Check out our exclusive behind the scenes gallery from the video shoot of Soak!
Image: Mitch Lowe.
Brisbane pop-punk quartet Waxflower recently unveiled the visual for their latest single Soak, directed by Giles Higginson and Nick Hargans. To celebrate the release, the band are taking MILKY behind the scenes of the video shoot, and we're bringing you along!
The music video for Soak was our most ambitious to date. Like all of our previous videos, this one was led by our guitarist, Nick Hargans. He’s carved a name for himself within music & videography throughout Australia, and he’s an outstanding asset to the band.
Additionally, Giles Higginson came onboard to co-direct. Giles is Tristan’s brother and has been a “fifth-member” of the band for a few years now - contributing to photo, video, creative & branding sporadically. If we’re putting out something cool - you can bet Giles has played a part in it.
The following are film photos depicting the 3 days we spent shooting Soak. All photos by Giles Higginson.
The opening scene of Soak depicts Tristan strapped to a chair, struggling to break free. He’s restrained by burly looking thugs (in reality, we roped in some lovely pals to help out). We wanted to be quite literal here, it represents the internal struggle Tristan discusses throughout the song. This shot is a bit of a “calm before the storm” moment before shooting. Tristan had bruises for a week or so afterwards.
I’m so stoked that Jordan wrote & sung the second verse of this track. I’ve been a fan of his voice for years, so it was awesome to have it showcased on a Waxflower track - really making it a collaborative effort between him & Tristan for the song. Nick built this incredible “rainmaker” for Jordan’s verse and we shot it on a quiet street behind his house.
Singing in the rain
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The morning after the “rain” shoot, we got up around 4:00am and headed out to a dam in North Brisbane to shoot this scene. The idea was to showcase various versions of Tristan’s “reality” and this one has him waking up, in the middle of a lake. Perhaps a fear we’ve all had? We were just glad the blowup mattress floated.
Although initially apprehensive, Tristan was a good sport about being pushed out into the middle of the dam. At first we had tied a rope to the mattress, but it was pretty visible in the drone shot, so we cut the cord and he had to paddle himself back to safety afterwards. The drone only had 20 minutes of battery, so we had to push to get this shot, and Nick nearly dumped it in the lake as it hit zero battery.
The “performance” shots of the music video were shot in the evening. The venue was upstairs at a motorcycle bar / cafe and there were tonnes of old bikes lying around. It was, however, stinking hot. Performance shots usually take a lot out of you physically.
As we only had a few hours, it was exaggerated even more, with us running through take after take without much of a break to get the shots we needed.
I love how Nick lit this shot. It ties everything together really nicely and references back to the opening shot, as well as the “red light” press shots we took for the single release.
Watching on with intent. Always heaps of fun to see the concepts we’ve discussed, be brought to life by Nick, Giles & the whole team!
Soak is out now! Watch the visual below.
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