Do you have five seconds to spare? In our crazy-paced modern world, fragmented conversations and media occursall day long via Twitter, Facebook and whatever other social media outlets people are into (Instagram, Vine, Snap Chat ect.).
Following the same guiding principle is the YouTube channel “5secondfilms”, which recently concluded a staggering five-year run of releasing a new five-second video every day monday through friday. By my very rough calculations, that means that the talented folks behind the channel have collectively churned out well over 1000 videos.
Here is a 3-minute video put together by Cracked.com that showcases their picks for the top-25 5secondfilms:
Whats even more impressive about each video is that each film establishes the scene, characters and relationships all within the parameters of being only five seconds long. The humour is often dark and shocking (no point in being subtle when you’ve only got five seconds to get a reaction), but what I always enjoyed the most about each five second film was both the entirely random nature of clicking on the latest video not knowing what you were going to get, and the waffling production quality.
Now, it could be said that, in the same way that video killed the radio star, perhaps Vine killed 5secondfilms. Suddenly, what was once an entirely novel idea (telling a story or joke in 5 seconds) is accessible to anyone with a smartphone. I don’t know if I believe that as much as I believe that it’s hard to come up with five unique stories or jokes to write, film and edit every week… Even if they’re all going to last only five seconds long.
Breaking from their format for their finale farewell, the team produced a two-part epic (for a production team known for 5-second-films, at least…) which you can watch below:
(might be worth a quick binge-watch of EVERY FIVE SECOND FILM so you get all the references…)
BONUS: If you’re really digging the style of their videos and are now bummed that you only found out about them now that they’ve stopped making new ones, I should inform you that the crew has moved over to Uproxx, where they are producing weekly content that is longer than five seconds.
Like this sweet music video:
Hello, I'm Marc Lagace! 