The Band Explains: Plastic Mermaids - 'Alaska' (Video)

Isle of Wight five-piece Plastic Mermaids speak to us about their music video for psych-pop single,‘Alaska’, taken from new EP, ‘Everything Is Yellow And Yellow Is My Least Favourite Colour’ out now through Cross Keys Records.

The Band Explains
Where was the video filmed?
We shot the video ourselves on the Isle of Wight, mainly in a friends sail loft and then my  (vocalist Douglas Richard) Dad’s garden.

How does the video compliment the song?
I guess there's not a lot of story to the video, I had some ideas of things I wanted to do with ice and it seemed fitting that the song was called 'Alaska' so we went for it.

Any behind the scenes stories?
We shot the whole thing on Super 8mm film which took us about a week. After waiting to get it back and paying the developing fee (not cheap), we realised the camera hadn’t been exposing properly and most of the footage was too dark to be useable. This was pretty demoralising and left us with a tricky decision on whether to just shoot it digitally or try again with film. We eventually decided the only way forward that we’d be happy with was to press on with the film and bought a different camera to shoot with. Finally, after another week of shooting followed by a very nerve-racking two week wait whilst it was processed we got our footage back and it had all exposed properly!

Tell us about the ideas/ themes/ imagery used?
We had some ideas to use stop motion as it really complimented the jitteriness of super 8, in some of these shots we stop motioned ourselves moving around but also shot a lot of scenes of ice melting, these were pretty time consuming even with a couple of heat guns aimed at it. I really enjoyed working with the ice though, the way it freezes and melts creates some amazing shapes. We did quite a few other cosmic looking shots, these included shooting through fishbowls of glitter, lots of food dye and making technicolour gunk drips out of cornflour.

What is the message the video is trying to convey?
There’s no overall message, it’s just a load of creative ideas we had and thought would be fun to make!

Interview feature by Karla Harris

Live dates:

22nd July - Deer Shed Festival, North Yorkshire

24th July - Blue Dot Festival, Jodrell Bank

29th July - Farm Festival, Somerset

31st July - Kendal Calling, Lake District

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