Find endless writing inspiration through Vimeo channels

Well, I’m in a relatively unique position as a fiction writer who also works full-time as a copywriter. What’s unique is that I’m a copywriter for a design company. What’s even more unique is that we’re a design company that also has a significant e-learning arm, wing or tenticle, whatever you want to call it.
I’ve found that this exposure to various media and alternative ways of approaching projects has helped my writing no end. And recently, I fell in love with Vimeo channels.

Introducing Vimeo

I’m inspired by good storytelling, whether it’s a piece of writing, music or film. Even when people inspire us, often it’s their story – their background and approach to life – that gets our juices flowing, so to speak.

Vimeo is packed with wonderful storytelling and there are some fantastic videos on there that can really get you thinking about your writing. If you’ve only ever watched videos online via YouTube, you need to check out Vimeo. The key word here is respectful:

Vimeo is a community of respectful people who enjoy sharing, collaborating on, and watching videos made by people just like you.

Vimeo for me is a hotbed of creative talent that provides no end of inspiration for writers. Whether it’s footage from a spoken word night or a short fillm or animation, it’s ripe with creativity and does away with all the dross you get on other video sites.

The best place to start is searching for inspiration is through Vimeo channels – collections of videos brought together, usually under one theme.

Vimeo Channels are a simple and beautiful way to showcase videos. Create a Channel to give your viewers a slick destination to watch your videos, or other videos you find on Vimeo. Other people can subscribe to your Channel and the videos you add will show up in their inbox.

Though I’ll give you a few recommendations below, I highly recommend you spend half an hour searching for subjects and genres that interest you. You’ll have lots of fun.

Recommended Vimeo channels

Here are five of my favourite channels to get you started, but there are so many it’s much more fun to set some time apart and get lost in the creativity of it all. Of course, I also have my own Vimeo channel, where I post videos that appear right here on Write for Your Life.

Some recommendations

Everything Animated – ‘A channel for the admirers of any kind of animation’

Staff Picks – ‘We are the Staff. These are the videos we like the bestest. Check em out!’

01SHORTFILM – ‘Only the best, international, award-winning, CINEMATIC shortfilms’

Five vignettes – ‘A variety of the ‘5 Vignettes’ videos by the users of Vimeo. 5 short, 5 second clips — no music’

Under the influence – ‘Aurally and visually stimulating videos that will pleasure your mind’s mind.’

Go be inspired

So that’s it really. Just a quickie to point you in the direction of some inspiring work that might help you break some writer’s block or set you off on a brand new writerly path.

Please feel free to head off, find something great then come back and tell us about it. In fact, I’m more than happy to add to the list of channels above and extend this page to make it a more lengthy resource.

Oh, I almost forgot. The video at the top of this post was one of the first things I saw on Vimeo and thought, ‘Wow, there’s some fantastic storytelling on here.’ It’s part three of a series of music videos for the artist, Hauschka. It’s beautiful. I love it.  Make sure you check out the other parts too.