Maciek Jasik
For 13 years, Manhattan photographer Meagan Cignoli worked to capture the perfect moment. But now she's also trying to make those moments move—weaving them together on Vine, Twitter's app for sharing six-second videos shot on phones. Her movies, tiny animations that unfold into absurd, diorama-like dreamscapes, became an instant hit with fans; she now has her own studio with a staff of eight, producing videos for the likes of Puma, eBay, and Lowe's.
How did you get into Vine?
I was starting to get bored with photography when Vine came out, so I began experimenting with it. I took a picture. Then I moved something and took another. Then I started placing more things on the scene, taking more pictures. I didn't know what stop-motion animation was, but I discovered it by accident! After that, I was obsessed. I couldn't sleep at night—I just kept thinking of ideas. The first or second week they were up, the videos I was doing were hitting Vine's “Popular Now” page. After a few weeks, I saw someone call my work “stop-motion,” and they called me an animator. I was like, “I'm not an animator!”
Describe how your Vines come together.
I like setting things up and making beautiful sets. I often start by thinking of a picture I'd like to take—anything I think could be pretty—then ask myself: How can I make this move? To give it the right look, I look through books of colors and choose three I feel like working with, then I choose materials—fabrics or spoons or whatever. And then I make a little video of it. It's more about exploring an aesthetic than telling a story.
Vine doesn’t have a separate audio track; how do you add sound to your videos?
Sometimes we try adding a song, but it's hard. When you're working with stop-motion, you hear all this weird noise. We worked in silence for months and months, trying not to make any noises, before we realized we could plug the microphone. You can try to do sound, but you have to play it live while shooting it. You have to break it up into like 100 different pieces, then play each at the exact time you're shooting a frame to catch that noise.
How did the ability to edit clips—A feature Vine rolled out in October 2013—change your process?
You can remove pieces, which makes it so much easier. Before, you'd work for hours on something but accidentally have your finger over the lens in one frame, and that would force you to start all over again.
I love the videos where you're crying paper tears, which roll down and soak your shirt in water.
I did about 10 selfie videos where I used my face and tried to animate over it. I couldn't get my whole body because I had to keep using my arms to tap the screen! I thought, what could I do with my face? At that time, I couldn't even see my face while I was shooting, because Vine hadn't enabled the front-facing camera yet. I would take a lighting stand and use it to boom my phone over my head while I was in the bathtub. I ruined like four shirts—but I'm really happy with the results!
