Fans of Aussie singer Mallrat (born Grace Shaw) are in for a perfect Halloween treat. Packed with a Memphis rap sample of Zirk's "Born2 Lose" against broken beats and a buoyant base, the artist's latest track, "Hocus Pocus," is haunting. In it, she sings, "When I'm in your atmosphere, I fall under your spell," pointing to a love trick before adding, "Just like a rubber band, I feel my heart expand," reveling in the sweetness of love.
“I fell over and fractured my arm dancing to this demo on a walk home," Mallrat says of the track. "I couldn’t help but be excited! I had to wear a cast and sling. When I was writing the pre-chorus section of this song I was thinking of the sharp inhale breaths as lyrics that needed their own moment, kind of like a punchline. A lot of the time in pop music, breaths are edited out and turned down, but they felt important here to me.”
Below, the video's director Tom Carroll PAPER how he captured all that atmosphere and breath and transformed it into dreamy, cosmic visuals.
How did the idea for this video come together?
Lots of daydreaming with the audio on repeat. Grace handed me the reins. From the start, I knew it would rely heavily on the green screen and VFX, my favorite space to create in. I wanted to explore and design ambitious concepts I could bring to life with VFX, striking and enchanting visuals that would capture Mallrat in a unique light, embodying a surreal and dreamlike fantasy.
Can you tell us about some of the themes in this video and what they mean?
I didn’t feel bound to any specific meanings during pre-production. I guess you could say my treatment had a touch of hocus pocus!
How many animals star in this video?
Roughly 61 animals. Horses, baby lambs, goats and swans.
What was the inspiration behind the video?
Listening to "Hocus Pocus" 900 times, daydreaming, and Pinterest. I found two clips that we especially obsessed over during pre-production. The first is this TikTok of a woman in a red dress operating an excavator and rotating the cabin 360 degrees with the camera attached to the excavator's arm. The other was a clip of these sheep in Mongolia that got stuck walking for days on end in a tight circle formation, captured on CCTV. I coined the scene, lamb hysteria. I had to recreate these visuals for Mallrat! Very powerful auras. Very Hocus Pocus. [I wanted to] take inspiration and chaotically refuel it with the ambition to recreate it in a 3D space, go big have fun with the ideas, fix it in post. (I do all the VFX).
I loved working with the white 3D horse from the "Ray of Light" visualizer, and I wanted to expand on this for the "Hocus Pocus" music video. The ability to compose unique and creative shots with such a realistic 3D model was very exciting. Figuring out a way to make Grace ride the horse, well that’s another story. The Kanye West "Bound 2" music video was a bit of an influence and I had to buy a pommel horse off Facebook marketplace. Grace also had a stunning mood board originally pieced together for the "Ray of Light" music video. So, there’s some of that influence in here too. I would say this is what kicked off the initial concept and idea progress. Baby lambs, moths and lights, a woman climbing a transmission tower and many more moments made their way into this. Also a pink Mack cement truck that Grace shared on her IG story. I ate that one up.
What was a moment during filming that you did not prepare for or did not go as planned?
Grace climbing the transmission tower! That was a tough one, though it was much simpler than I had planned thanks to the Gaffer and DP for a quick solution. We lay the wooden ladder flat on the ground propped up with a few apple boxes, enabling us to shoot directly at the green screen while still entertaining the concept that Grace was climbing upwards. I also wasn’t sure if it would come across well in post, but rotoscoping out Grace to remove the ladder and placing her on the transmission tower turned out to be very effective. Stoked that this scene came together so well!
Anything else we should know?
Shout out to the landscape and mower crew that were so kind and accommodating of our filming at the grassy field location.
Photography: Casey Garnsey
