Canberra musician Aya Yves has just released the music video for her single Smart Girls, and it’s a triumph. Over 200 hours went into making the music video, resulting in a truly world-class visual treatment. It’s a video that elevates the song’s meaning, while capturing its essence.

I spoke with Aya about the music video, and how the idea came to fruition. There’s a lot of things that go into making such an involved video - including a lot of work off-camera - and Aya wants artists to know what to expect when they go to a music video shoot.

Ben Madden: Firstly, can you introduce yourself and your music?
Aya Yves: For sure! I’m Aya, I release music under Aya Yves and I’d say I sit in a dark electronic pop space.

You’ve just released the music video for your latest track, Smart Girls – can you tell me a bit about the concept behind the video, and how the idea came to you?
I’m a very visual person. I love beautiful imagery and visual storytelling. When I started thinking of how I could level up for the music video for Smart Girls - the first thing that popped into my head was colour. Bold use of colour makes for extremely effective visuals and can be used as a way of tying things together.

The first thing I saw was a blue room, so I fleshed out that idea. I started thinking of things that could be used to tie in the lyrics- and the first image I associated with intelligence was books. The thought of books closing in around me is a metaphor for feeling closed in by making ‘intelligent’ decisions, and me pushing the books away is a visualisation of me doing what I want. I had this idea of sitting down for a family dinner, but it being dissonant and uncomfortable. Everyone pretending to be something they’re not, kind of a ‘facing the dark parts of yourself’ vibe.

I thought of the masks and remembered seeing some geometric animal masks online. I quickly realised they were Lapa Studios, a company based in LA and reached out asking if they’d be down to collab. They said yes, sent across the templates and I got to making them straight away. They’re quite time consuming - each one takes about 5 hours so after making 11 of them myself I put a call out on my Facebook asking if any of my friends were feeling crafty!

The bed scene felt pretty self-explanatory. I wanted to do a literal interpretation of the lyrics but also again, make it slightly dissonant and uncomfortable- taking ordinary things and putting them in extraordinary situations.

How do you visualise the connection between the song and the video, and how do you think each medium elevates each other? I’m quite a visual person, so if music makes me feel somethingm I visualise what it makes me feel - the place it takes me to. I like to imagine scenes not just for music I write, but music I consume - I find it fun imagining a visual representation.

I think visual storytelling is so important and can really heighten the emotion you’re trying to convey. It helps your audience understand not only you as a musician, but you as a creative and helps solidify the space you sit in as an artist. The two absolutely go hand in hand!

The masks in the video alone took 100 hours to make – do you have a rough estimate on how long the video took overall, from conception to release?
Oh man it was a huge effort! Like you said, the masks took 100 hours, from set up to pack down we were on set for about 50 hours in total across 4 days. I spent easily 20 hours on art material planning, sourcing and creating, I scoured the internet for a few nights looking for outfits, the dancers had to choreograph and rehearse, we had a quite few production meetings/calls. The hair styling, also the catering prep for all my crew and extras - there was a lot of love and time put into this. Not to mention the vfx and the phenomenal video edit! Definitely over 200 hours in this video, potentially even close to 250 hours which is wild when you write it out.

Making a video during a pandemic isn’t easy – how did you make it work despite restrictions?
Thankfully being based in Canberra the restrictions weren’t too harsh as our cases are quite low. Unfortunately, my original video director is based in Melbourne, so we had to shuffle around the team when Melbourne went into lockdown. We were still extremely cautious when shooting and ensured everyone had masks/gloves/hand sanitiser galore and vetted all our crew members/extras before bringing them onto set. As you can see, we incorporated masks/gloves into the costumes for the extras just to really make sure we had our bases covered.

Which scene in the video are you most proud of and why?
Definitely the dinner scene, it was the most time consuming, but I think all the prep paid off! It’s so visually effective and so strong in all aspects. The team did such a phenomenal job.

Do you think music videos are as important in 2020 as they might have been in the past?
I almost think they’re more important. We live in such a fast-paced society, you really have to fight for a viewer’s attention. Video is one of the most engaging forms of content on socials, so if done well it’s a great way of pulling people in.

Was there anything surprising about making the video that you think other artists/creatives should be aware of when going to shoot a music video?
Not really surprising as such, but things always go wrong, things never go to plan/run on time. Make sure you have a plan A, B, C, D and Z so you have all your bases covered!

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Finally, are there any other cool video ideas in the works?
So many- but I can’t give it all away now, can I?