A Few More Thoughts On Vine… – Part 2 (Delving Into More Recent Vines)

January 8, 2015

Picking up from yesterday –

It’s kind of amazing how many little decisions or thoughts can go into a 2-second video. For instance, on Christmas Eve, I made this vine.

First, I wondered it if was too sad to be funny. I genuinely do appreciate my alone time around the holidays. So I didn’t want to seem actually lonely! But I did want to make people laugh. I thought they would, so I went for it.

Then you have other little decisions, such as why add the spoon? I kind of wanted a prop. I know people often associate eating with sadness. I didn’t have ice cream, but at least I could grab a spoon.

Then I wondered if I should use a different spoon so as not to have a reflective surface. But ultimately, I thought the reflective surface added to the humor because you could see this person having to hold her own phone. (And you may be able to make out some of our dirty dishes.) All of that helps more vividly paint the picture of being alone in a sad, messy apartment.

Of course, I don’t want to over-think it too much. I know I want to be great. But I want to be able to accept things that aren’t perfect. Art can always be different. Different choices can be made. No choice is ever technically “right,” which can be a hard thing to remember…

(Side note: This is the first of my new, fun Vines that I’ve tried doing directly in the app. It was a little scary because you cannot overshoot anything (as there is no room). But if I’m gonna use Vine, I want to be really comfortable with the tools of Vine. And it worked out pretty well!)

I have an old vine that as of this writing is still up, but I might take it down… It’s from October of last year. I like to have an old school Vine up, but the Vine app doesn’t put the year on things.

So, if you scroll back, since I didn’t post anything between October 2013 and December 2014, you can’t sense that there’s a break of over a year. Do you remember how much we were all devastated to get rid of iOS6 back in 2013? We were so sad!

But if you’re putting it in a context of 2014, people might be confused as to why I’m so recently talking about iOS6.

So, just for the pure reason of trying to have a coherent profile that doesn’t have that random gap, I might delete that vine. (But it’s here if you want to see it.)

This is another vine I could’ve done better. (My iPad was still running iOS 6 at the time. And I could’ve taped a read device – not just a photo on a computer screen. But live and learn with Vine, right?

I also just said in another post that I was really going to make an effort not to delete vines, and yet… here is one I deleted.

This was my first one of 2014 (in December, still). I do really like the idea of “word of the day,” actually – where you take a word we use a lot, but then by reading its definition you maybe think about the word in a new light.

However, I’ve realized that that would be so much better holding an actual dictionary.

(Add to the fact that the lighting is a bit weird and the skin under my right eye looks strange to me for some reason… I thought it was time to take it down…)

I know I’m never gonna look perfect in Vines, so I’ll try not to take them down for vanity sake. But since I so enjoyed the other Vines I’ve done, I didn’t want people to scroll back to that one and go, “Eh. Put a dictionary in the frame. Guh!”

So, there you have it. Some more minutiae about Vine. (I love it. So hopefully you’ve at least half enjoyed talking about it. :-)) I’m excited to continue to grow, stretch my creativity, and hopefully get more comfortable with imperfect things.

I'd love to hear from you! So whaddya say?