Molly Simpson

Media Studies

Lope 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

Molly Simpson

Media Studies

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 codirected.

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.

Molly Simpson

Media Studies

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:

Molly Simpson

Media Studies

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.

Molly Simpson

Media Studies

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 direction
and 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.

Molly Simpson

Media Studies

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.