Cumbria pop punk sextet Willowside Park recently announced plans to release a new EP titled ‘Hollowed Out’. Set for release on April 8th, the EP is led by a track called ‘Fading’ capturing their infectious, upbeat energy being fused alongside thoughtful, emotive lyrics.
Having released a video earlier this month, Willowside Park has kindly provided Already Heard with an exclusive insight into the making of the video for ‘Fading’. The two day shoot saw the band annoy the neighbours and explore an abandon house.
Take a look at the clip and read on to see what vocalist Chris McQuire had to say about the shoot.
“Long before we had finished this EP, we already knew we wanted to work with Will Kirkman (ex-Above the Underground). Will’s a good friend of ours and he’s always supported/guided us whenever he could, so it was an obvious choice when deciding who we wanted to shoot ‘Fading’ with. He’s been shooting videos for bands for a while now and we were so psyched to have him along for the ride.
We shot the video over two days. On day one we headed to Will’s home town of Chester after arranging some performance spaces for us but unfortunately they fell through, so he came through with the clutch and was able to persuade a friend of his to let us film in his house at the very last minute which we’re eternally grateful for. Amazingly, Will’s mate was asleep throughout the whole filming process (we were so loud we even bothered the neighbours a little, so it’s crazy he was able to handle us making a racket downstairs!) We actually only met him a short while after we had finished filming. I can’t even remember his name to be honest, I’m just gutted we couldn’t repay him by having a massive Super Smash Brothers session afterwards! Cheers again dude, you rule haha.
The second day we shot the narrative around our area in Cumbria. The idea of the narrative was to explore past relationships (romantic and/or platonic) in a visual sense, with the abandoned house representing the past and its decaying memories attached to it. We didn’t want to create something too contrived and preferred the plot to be open for the audience to perceive their own interpretation. The abandoned house/outhouse we used was super weird to explore. Supposedly (the story goes) the owner was forcibly removed from their home many years ago and it was boarded up, meaning there’s still appliances and home furnishings present in the building just decaying slowly. It was almost like we had a set designer in to do the place over, but in actual fact the place is just like that inside and we had no idea it was there the entire time we had lived around here which is pretty crazy.
We got rained out towards the end of the shoot and we luckily had a good friend take us in and let us hang with her dogs while waiting for the weather to clear. Overall it was a cool experience and we’d just like to thank everyone who was involved. Will, for delivering a top video, his mate for letting us use his house and Jules for being our hero by putting us up when it started raining and making us endless cups of tea!”
‘Hollowed Out’ EP by Willowside Park is released on April 8th.
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