Lindsay Carole Ellis is an American film critic, YouTuber, cinematographer, essayist, short film director, and author. From 2008 to 2014, Ellis was part of the Channel Awesome production company under the web name "The Nostalgia Chick," a counterpart to the Nostalgia Critic. In 2014, she ended her affiliation with Channel Awesome to focus more on long-form video essays.
Life and career
Lindsay Ellis grew up in Johnson City, Tennessee. She received her BA in Film Studies from New York University in 2007 and MFA from USC School of Cinematic Arts in 2011. Along with her friends Elisa Hansen and Antonella "Nella" Inserra, she wrote Awoken, a paranormal romance parody of Twilight featuring a womanfalling in love with Cthulhu, under the alias Serra Elinsen. In 2010, she wrote and directed the documentary short film "The A-Word" about women's experience with abortion. While studying for her MFA, Ellis was selected to host The Nostalgia Chick, a web series based on the Nostalgia Critic; she went on to create over 100 videos as part of the series before leaving in 2014. On her YouTube channel, Ellis frequently makes videos about Walt Disney Pictures films. Other works include "The Whole Plate," a long-running series examining the Transformersfilm series and the work of Michael Bay which has received more than 4 million views, and a three-part series about the production of The Hobbit trilogy and its effect on the New Zealand film industry. Her Loose Canon series explores derivations of literary and film characters over time. Since 2017, her focus on her channel has been on video essays about films. Ellis says she most enjoys thinking about "things that are deeply flawed but have this really interesting potential." Her videos are created alongside a small team of part-time staff. In addition to covering film topics, she has also created videos on being a YouTube content creator. Ellis also co-hosts the It's Lit! web series, alongside fellow YouTuber Princess Weekes, for PBS Digital Studios, which explores trends in American literature as a companion piece to The Great American Read on PBS itself. The three-part documentary The Hobbit Duology, which Ellis wrote and edited with Angelina Meehan, was a finalist for the 2019 Hugo Award for Best Related Work. Throughout her career online, Ellis has been subject to multiple campaigns of harassment. In 2019, Ellis announced her debut novel, titled Axiom's End, to be released in July 2020. She was one of the founders of the Standard creator community along with Dave Wiskus, CGP Grey, Philipp Dettmer and many other creators. Through Standard, she has released most of her content on Standard's Nebula streaming video service, including an extended cut on Tom Hooper's Les Miserables. She releases content early on Patreon where she has over 7000 patrons, making her one of the top creators in the Video category. In early 2020, Ellis co-founded MusicalSplaining, a podcast in which she, accompanied by director and illustrator Kaveh Taherian, discusses a different musical every two weeks. It was included in Oprah Magazine's top 20 podcasts of 2020.
