12/11/14

Vines - The Condensed Meaning of Everyday Life and Thoughts

Vines. We have talked about vlogs and memes but we haven't got deeper in the trends of the web. We may think of the web as the resemblance of our stressful day routine, but we really are who change the speed dial to even higher levels everytime we move or come into a hurry for really nothing.

Despite of the thoughts that can be spread from our jobs, studies and daily actions, we've got the art expressions and culture these come with. These ones are moulded by this celerity and, why not, the adaptability the common of the people has to it.

In an attack of curiosity, I've came to revisit one of my web's favourite videos and I found time ago and, at the beginning of this year I found they were called vines! Wow, interesting. Youtubers really should have patience to record only 6 second tapes. But no, not youtubers but "viners". 

Today I went and used define: in Google to find out what a vine is. Wikipedia gave the best definition (althought I swore by my mum to not quote Wikipedia again):

Vine is a short-form video sharing service. Founded in June 2012, it was acquired by microblogging website Twitter in October 2012, just prior to its official launch. The service allows users to record and edit five to six-second long looping video clips, and to "revine", or share others' posts with followers
 - Wikipedia, Vine (service)

I must say I am impressed. Five to six seconds! What can a video tell us in such short time? It is too fast! Well, vines can say a lot.

First of all, even if you haven't noticed the content in the first attempt, they are self-recursive, this is, the repetition in such short time lapse will allow your brain to get it at the second or third time. This happens with advertising (annoying ads are annoying but we learn them).

After this simple realization, it comes a large variety of elements to portray in a camera. Let us observe some of them:

https://vine.co/v/OrJj39YlL57

This one is called "Forgot My Lines", from the viner Reno Shaw. The composition is simple, just a white board and a man writing on it. We can read, from the point of view of the creator, "a story without `[undefined lines] means [undefined lines]". Then, with a spice of creativity, the man with the pen adds some lines to complete: "a story without details means nothing". 

This is a sentence that fosters our thinking about stories. Details are there to complete the stories, because we cannot even imagine a story with a lonely protagonist and the poorly spiced ones are quite boring, so they become nothing. So we feel compelled to think about and feel fun while agreeing to this user.

The art is created quickly, the pose is stressed and in the movement is quick but precise. The main colour is white, so as the man's skin with contrasts with the man's black and white shirt, glasses,  and hair. White is the colour associated with academicism. The music pitch is relaxed though the cadence is an obstinato of guitar dotting with a little harmony that helps the viewer to infer a feeling of continuity while rewatches the looping video. 

The steadiness is the purpose of the vines. Even more loopings a video generates, more popularity acquires the viner.


Of course, there are more things that give popularity to videos. I came into the "animal" section of vine.co to find more videos with an only purpose: Internet stereotypes. Soon after I faced the biggest I can imagine: puppies and babies: 

https://vine.co/v/O6AKeWD3EhP

So cute! Too much tenderness for this hour of the day! This one is more simple but repeats one variant from the first one, which is the music. Still the musical pattern is repeated to the point that pastes from the end to the new beginning. More loops. 


Then I found this one in the comedy section, which I think is quite hilarious albeit it took me four times to understand all the sentences. It is from KingBach, who I found is so popular.

https://vine.co/v/O6ua2qXQHq5

The curious fact is that they use 7 different shots, three different simple sentences (spoken in less than a second) and a sequence of music that only lasts quarter of a second. It is a must-watch, seriously. It has a lot of things to explain but it would take too long.

So this is it, I hope you have enjoyed it and I leave here the URL to my favourite video of all the times. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoEmsjIYj1s

See You!

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