Something New, Maybe

I have lately got into the latest social networking fad of "Vine". At the speed these things progress, it likely has no more than a few months before growing passe and dying out, but for now it's quite fashionable. It is to videos what Twitter is to the written word. Rather than being confined to 144 characters of text, one is restricted to seven seconds of video which evidently can be shot and edited only in sequence. It's rather elegant in its simplicity.

I hadn't gotten into it, nor had I really intended to, until I met a woman on the train from San Diego who was really into it. A man will do funny things over a woman, but there's no need to get into that truism. The point is that I got into these "Vine" videos. I feel I am well-suited to making the occasional one, although I am a little lazy to put much production value into them. So far I have made a handful, one or two of which proved very good in my eyes.

You have enough time for a brief exchange of dialogue, or something visual that falls into a kind of "A-B-A" or "A-B-C" pattern. It's not really necessary to do something with edits. I've done one that aimed at stop-motion, but more that were uninterrupted single shots. It's challenging to film oneself, as the camera on the screen side of the iPhone evidently does not work for such purposes. It encourages the enlistment of friends, which I ought to do.

I don't know how far I'll go with Vine, but it is a pleasant and novel enough diversion. I don't know that it will prove as viable in a professional sense as I believe Twitter is, but not everything has to be like that, and maybe I'll be wrong anyway. It just probably won't be that for me, since I'm more writer than filmmaker (if I am anything). You might try Vine, but don't get the idea that I'm too invested in your doing so. They aren't paying me.