The Artist Explains: March To May - 'Hylas'
March To May talks to us about all things behind the scenes in the making of their music video for ‘Hylas’, the first single taken from their upcoming album, ‘What I Was and More’.
Where was the video for ‘Hylas’ filmed?
The outdoor scenes for Hylas were filmed on Whidbey Island in Washington State. There's a gorgeous area called Ebey's Landing where the forest gives way to bluffs that drop down to the beach, which gave us a lot of striking and different-feeling settings to work with. The indoor shots were filmed at the Little White House, a photography studio in Seattle. We found it on a list of event spaces and fell in love — it had so many unique touches, and fit the beautiful and kind of eerie feeling we were going for perfectly.
How does the video connect with the song?
We had two themes we wanted to touch on in the video. Obviously, the lyrics themselves deal with sabotage and betrayal, but we also wanted to leave it a little ambiguous as to whether the speaker is real or a voice inside your head — one of the insidious, warped internal voices that takes on life of its own and chips away at your sense of self. We liked the idea of having me stalk Darren for most of the video, but keeping our direct engagement to a bare minimum — he only looks straight at me once, towards the end.
Do you have any behind the scenes stories you can share with us?
Haha, do we ever. The turnaround time for the video was very short — once we decided we were going to do a video for the song, we had about two weeks to come up with the concept, find our locations, and completely finish shooting it in order to stick to our release timeline for the song. Quarantine rules around COVID-19 were also just starting to ease up in our area, so we had to keep the people involved limited to just the two of us, our videographer, and one friend who came along to help out. On top of all that, a rare-for-the-area thunder and lightning storm passed through on the morning we shot the outdoor segments, so we were dealing with a severe advisory as well! It was definitely an experience.
Could you tell us about the ideas/ themes/ imagery used?
The song is loosely based upon John William Waterhouse’s painting “Hylas and the Nymphs,” so we wanted the video to be full of things that were beautiful but just a little bit off, a little bit disturbing. We also wanted a very desaturated color palette — almost colorless, except for Beth and the landscape — to echo the feeling of things being entrancing but also a little off-kilter.
Is there a message the video is trying to convey?
The video is beautiful, haunting, and a little macabre — but it also relies largely on the power of suggestion. Whether it’s someone else’s voice or the voice inside your head, words are just words. They can be powerful and destructive, certainly, but they can’t touch you.
Interview by Karla Harris
