Credit: Claire Marie Vogel/@oclaireWhen My Chemical Romance announced their full reunion tour earlier this year, they did so in the most My Chemical Romance fashion: with a 13-minute video titled A summoning…, which was full of Easter eggs that require a post-graduate degree in MCRology to fully understand.
Now, in an new interview with Variety, the video’s director and producers break down the video’s meaning, as well as their approach to the epic clip.
Producer Audrey Ellis Fox describes the A summoning… script as “about a boy summoned by My Chemical Romance who not only has to escape his own reality, but also the many alternate universes of [their] past, finally encountering the band in present day in the empty [Los Angeles] Forum.”
“[Director] Kris [Mercado] did an incredible job putting his own spin on [it] and modernizing My Chemical Romance’s history,” Ellis Fox adds.
Mercado reveals that My Chem wanted the video to reflect “music as a visual landscape.”
“I could see, at least from a top-line perspective, how we built this story,” Mercado explains. “It was essentially a young man’s journey through the catalog of music…kind of in a visual sense.”
“We were able to pull imagery from what felt like a decade of their music history…so it becomes a cool journey through nostalgia,” the director adds. “You’re able to revisit that iconic imagery and iconic themes, but through a new lens.”
A summoning… has been viewed over 1.5 million times since its January 29 release. Producer Joanna Shaw thinks it might influence future music videos.
“It’s almost like the reinvention of the music video because what a video used to do is promote a song,” Shaw says. “I feel like this was a super-creative way to tell people, ‘We’re back, we’re going on tour.'”
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