Vidrec Thursday
Sep. 10th, 2020 06:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretMy favorite West Wing vid of all time is laurashapiro's "Circles".
The West Wing's most famous visual move is the Walk and Talk, andlaurashapiro uses the Walk and Talk to create the sensation of perpetual, circular motion throughout the vid. What is brilliant about this is the dual effects this creates and how they work against each other. On the one hand there is the sense of moving in circles, being frantic but to no apparent effect. We see in the vid's opening a sequence of Josh and Toby and CJ moving and quipping with each other, and this kind of exciting, but ultimately aimless, motion recurs at various points in the vid. But this sets up the opposite effect, which is circular motion being a harbinger of impossible rapid change. Leo and his problems with addiction, as a bit of a teaser for the main story, of Josiah Bartlet's concealed MS and the way that secret inexorably moves through the whole staff and changes their outlook on their mission in the White House. "The White House is no place for secrets," indeed.
One of the things I really picked up on when I made my own remix of this vid is the way Circles means other things for the vid besides that circular motion. The vid repeatedly picks up on the (circular) Great Seal as a visual motif, representing the obligations of the office that the characters are literally dancing around and on top of. Later in the vid, we see Toby's spaldeen ball, another representation of circle as agent of change, and it is Toby bouncing the ball against the wall that is the vid's final image.
Watch "Circles" on AO3
laurashapiro's "Circles".The West Wing's most famous visual move is the Walk and Talk, and
laurashapiro uses the Walk and Talk to create the sensation of perpetual, circular motion throughout the vid. What is brilliant about this is the dual effects this creates and how they work against each other. On the one hand there is the sense of moving in circles, being frantic but to no apparent effect. We see in the vid's opening a sequence of Josh and Toby and CJ moving and quipping with each other, and this kind of exciting, but ultimately aimless, motion recurs at various points in the vid. But this sets up the opposite effect, which is circular motion being a harbinger of impossible rapid change. Leo and his problems with addiction, as a bit of a teaser for the main story, of Josiah Bartlet's concealed MS and the way that secret inexorably moves through the whole staff and changes their outlook on their mission in the White House. "The White House is no place for secrets," indeed.One of the things I really picked up on when I made my own remix of this vid is the way Circles means other things for the vid besides that circular motion. The vid repeatedly picks up on the (circular) Great Seal as a visual motif, representing the obligations of the office that the characters are literally dancing around and on top of. Later in the vid, we see Toby's spaldeen ball, another representation of circle as agent of change, and it is Toby bouncing the ball against the wall that is the vid's final image.
Watch "Circles" on AO3
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