Molly SimpsonMedia StudiesLope Serrano

The past few days, I have been researching more into the original video of Two Door Cinema Clubs What You Know video. Although I am not usually drawn to this type of music genre, Two Door are a great, successful band, and after hearing the song continuous times over the past few weeks due to creating the storyboard etc., it was time to step it up and research what I am potentially trying to recreate.I firstly started off by watching the video again on YouTube, and I was blown away by how many views both the song and video had.

The video is very different and unique, or at least I thought it was. After having a lesson with my teachers about how no music video is original; all ideas came from or were inspired from somewhere, I was amazed. This meant the video I was attempting to recreate slightly differently, their idea had come from elsewhere. This was very interesting to hear that all video directors are inspired from other elements of the media such as adverts, other music videos and films etc. After finding out this valuable information, I decided to take my research further.

Within the information box of the music video published on YouTube, it tells viewers information on when the single was released, what album it came from, and who directed the video. As you can see from the above image, the video was directed by Lope Serrano who works for a production company called CANADA. The company is based in Barcelona, Spain, and has been producing and directing music videos and commercials since 2008. I began to think that working with such a popular band must have been such a privilidge and achievement.

I decided to search Lope Serrano into their website, and I managed to come across a variety of commercials and videos he had either directed or co-directed.

I watched a couple of his creative videos, including the music video Brillar which was very interesting, a commercial called Inimitables and also the music video for Invisible Light by the Scissor Sisters. All of these videos have different ideas to them, which were very intriguing and very creative. So far, Lopes work has drawn me in and wanting to know more about the director.

After researching into his previous work, I decided to take it to the next step. After finding information about the company, although it was a bit of a long shot, I decided to try and get through to Lope Serrano using email.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find his email on the website, so I emailed to executive producer of the company, Oscar Romagosa. If I was going to get through to anybody, it was going to be him.

I emailed Oscar in order to try and get through to Lope. I told him my name, what my intentions were and if it was possible to be directed to him. I also sent him the link to my music video to the song, and see if he would give me feedback on it.

Amazingly, I received a response. Oscar had kindly forwarded my email to Lope himself so he had it directly. This was his response:

I was so overwhelmed by this. Someone who had created a professional, creative and famous video had agreed to help me with some answers to his idea behind the video. He politely asked if I just wanted a brief overview or specific questions. Of course, I had come up with specific questions in order to get as much detail as I possibly could for my research.

I sent Lope a lengthy response back with the questions I would have liked him to have answered. I mainly asked about his ideas behind the video, as that was my main intention, however I also asked about how he got into his job and if he ever has experienced with any other music genre other than indie/electronic/pop (as I had seen he had directed on CANADAs website. Later that evening, I had my response.

I could not believe my luck. Lope had responded to my email with more detail than I could imagine. In the email, he explained each document he had sent me. I feel fully privileged to have communicated with such a unique and creative director, who took the time out of his busy schedule (I can only imagine) to speak to a student. The folder, called TDCC for Molly contained information only a media student doing there a levels could only wish for. The first document contained the treatment and pitch they had created for the image of the track, a great piece to not only help me with my coursework, but for also my teachers to look at and potentially use with their future classes to explain the process of a music video. The second document, once the job was given a green light, was a more detailed idea of his art directionand dance cast within the video. Next was a video of the song and a video with it, the idea for his video laid out with wooden figures. He mentioned to me that this is not usually the way the usually do this, however due to the video needing a lot of camera angles; it was the most effective way. Lastly contained a folder of inspiration references he had used to illustrate his ideas.

To sum up, my research into the music video was successful. I feel very privileged and grateful to have been in contact with Lope to discuss his ideas and view on his video. It has helped me expand my research effectively and I cannot thank him enough for allowing me to see this and share it onto my blog. I aim to look through his videos and use some to support my own work.