They may be called the Shorty Awards, but the honors for various online video, business, entertainment, journalism and social-media stars are getting a bit longer this year, with added categories for the best 6-second videos on Twitter‘s Vine app and for the people who make them.
To get you ready to fill out the mock ballot for your pool at that big Shorty Awards watch party we just know you’re all doing, Deadline has taken a gander at all the nominated Vines, which is what they call the video posts on Vine. We also have links to the finalists for the category of best Vine creators.
At 6 seconds each, it took longer to load some of the finalist Vines than to watch them (even twice). Some have attracted hundreds of thousands of views, while others are for more refined (or, perhaps, more sharply restricted) tastes.
“Six-second savants have toiled in obscurity throughout history with no outlet for their talents,” said Greg Galant, the Shorty Awards cofounder and executive producer. “Everything changed for them last year when Vine launched.”
Vine itself, for those of you who missed it, only launched in January of 2013, and only as an iPhone app. With it, you could shoot and share your quick video creations not only on Vine but also on Twitter and Facebook. It blew up quickly, further aided by the subsequent release of a similar app for Android-based phones. The conceit is simple: create a 6-second video that can be endlessly looped. For stop-motion animators, abstract artists, one-joke wonders and other creative types with enough attention or imagination to span a Mayfly’s love life, it’s been a boon.
And now, 14 months later, it’s part of the 6th annual Shorty Awards, which will unspool, however briefly, in New York City on April 7, with sponsorship from Univision. Nearly 2 million Tweeted votes helped select nominees, as did an expert panel. Now a few dozen journalists, technologists and others collectively called The Real Time Academy are charged with picking final winners.
With 50-odd categories, the awards could threaten the Oscars in endlessness, but the show’s creators have come up with one nifty innovation: acceptance speeches can be no more than 140 characters in length, or one tweet’s worth. And winners don’t even have to actually say their speech. They can just post it on Twitter. Perhaps the Motion Picture Academy could require this of winners who want to thank “their teams.”
All that said, the reasons for a couple of these finalist Vines making the list are, to be blunt, a bit opaque. I love Logan Paul’s athletic little joke, and am more than a bit inspired by wheelchair-bound Steve Gleason’s Saint-ly fandom. Chad Jaxon Perez pulls off some amusing visual effects, and Dylan Blau’s geometric abstraction enchants. Of the others, the group effort led by Nick Spears and Tara Strong’s snuggle with Mark Hamill each suggest inside Vine jokes we normies will never quite get. The less said about P9’s hoot and holler the better.Again, it may be too inside for the rest of us to appreciate.
Now, without further adieu, here are the seven nominees for Best Vine. A quick note: We’ve changed the Vine settings so the audio doesn’t auto play (and create cacophony). You can turn it back on for a given video by hovering your mouse in the upper-left corner of each video and clicking on the icon that appears.
Best Vine Finalists:
That was a close one by Logan Paul
My Puddin’ with, @hamillhimself by Tara Strong and Mark Hamill
Steve Gleason live-tweeting with his eyes during Saturday night’s game by Team Gleason
My reflection is cooler than me by Chad Jaxon Perez
Strata paper by Dylan Blau
Woooooooul by P9 Official
Wanna Buy a Viner? by Nick Spears, KC James and Arielle Vanderberg
//platform.vine.co/static/scripts/embed.jsVineographer of the Year Finalists
Deadline has linked below to the accounts of the seven Vineographers (as they’ve been dubbed) up for a Shorty for their body of vinous videography this past year. That way you can check out their entire oeuvres. Go ahead, it won’t take long. Just remember, many of these Viners already have millions of followers, on a medium that’s just 14 months old. How many do you have?
“Stars on Vine have emerged at the speed of light,” Shorty executive producer Galant said. “It took a couple of years before anyone amassed a million followers on Twitter, and the first person to do so was the already-famous Ashton Kutcher.”
The Vineographer finalists are a diverse lot. According to their online biographies, they include the Ohio-based brothers Logan and Jake Paul; a Kuwait-based Indonesian artist, a Los Angeles social-media consultant and a Salt Lake City cook. Here they are:
Cody Johns (https://vine.co/codyjohns – 1.6 million followers)
The Cupcake Dude (https://vine.co/u/927650693618221056 – 19.2K followers)
Pinot (https://vine.co/pinot – 252.7K followers)
Logan Paul (https://vine.co/LoganPaul – 3.3 million followers)
Jake Paul (https://vine.co/JakePaul – 1.2 million followers)
Marcus Johns (https://vine.co/marcusjohns – 4.2 million followers)
Carter Reynolds (https://vine.co/Mr_Carterr – 2 million followers)
Must Read Stories
Subscribe to Deadline Breaking News Alerts and keep your inbox happy.