Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Emmanuel Macron have embarked on the scripting of their campaigns for the presidential election, with docu-fiction broadcast on Youtube and platforms. Emmanuel Macron has also chosen to complete his letter to the French for the announcement of his candidacy with a video, which presented itself as the first episode of a web-series entitled “The Candidate”. A weekly format, with a new number posted every Friday around 6 p.m.: we follow Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace, in his campaign trips and, distinctively, he is accompanied by a videographer who asks him questions. With, in addition, all the codes of the good old Netflix series: music, tight shots, image that moves a little to create an impression of closeness with the candidate.
“With this new political communication medium, there are several objectives, explains Gaspard Gantzer. The first is certainly to ride the wave of series success on all the platforms we know: people love this type of storytelling, the dream it gives. The second is to give him, through narration, the attractions of modernity, a bit like he did with McFly and Carlito, the two youtubers. The third objective is to occupy the field at a time in the campaign when not much is happening. Finally, the fourth objective is to make himself sympathetic because he knows that some criticize him for his arrogance and his distance.
Emmanuel Macron is not innovative: Jean-Luc Mélenchon is the first to have created his web-series, already in November 2011. The Front de Gauche candidate was filmed until the first round of the election in May 2012, and this is not invented, his series was called… “En Marche”. For this campaign, Jean-Luc Mélenchon has therefore chosen to reconnect with this communication medium, and has launched a web series, “Our steps open the way”, broadcast since August 1st. Thus, for example, in number 12, posted on March 4, the rebellious candidate discusses with teenagers in the streets of Digne-les-Bains.
The two web-series of the two candidates are quite different in the staging: the first constantly addresses the camera, answers questions, in short formats of ten minutes maximum. The second rarely does, and we practically only see the backstage of his campaign. The format is also longer: about thirty minutes.
How to interpret these choices? “Emmanuel Macron assumes more the fact that the series is centered on him, explains Gaspard Gantzer. He assumes more of his presidential function, his Jupiterian and vertical posture. Jean-Luc Mélenchon has two other objectives: to show that he is part of a collective, that he has a team around him and that he has a good relationship with people. Because we remember that a few years ago he had created controversy by pronouncing this sentence “The Republic is me!” which had made him unsympathetic. So he’s trying to catch up.”
Emmanuel Macron has chosen an external service provider to produce his web series, while Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s internal teams are filming it. “Jean-Luc Mélenchon chose simplicity and efficiency, with collaborators to produce the web-series, continues Gaspard Gantzer. Emmanuel Macron, he wanted to rely on an outside director who gives the impression that it is a journalist who asks the questions. But that also raises other questions, since in this web-series we see images of the Elysée and Emmanuel Macron and his entourage thus maintain the confusion between the candidate and the president, which could pose problems from the point of view of the election campaign.” The number of views of these web-series is, in any case, far from being confidential: obviously, with the start of the campaign, it takes off, and exceeds 100,000 views on average. Emmanuel Macron beat the scores with more than 300,000 views for his first episode.
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