What Is a Video Prompt on Hinge?

A Video Prompt is a prompt on your Hinge profile that you answer with a video instead of a written answer. You record it inside the app, and Hinge's launch announcement put the length at up to 30 seconds. Done well, it shows her how you move and sound, which nothing else on the page can do.

Hinge's help page walks through it like this:

1. Tap your Photo icon at the bottom right of the screen.
2. Tap the Pencil icon.
3. Tap the box under Video Prompt. Your phone may ask for permission to record video.
4. A prompt shows at the bottom of the screen. Tap it if you want a different one.
5. Record your answer.
6. To try again, tap the X at the top right or Redo at the bottom left.
7. When you like the take, tap the purple arrow. Then tap Done on iPhone, or the back arrow on Android.

Watch it back before you keep it. The redo option is there for a reason, so use it.

Online, she has very little to go on. She cannot see your eye contact or your body language, and she cannot hear your tone. She has your photos and a few lines you wrote, and she builds a whole man out of them.

A video fills that gap in a few seconds. She sees whether you smile easily and whether you talk fast when you are nervous. She sees whether the man in the photos looks relaxed once he starts moving. When Hinge launched the feature, it said daters named mannerisms as the most interesting part of watching someone on video.

That cuts both ways. A calm, warm clip makes every photo above it easier to believe. A stiff one makes her wonder which version of you is the real one.

The best answers are not speeches. They are a moment. When Hinge launched Video Prompts, it named "Hi from me and my pet" and "I'm a 10 but" among the most popular ones. Both work for the same reason: they point the camera at something happening.

So choose the prompt that fits something you can actually film. Your dog losing its mind when you pick up the leash. The view from the trail you run on Sundays. You at the stove, explaining why your one good dish beats anything she makes.

Show her the thing instead of telling her about it. "I love cooking" is a claim. Twenty seconds of you cooking is evidence, and she gets to reach the conclusion herself.

Film it somewhere real, in daylight if you can, with your face easy to see. Hold the phone at eye level or a little above. Talk to one imagined person, not to an audience.

Use less than the full time. Start in the middle of the moment rather than with "Hey, so, a fun fact about me." Stop when the moment ends. Three or four takes is plenty. Past that you stop sounding natural and start sounding rehearsed.

Sound matters more than men expect. A clip shot in a loud car or a busy gym tells her about the room and nothing about you.

Four versions come up again and again.

The interview, where he sits dead center and lists facts about himself. The performance, where his voice drops half an octave and he plays a character. The mirror clip, shot in the bathroom, which suggests he could not find one other place or person. And the recycled clip, cut down from something filmed for another reason, which rarely fits the prompt it sits under.

None of these is a disaster on its own. Each one still gives her a reason to keep scrolling that she did not have before.

Skip it if every honest take still looks tense. An empty slot costs you nothing. A nervous clip tells her something you did not mean to say.

Skip it, too, if the rest of the page is weak. If your photos are old or your written answers are one word each, fix those first. She only watches a video after the rest of the page has earned a closer look.

And keep it inside Hinge's rules. Its help page on removed content lists Video Prompts among the things Hinge can take down, the same as photos and written prompts.

Play it back once with the sound on and once with it off. With the sound off, ask whether you look like a man who is comfortable. With it on, ask whether you would want a drink with the guy talking.

Then show it to a friend without explaining it, and ask what you come across as. If the answer is "relaxed, like you," keep it. If the answer is "a bit nervous," you just got the same read she would make in five seconds, and you got it for free.