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Cut-and-paste social video strategy

This story is about the quickest, and arguably most-creative, video I’ve ever made. The day of Facebook’s tenth birthday.

Unfortunately, since that day in 2014,  lots of things have happened. Namely, the service that the first of these videos were created on has disappeared from the web. There is still a lot of buzz about ‘Vine’ – and it is rumoured to be returning at some point in the future – but for now…it is literally gone (if not in spirit).

Lesson one: Backup your stuff

The first lesson here, of course, is to backup. If you create a video for a relatively new or unstable platform that might not go the distance (even if you think it will) get a copy of what you made.

In fact, nowadays, almost every major social network has its own video platform (it was a simpler time in 2014) so it makes sense to take a copy of your creation so it can be distributed farther and wider than the initial platform it was created on.

Vine created to celebrate Facebook’s first decade for Campaign magazine

 

Lesson two: Use what you’ve got

What we did here, in the space of about 20 minutes, was research some key facts on the platform, print out some imagery to create the visual timeline and then strap an iPhone to a ruler with an elastic band. Using a bucket and some books to create a sort of crane above an A3 piece of paper, our studio was complete.

vine-creation

Each time we moved an image, we’d capture it on the Vine camera, slowly moving through each phase to create the video.

It was silly, it was a bit clumsy and it was very crafty-looking. But it worked – reaching new users on Vine’s platform and lifting an otherwise text-heavy analysis of Facebook’s first decade online.

The best news is it was fast, repeatable and lots of fun. You could even use a sprint format and time-box the production to make it more challenging, more fun and more efficient.

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