We all love a bit of air guitar. The moment that invisible axe is slung around your neck there is no imaginary stadium audience that can’t be whipped up into a frenzy. In that spirit, Melbourne indie rockers The Raffaellas have a new music video for Control (Had It, Lost it).
Are you ready to show off your air guitar skills? The Raffaellas are in their moving new video for Control (Had it, Lost it).
This is the second single from their recently released sophomore EP Dreams Out of Reach produced by Holy Holy’s Oscar Dawson. This EP is a personal one for the band as it explores the themes of dreaming and growing older – something we can all relate to.
The Raffaellas first stepped into the limelight in 2012 with their debut self-titled EP and since then their success has grown. They’ve performed with the likes of Jinja Safari and Neighbourhood Youth. Talking to the band about the clip they had a few ideas in mind for the shoot. When they met with Max and Elle from WE ARE MOON HOUSE productions they put those thoughts into process and came up with a unique idea.
“We were aiming for a fairly straightforward live clip initially but Max and Elle came up with the idea of trying to do so without instruments,” they said. “[We were] working with [Max and Elle’s] friend Oli Sansom who is a seriously gifted videographer/photographer, Max and Elle also proposed to do the video in a kind of stop-motion way. We think it worked really well.”
The video is simply that, just the four boys sitting in a room looking like it’s been transported straight from the 50’s with scattered vintage paraphernalia such as trunks, sporting equipment like tennis racquets and cricket bats and tattered couches. They pretend to play their instruments, wearing plain clothing and looking expressionless.
With this video it seems simplicity is key. Watching it you’ll get drawn into the four guys playing invisible instruments and the hypnotising stop motion jerking their bodies around. The song focuses on obsession and being consumed by something or someone, so they wanted the video to reflect the song’s meaning.
“We kept Pat (who sings) as someone kind of separate and isolated from within the video; a lot of the action goes on around him,” they said. “We didn’t really want to go down the path of acting things out, or trying to re-create scenes from the song.” The thing about shooting a video in stop motion is in real time everyone has to act in slow motion to capture the stop motion effect. So for the band it was a strange feeling performing at half speed. “It is a really odd thing to try to walk around, and sing, and play an instrument in slow-mo, especially if the instrument isn’t even there.”
To launch their EP, The Raffaella’s will be performing at The Workers Club in Fitzroy on March 11.
