Seth Weisfeld tried out Vine soon after it came out in the beginning of this year. One of his first Vines, a quick take of a vivid pink and orange sunset over Lake Tahoe, got him an “Editor’s Pick” on the platform and a whole lot of likes and followers. From then on, he was drawn in to the world of Vine and its community of six-second video artists — and now he’s actually part of the Vine world as its product design lead.
Weisfeld recently made the move to Vine from the agency world where he had spent years as a creative director at agencies like Huge and Weiden+Kennedy.
“I had slowly been wanting to move from working on things that interrupt people’s days to working on things that people incorporate into their days,” said Weisfeld. “And I wanted to have my design decisions and creative decisions shaped by users rather than clients.”
As Weisfeld sees it, the popularity of short-form video isn’t surprising; it’s a reflection of the “current state of the attention span,” as Weisfeld put it. And if the enduring presence of the GIF on the Web is any indication, Weisfeld doesn’t see short-form video going away anytime soon.
We asked Weisfeld to share some tips on how to make good Vines, and we’ve included related brand Vine examples — so brands, pay attention.
Less is more
“People use Vine in a different way than other platforms like Instagram and Snapchat. The really short-form format lets you tell a story, but it also is short enough that you don’t bore people. You have a concise message. Because it’s shorter and looping, people see your message three or four times — you get more impressions in same amount of time.”
Tell a story
“A lot of what makes for a good Vine is a narrative arc of a three-act play — it needs to resolve in some way with a hook at the end. You can leave it sitting on one thing for a long time and then surprise or scare people at the end to give people a kick. What also seems to be really popular on Vine tends to fall into the humor/comedy category. People have found it as a good place to share their sense of humor. Vine is one of the few places where you can create really beautiful stop motion right inside the app — those always do pretty well. Also, camera tricks, like making things disappear and reappear.”
Be useful, brands
“I really like the Lowe’s six-second tips for handyman stuff around the house. It’s interesting and useful. I have this term, ‘utilitainment’ — entertainment that’s useful — and they are a good example of that. Vine is a place where you can get utilitainment done, and it’s definitely something brands can do.”
Experiment
“Something we are seeing more of and are excited about is how people are taking Vine’s short form and turning it into longer formats by stringing Vines together into series or making crowdsourced Vine films.”
(Crowdsourced Vine film from Airbnb)
Image via Shutterstock
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