10 Tips For Making Really Great Vine Videos

Steve Kovach

2013-05-07T01:37:00Z

Vine, Twitter's new video-sharing app that launched this year, has quickly grown to be one of the most-downloaded apps on the iPhone.

The app lets you take short video clips that play on a loop and share them in an Instagram-style news feed. Vine has opened up a bunch of neat community-generated trends on Vine from how-to videos to the new selfie shot.

You can download Vine for free here.

Shooting videos is pretty easy: you stitch clips together by pressing your finger on the screen to capture a segment and let go to stop. But shooting a good Vine is hard: The first few times you try it, you're likely to end up with a random six seconds of incoherent movement.

Here's a collection of common types of successful Vine videos you'll see along with some tips on how to shoot them.

You can take stop-motion videos on Vine by filming one shot at a time. It's easy: Set up your shot, then tap the screen once to capture the frame. Repeat the process until you've filled up your 6 seconds.

Using stop motion, you can also make it look like your subject is flying. The key is to take a quick shot as soon as your subject jumps in the air.

Vine recently added the ability to record clips with the iPhone's front-facing camera. Before recording, tap the looped arrow icon in the bottom left corner of your screen to switch on your front-facing camera. Now you can record an awesome selfie like this.

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has pretty much mastered the Vine selfie. Let the background do the moving. (This helps the loop effect, too.)

Since Vines automatically play on a 6-second loop, you can time your shots to match up perfectly to look like they're playing endlessly. It takes practice!

Here's another great loop.

A lot of Vine users label their videos with the hashtag #Magic, meaning they use camera tricks like stop motion to achieve the impossible.

Become a director: You only have six seconds, but a lot of people have come up with creative ways to tell a full story.

Whatever you do, don't take still shots with Vine. It's boring. Save that for Instagram.

Cute animals always make great vines. Be sure to use the #cute hashtag so more people can find it.

Sometimes Vine is just plain weird. We dare you to come up with something crazier than this.

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