instinctual idea into visually communicative fact." - Jacob Oller, Film School Rejects