Review: Hillary Clinton’sannouncement video is surprisinglybold, fascinating filmmakingUpdated by Todd VanDerWerff on April 12, 2015, 6:50 p.m. ET @tvoti
In her ad, Hillary Clinton positions herself as just one of the many, many people in America with big dreams.
Screenshot
Hillary Clinton's video (
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLRYsOHrkk5qcIhtq033bLQ)
announcing her run for president in 2016 is a fascinating piece of
filmmaking, and it does something I haven't seen a political
campaign ad do in quite this way.
The video attempts not to minimize Clinton's placement in her
campaign, but to portray it as a natural outgrowth of a mass,
populist movement. The story of Clinton's campaign as expressed
by this ad isn't one of an inevitable, indomitable candidate. It's one
that attempts to portray Clinton's run as an idea she had a couple of
months ago that she's been saving up for.
And if it works, it could change how these sorts of announcements
are approached for the foreseeable future.
How campaign trailers usually work
The "presidential campaign trailer" is a relatively recent
phenomenon. All you need to do to see this is to look back at
Clinton's announcement video from the 2008 campaign, which is
shockingly bad. (The camera keeps shifting back and forth, like it's
been placed on the base of a rotating fan.)
However, the basis of the campaign announcement trailer is similar
to movie trailers. The idea is to provide a tease that will get you
excited about the product being sold — in this case, the candidate.
Thus, most of these trailers suggest they are the story of the
candidate and just the candidate. Let's take a look at Rand Paul's
first two campaign videos (
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_8WUrPbi8clO6sWt_FDvuA)
to get a sense of how this often works. Both are well-done versions
of the form, and both suggest Paul is the man who will lead us out of
the darkness.
Let's start with his announcement video.
Hillary Clinton 2008 presidential announcement
"A Different Kind of Republican Leader"
It literally features lights beaming down on him from above:
(screenshot)
And when we see him, he's usually at the center of the screen,
bright red in the background to focus our attention on him. The
human eye is drawn to differences, and all of those hot reds
contrast perfectly with the cool blues at center screen. (And then,
even more center-screen than that, is his red tie.) He is, in essence,
commanding the screen. There's nowhere else to look. It's a
beautifully composed image:
It positions him as a leader of a movement, a movement that he
hopes will turn into a presidency:
(screenshot)
The second video posted to Paul's account is called "Kelley's
Words" and focuses on memories of Paul from his wife, Kelley Paul.
If the announcement video wants to position Paul as a leader of
humans, then this video aims to make us see his more human side.
Broadly speaking, these are the two types of campaign ads not
specifically focused on policy positions — the "leader" ad and the
(screenshot)
"human interest" ad.
Look at how "Kelley's Words" filters the couple through the gauzy
haze of memory:
"Kelley's Words"
And when we see Kelley Paul herself, she's speaking to us from just
off-center. Center screen — as we saw with Rand Paul above —
suggests command. Off-center suggests approachability, while still
some degree of control. (Were Kelley Paul shifted all the way to the
right or left, our brains would subconsciously perceive her as losing
control of the situation.)
(screenshot)
Unlike with the use of reds and blues above, Kelley Paul fits
comfortably in her environment. This is a very domestic,
nonconfrontational image, and when you combine the images of the
two spouses together, you see what the campaign is going for —
Rand Paul is very much a leader, but he's also somebody who might
tell some great stories at a dinner party.
(screenshot)
Even the textual interstitials of "Kelley's Words" are softer than
those in the announcement video.
The problem, as you can probably see, is that if you watch just one
ad in isolation, you get only half the portrait of Rand Paul that his
campaign wishes to sell you on. Watch just the announcement
(screenshot)
video, and you might find yourself thinking he seems a little too
commanding. Watch just "Kelley's Words," and you might find
yourself thinking Rand Paul is a walking, talking puff piece.
So what's neat about Clinton's "Getting Started" is how it attempts
to do both at the same time, and it does so by removing the
candidate herself almost entirely.
Clinton's video: A movement of people
The first things we see in "Getting Started" aren't anything we'd
associate with campaign imagery. They are, instead, a bunch of
people going about their daily lives. And that goes on for most of
the ad.
Like here's this guy doing some work or something:
Getting Started | Hillary Clinton
And this young woman has a car. (We don't know much else about
her.)
(screenshot)
Notice the framing again. All of these people are close to center but
just off of it. We're meant to be pleased that they're taking control
of their lives — everybody in the ad has some big goal they're
working toward — but also think that we could just walk up to them
and start having a conversation.
(screenshot)
Like we could with all of these people!
(Side note: the compositional weight of the vast majority of images
in the ad is to the center left, which is a great, sly visual joke that I
refuse to believe is an accident.)
(screenshot; photo illustration by Todd VanDerWerff/Vox)
Look who else is starting something. Look who else is just off-
center, so we can still approach her with our concerns and
questions:
What this accomplishes is twofold. First of all, it reaffirms that
Hillary Clinton has big, big goals, and she's going to do anything she
(screenshot)
can to accomplish them. And second, it subtly reinforces her
connection to everybody else in the video. They're all part of the
same movement, the same goal. The woman who's moving so her
daughter can go to a better school has a dream that is no better or
worse than Clinton's ambition of running for president.
Indeed, the final image we see is literally Clinton's logo made up of
all of these other people:
To a degree, Clinton can get away with this because she doesn't
need to introduce herself to the American public. If you are of voting
age and an American citizen, there is a very good chance you
already know who she is, as Jonathan Cohn points out.
(screenshot)
One advantage Hillary has: She can use her announcementvideo to set a theme and tone, rather than introduce herselfyoutube.com/watch?v=0uY7gL…9:38 PM - 12 Apr 2015 · Ann Arbor, MI, United States
18 16
Jonathan Cohn @CitizenCohn
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YouTube @YouTube
But Clinton's ad also hits at something fundamental to her 2016
message — and, indeed, to her message throughout her career.
It takes a village
Remember Clinton's book It Takes a Village (
http://www.amazon.com/Takes-Village-Tenth-
Anniversary/dp/1416540644/ref=sr_1_1?
s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1428875558&sr=1-
1&keywords=it+takes+a+village+hillary+clinton)? The book,
published while she was first lady, took its title from the old
aphorism that it takes a village to raise a child. There was, at the
time, much mockery of it in right-wing circles for being the sort of
thing a hippie might say.
And after the publication of It Takes a Village, Clinton pivoted into a
role as a senator and, eventually, secretary of state, both positions
that underlined and highlighted her leadership qualities, particularly
the latter. In her 2008 campaign, Clinton often underlined just how
much stronger she was than Barack Obama, particularly in the
infamous 3 am ad ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=aZ_z9Tpdl9A).
What's interesting about this ad, then, is that Clinton is pivoting
back to the idea of it taking a village. This isn't an ad about how
Hillary Clinton is going to run for president. It's an ad about how all
of us are going to vote for Hillary Clinton for president, should she
earn our votes. Clinton isn't the one. She's one of many, and we're all
working together to make the country run.
What's canny about this is how completely it exists within the
current Democratic Party pitch, just as Paul's ads exist within the
Republican Party's pitch. If the GOP is all about rugged individualism
and pulling oneself up by the bootstraps, then the Democrats are all
about what we can accomplish as a community of people working
together toward a common goal.
This is actually a bit of a risk. Even in 2008, both Clinton and Obama
sold themselves as individuals and leaders first, members of a
collective second. And American narrative tends to be based on the
idea of one bold person taking a stand for what's right. (We, more
than any other country, seem most infatuated with the Great Man
theory of history.) But even though Clinton's ad might seem cheesy
or goofy at first, it's actually a sophisticated break from what's
come before. Now the question is whether it will work.
Watch: Do political ads actually work?
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