My Top Five Videos, that is. She’s not on my Top Five Candidates list. That doesn’t mean she won’t be; I just haven’t composed that one yet.
But in just two weeks of boffo box-office, she has muscled her way to No. 3 among my most-watched video clips on YouTube. Well, she didn’t do it herself. Some credit goes to the star of the clip — the woman who heckled her at the College Democrats meeting in Columbia — and to her cinematographer, moi.
The title ("Hillary’s Heckler") probably helped. Alliteration is a powerful thing. Also boosting it was the fact that there was a CNN clip of the same incident. Still, that one — shot with a better camera and from a somewhat more advantageous vantage point — only got 2,232 hits, while mine had received 5,639.
How could that happen? Well, I’m going to credit the rough style of mine. First, I used the Steven Spielberg/"Saving Private Ryan" hand-held-no-steadicam style, rather than the stodgy, omniscient-viewer, fixed-position technique of the network. This really puts you in the action.
It’s shot from a combatants’ viewpoint. This is what a rapt young Democrat, fascinated by everything Mrs. Clinton had to say, would have seen and heard. The camera stays on Hillary, then there are murmurs and cries of "No!" and you don’t know what’s happening at first. Is the crowd turning against Hillary? Do they not like what she’s saying? But wait! The camera swings in the direction of the sounds, and here’s this nutty lady yelling at her, and (unlike in the CNN clip) you can hear what she’s saying — not that it makes sense, but you can’t have everything.
The jostling, the confusion, the lack of explanation of what just happened, Hillary’s smooth slide back into her speech — all add to a dynamic viewing experience.
That’s my interpretation, anyway.
Whatever the explanation, no video of mine has ever topped 5,000 in less than two weeks. And it makes poor Joe Biden — whose frenetic Rotary performance topped the chart for a time — even more of a footnote. Show biz is hell.
Here’s the list as it stands now:
- "The Alpha and Beta of Thomas Ravenel" — 10 months old, still at the top, with 6,800 views. And to think that for the first few months, it had trailed Grady Patterson’s classic "He Makes Up Stuff," which has now falled to number 7, behind Biden.
- "Nazi Presidential Candidate Defends Confederate Flag" — 3 months old, with 6,487, this may have been the fastest-riser before Hillary. It rose quickly to No. 1 right after it was posted, but fell after the Ravenel scandal broke.
- "Hillary’s Heckler," as mentioned above, with 5,639.
- "Who Resurrected the Electric Car?" — 4 months old, still probably my masterpiece in terms of sheer artistry (the YouTube critics give it 5 stars), with my first effective use of the voiceover technique. 5,440 views.
- "Nazis Defend Confederate Flag II." My shameless exploitative sequel, shot and released the same day as the first hit, a la LOTR. 4,147 views.
So we see what sells, don’t we? Cars, cocaine, controversy and Nazis. At least I haven’t stooped to luring y’all in with sex. But that’s just because Ségolène Royal‘s agent has been completely unreasonable.
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