What does Vine do? I am amazed by the multiplicity of answers to this question–in the form of videos posted by Vine users every day. Most importantly, Vine is a visual medium. It needs to reflect your aesthetic, or at the least, you should feel it looks good. While it uses sound, the sound is often less compelling than the visual.
Good vines exploit the visual nature of the medium. This can take so many forms, from visual explorations of space, to humorous juxtapositions, to surprising stop-motion.
In order to create vines are visually appealing, consider a number of factors:
Lighting—if it looks dark in your phone, your vine will not be wonderful. Natural light can work, but if you are doing stop-motion, the changes throughout the period you are working in, will make your stop-motion less successful.
Tripod—a tripod holds your phone still so that your vine doesn’t feel like the Blair Witch Process.
Ghost—The ghost feature allows you to line up frames so you can create seamless stop-motion.
Save—At the bottom navigation, the far right icon, allows you save your video for later.
More shots—particularly if you are doing something complicated, or that involves sound, consider making a number of “shots.” Each time you tap the screen you create a discrete unit of video. These units in themselves can’t be edited, but each unit can be moved or deleted.
My vines can be found here.
I have written a series of short posts about Vine. Enjoy:
Vine Video for Museums: Post 1
How can Museum Educators use Vine?
The Right Audience for Vine
Fostering Participation in Vines
Vine to Share the Museum Experience
Narrative in Vine
Looking at Art through Vine
Vine on Your Own
Vine Interface—An Orientation
Vine and Audio
Stop Motion Tips
I produced these posts as notes in preparation for co-writing this paper for Museums and the Web 2014, with Alli Burness, @Alli_Burnie; Patty Edmonson, @Retrograde_D; and Chad Weinard, @caw_
Our presentation Vine feed is here.
Our workshop in April, 2014 sparked some good conversation, see the Storify.
Many of our participants made some wonderful Vines, check these out.