Instagram: a generation of photographers, Snapchat: a generation of directors and video editors.
How Snapchat allows its users to create cinematic stories.
We live in a visually reliant world. From subliminal messaging to product placements, our species is has for the most part, relied predominantly on our visual senses to communicate.
From caveman paintings, to Hieroglyphics; where written characters closely resembled the subject it wanted to address. The world of social media has quickly evolved into a image reliant environment.
Looking at Snapchat’s rise in popularity, it is slowly generating heat around platform loyalty (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter). It seems almost reminiscent of a point in history when the Cinema (the moving image) became mainstream in a world that was used to looking at paintings and photographs.
When cinema came to be, people started experimenting with the medium in all sorts of way. Some would alter the sequence of negatives to make transition cuts. Some would rewind the films to create an illusion of time manipulation. Cinema was a new playing field in which people could experiment and make their own stories. It is because of this experimenting that we now have Montage editing, Smash cuts, Animations, and so on.
It is undeniable that in 2017, the best way to consume information is in video format. It is faster, more engaging, and contains the capacity to pack in more information (with a combination of text, audio, and imagery).
Being a video editor, one must always consider the best way to convey a message. Whether it’s an emotional tone, a happy tone, a funny tone. Any sort of reaction requires some sort of combination of appropriate music, color tone, framing, and other stylistic choices.
You could technically film and edit a movie on Snapchat. Think about it this way:
A movie has scenes, and scenes have cuts. Snapchat records videos up to 10 seconds (or less if desired). Constantly adding more snaps will make the videos play one after the other almost like a timeline of shots (making it a scene)
Next, one could add text. The additional feature within this is that you can attach texts to a specific spot in the video, and it will track the position. This can give off the illusion of floating texts just like opening credits in movies.
Snapchat also allows its users to engage with their artistic side, by letting them draw on their content.
Fast forward, rewind, and slow motion. These features on Snapchat are also widely used in professional videos. To communicate the passing of time, or to really highlight a particular moment, a good video editor can use these features to emphasize these experiences.
In a nutshell, Snapchat is enabling us to become communicate more effectively. With video editing tools found within the features of Snapchat, we learn to communicate in a large variety of ways that other platforms cannot.
You can be a vlogger, a video host, be an online personality, a video artist, and so much more with Snapchat. Snapchat provides us with the tools to communicate in our own unique ways that are easily understood.
If Instagram got us interested in photography, Snapchat is getting people interested in telling visual stories.
