Claudillea's first love becomes a house she burns down in 16mm (interview)

A vulnerable breakup song needed visuals that stay personal for every viewer, told through metaphor and symbolism rather than a literal story.

First love is a house — so the video literally burns it down, then rebirths the singer as a goddess rising from water in 16mm grain.

Shot on 16mm: heavy, deliberate static compositions early to feel trapped, then the stock's grain and overexposure carrying the disorienting confrontation, the burning and the otherworldly rebirth; the director ran concept, costumes and art direction by Claudillea throughout.

No measured results appear in the material. (Self-reported in the interview:) the director says the metaphor-first approach lets each viewer make the story theirs, turning the video into a reminder of the strength it takes to choose yourself.

In an April 2025 Curation Hour Q&A, director Vittoria Rizzardi Peñalosa walks through the video she made for Claudillea's song 'Hope You're Happy', about escaping the grip of old patterns tied to a first love. She says the artist sent her four unreleased songs, asked her to pick a favourite and then gave her complete freedom on the interpretation — with every development, from concept to costumes and art direction, run by Claudillea.

The central metaphor, she describes: a relationship feels like a home, a place that is safe but where vulnerabilities live, so the only way forward is to burn that home to the ground. The video ends with a goddess-like creature — still Claudillea but otherworldly — a deliberately open symbol of the guiding voice, inner child or intuition that pulls you forward at your lowest. Fire and water, her recurring opposites — danger and safety, endings and beginnings — structure the journey.

She recalls choosing 16mm for its tactile, breathing quality: early sections use heavy, static compositions to feel trapped in a world of the protagonist's making, while the stock's organic imperfections — grain, overexposure — drive the chaotic sequences where she confronts her ghosts. The medium, she says, was not a stylistic garnish but shaped the video's entire emotional texture.

One metaphor carries everything: 'first love as a house' is legible in a single image, so the video never has to explain the psychology it is dramatising.

The film stock is a narrative instrument — static frames for entrapment, grain and overexposure for chaos — aligning texture with the emotional arc.

An open-ended ending (a goddess who may be intuition, inner child or higher self) invites each viewer to finish the story personally instead of prescribing a message.

Abstraction buys universality: casting a relationship as a house lets every viewer burn their own, and a film stock's grain can do emotional work a script cannot.

No distribution, view or festival figures appear in the material; the Q&A is part of Curation Hour's director-interview features on music-video craft.