January 16, 2020
After 5 years of back and forth boomerangs, Instagram has decided to take things to the next level, adding not one, not two but three new features for the ever-popular platform! According to Instagram itself, they are ‘creative twists that’ll make you say yaaassssss’. And will also help you to express yourself without the current limitations in place. “Your Instagram camera gives you ways to express yourself and easily share what you’re doing, thinking or feeling with your friends. Boomerang is one of the most beloved camera formats and we’re excited to expand the creative ways that you can use Boomerang to turn everyday moments into something fun and unexpected.”
So, what exactly are these new mythical modes and how do they work?
Here’s a quick rundown:
SloMo – Pretty much what you would expect… your boomerang, but slooowwwed down.
Echo – Giving your video a double vision, psychedelic type effect which adds a motion blur to any moving part of the video.
Duo – Let’s you rewind the clip with a ‘glitchy, digitised’ effect and also lets you speed things up.
Further to these three new features, they’ve also added a ‘cutting’ feature, so you can choose the length of your exciting new boomerangs. To use all of the above just head to the Boomerang composer located in the Instagram stories camera, record a video and then tap the infinity symbol that appears on the screen to reveal the latest features.
You may be thinking you’ve seen something similar before or asking what’s new here? There’s a whole host of similar effects features available on rival apps such as snapchat who have offered similar features since boomerang launched five years ago. TikTok, another rival to IG provides several motion blur filters as well as pixilated transitions similar to the ‘Echo’ effect, so although IG is late to the party, they are no strangers to innovation and capturing the interest and intrigue of their users. As Snapchat popularity rises again and TikTok showing no signs of slowing down, it’s an essential addition to the platform which will cement its place as the top dog on social. At least for the time being…