Who:Casey Lambert
Where: Housing Works Bookstore Café, SoHo, NYC
What: Evolution & Death of Vine; Creative Process; What Now
Occupation: Artist, Filmmaker, & Ex-Vine Artist

A couple months after we chatted with Casey for this interview, Vine shut down! We recently caught up with him to get his POV on the shutdown, and what he's up to in a post-Vine world.

Q: How has the shutdown of Vine affected you and your artistic work?
I took a little break from social media that really helped me figure out hat was important to me and what to prioritize. I'll still keep making stuff no matter what platform.

Q: Did you know it was going to happen, or was it a surprise?
I was notified by the curatorial team a few months beforehand...I had also just visited the office in the Twitter building maybe about 2 months prior to the announcement and I could tell something was up.

Q: Where are you focusing your content creation efforts now that Vine is no longer?
You can find me now mostly doing stuff on Instagram/twitter (@lucky_lambert) and Snapchat (@caseylbert)

Q: Anything else to say on the subject?
It's disappointing to hear that something that had become quite personal to me was coming to an end- it was my first real avenue to making commercial content. But, platforms come and go, and in an ever-changing digital world we can expect others to rise and fall as well. I'm grateful for the experiences and opportunities I had with Vine and am excited for new ones to tackle in the future.

Original Interview from August, 2016:

Casey Lambert, talented videographer and hilarious human, gave us a peek into his world. The Vine artist, Snapchat lover and Brooklynite shared about his humble beginnings, creative process and POV on the Vine community.

Q: Do you consider yourself an Artist/Filmmaker first, then Viner? Or vice versa?
I’d like to think of myself as an Artist first. I grew up creating constantly and I studied Drawing, Painting and Design in college. Vine is simply another avenue to express myself, and I still think of it that way, even if a sponsored one pops in their every once and while.

Q: When did you create your first vine and what inspired you to do so?
My first Vine was in September of 2014. A good friend of mine Meg Doherty (aka @hazelst) was bartending with me at the time and was part of the first wave Vine/influencer crowd. She knew that I had an interest in film/production and after a bit of dogging, I obliged her! She and @SimplySylvio showed me the ropes and who to follow so my feed wouldn’t stink over a sassy set of cocktails one night, and the rest, I suppose, is history.

Q: How has the platform evolved since you first started using it?
When I first started using Vine, the upload feature was a brand new thing, which was a huge deal that I didn’t really digest because I hadn’t experienced the platform without it. A lot of my initial stop motion projects benefitted greatly from that. Later on, Vine released the music plugin and that was another huge landmark for me. Music is really heavily integrated into the content I make and it feels so good to have a lower concentration of “What is this song?” comments.

Q: Have you changed your Vine style throughout the years?
A lot of my stuff originally was a little more experimental, but ultimately it has evolved as I have over time. That being said, my profile description has never really varied much from what it is now: Artist, Animator, Fanboy, Witch.

Q: Can you share about your creative process for producing Vines? How does it all come together?
It depends on the intent. Sometimes when I’m in a certain mood I will just turn the camera on, stand in front of it and see what happens, but most of the time I like to scribble a few fun ideas down and make simple storyboards for myself to get started.

Q: Do you ever have creative blocks? How do you move through those moments?
All the time. That’s one of those things that is hard to avoid in a creative profession. When I do feel that way it's usually just frustration with not being able to plan or resolve something right then and there, but a really important point about making art is to step back from the canvas every once and a while to see where you are and decide where to go before continuing. Forcing it can be just a bad as having no idea at all. I give myself a day or two to mow it over and then I come back to it when I have a clearer picture, which I usually derive from little scribbles in notebooks and notes on my phone that I take as I go about my daily life.

Q: Are you active on other social platforms, or is Vine your main focus?
Snap. Chat. Snapchat. I absolutely love this medium. I love being able to see little glimpses of my friends lives in real time, and the creative possibilities, with all of the stickers, face tracking and drawing tools, are near limitless.

Q: We spoke about how tight knit the Vine community is. In your opinion, what set's the community apart from other social media communities like snapchat or YouTube?
Vine is a really interesting platform because it was one of the first to incorporate private messaging along with the medium. It’s so easy to connect with people that you think are funny or talented, and it was initially really surprising to me how many people with huge follower counts that I was a fan of would actually respond! It’s just more intimate than a comments section. Also, the format of Vine has always been a unique medium; it’s amazing to see the amount of feeling or intent that can come out of six seconds, or how an image can become more powerful because of a seamless loop.

Q: What role do you think Vine plays in today's social media driven world?
It’s simply another avenue for creation. There are so many apps out there, but I think Vine is unique in that it launched a lot of people into creative success in a really short period of time.

Q: Can you tell us more about creating Vine content for brands? There are a ton of brand collaborations happening on YouTube, Instagram and even Snapchat. Are brands working Viners just as much?
Totally! This has been a thing for quite a while. My first sponsored post series was a little over a year ago, but I have Internet buddies who have been doing it professionally for way longer.

Q: Have you ever produced Vine content for a brand? What was the collaboration about?
I produced some commercial plugs for a *ahem* riveting LogoTV series called “Food to Get You Laid”, haha. I worked with them on a ten piece animation series that I used stop motion and hand drawn frame animation to make cute, saucy date scenes and talking plates of food. I got to animate two boys making out, so I’m extra grateful for that. Last week I also posted a new sponsored Vine for Mozilla Firefox! It's real cute.

Q: What are your long-term goals for your Vine account?
Ultimately, I want to keep it the way I use it now: as an avenue of self-expression and a kind of video diary. I guess if there were any goal, it would be to reach as wide of an audience as possible. I’d like to think of it as my time capsule for later on in life, for people to check out when I’m mega famous.

Q: Who do you think are some of the most up and coming Viners to watch today?
I absolutely adore Mackenzie Becket and MJ Riggins. They both have hilarious individual accounts and now they are making comedy content on YouTube as “Bone Thieves”. They are batshit crazy and I wanna party with them. In a different vein, there’s an electronic musician named @MysteryMansion that makes incredible loops that I love; he has great stuff and collaborates with visual artists to create this really cool, shoegaze-y kind of 16-bit aesthetic that I really love. He’s super talented and severely under-followed. I’ve also gotta pay homage to my boy Simply Sylvio. I got the chance to work in the art department on his feature film and am super excited to see it peek its way onto his page and the rest of the Internet!

Coffee with Collaborators is an interview series featuring the incredibly talented, creative voices in our community. Interested in having coffee? Email us.