“Well, I mean it always begins with an idea. And this time we sat down and brainstormed all these rooms. And it got to a point where Brittany, our director, would say ‘nope, that’s impossible!’ and we’d say ‘how impossible?’ Then she’d say ‘impossible, but we can probably do it. There were a few where she was like ‘that one is actually impossible!’.”

That’s the response Hollerado guitar player and lead vocalist Menno Versteeg offers when asked about the sheer amount of visual stimulation on display his band’s latest music video, “Born Yesterday.” The video finds the Royal Mountain Records Toronto office converted into some imaginative places, to say the least.

If you’re asking yourself “what more could there be?” after watching the video, which features a white room full of milk, a Bowie-like tinfoil spaceship, a recreation of the Garden of Eden complete with a live snake, a 1920’s opium den (with a goat!) and a pop-punk wet dream featuring a pizza guitar, “Born Yesterday” director Brittany Farhat has the answer.

“There were just so many crazy ideas, and they were all so great that we had to do as many as we could. So we had to not so much narrow it down, because we ended up doing we wanted to, but see how we could pull it off. So we broke it down and really divided the work up.”  

In exclusive behind the scenes pictures given to AUX by Toronto photographer Yoshi Cooper, you can see the daunting amount of work that went into creating the rooms and props seen in the video.  

“We were so blessed that we were able to lean on our friends and family to help make this process come to life,” says Farhat. “There was no shortage of work that’s for sure. Everyone who works at the Royal Mountain label came out; our friends came out, our boyfriends and girlfriends and brothers and sisters asked what they could do to help.

“For two weeks, we were all doing arts and crafts,” Farhat continues. “Every day there was an assembly line of people making something and passing it on to the next person to put into the video, and that was crazy and amazing.”

“There was so much manpower that went into this video,” adds Versteeg. “The guy who did the art direction for the video is insane, because he literally built all of these sets by hand with his friends and he turned each of them over basically overnight.”

The description for the video reads, “The four of us have never had as much fun playing music together than we’ve been having since we made this record. Lately, we’ve felt as if we are a bunch of seventeen-year-olds jamming together in a garage for the first time.” This youthful vigour serves as the inspiration behind both “Born Yesterday” and the band’s forthcoming album of the same name. And the album title is about all Versteeg is willing to spill.

“It’s coming out in April, and I can’t really describe it too much, but we’re really excited about it. We all worked really hard on it, and that’s why we are so proud of it. The actual music has given us a boost of morale as we’ve begun to play it live at shows.”

Hollerado are currently touring Europe with Sum 41. They’ll be back in Canada for the Indies in Toronto, on April 19th. Check out more behind the scenes photo below: