BANNERS just dropped his music video for “Holy Ground,” and it is amazing. It features Ashley Greene, widely known for playing Alice Cullen in the “Twilight” franchise, in her stunning music video debut that will surely get everybody talking.
How did this dream collaboration come together? “Honestly, I heard of BANNERS from the soundtrack for ‘The Royals.’ ‘The Royals’ is kind of my guilty pleasure,” Greene laughed. She continued, “One of my girlfriends ended up meeting him. Somehow or another, I had a barbecue and he was there. He was talking about all of his songs and we kind of got into a conversation about music videos.”
Greene said that the sound BANNERS creates reminds her of a very specific William Shakespeare play. “I felt this connection to his music. It was deep and romantic. His music, it sounds weird to say—kind of reminds me of ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ There was this push and pull,” she elaborated.
It was a no-brainer for Greene to sign on to this special project. “When BANNERS asked me if I was interested in being in a video, I said, ‘I’m so down.’ We got into concepts. At the time I was filming ‘Antiquities.’ It was about the loss of someone and the denial that my character Ellie was in. Andrew West was my co-star in both the music video and the film,” Greene said. The actress explained, “The music video and the song captures the essence of this beautiful and holy place where these two people find themselves. What we were trying to achieve throughout the video was this person, who essentially loses her other half, not wanting to let go. She had to go through the hard crash of reality that the person she loved is gone. She had to let him go to move on.”
Greene was thrilled that she had the opportunity to work with BANNERS. She noted the hardships that come into play for a lot of other music videos out there. “I think there is the reason why I haven’t done music videos before because it’s hard to find character development when you are used to doing a full performance that involves a beginning, middle and end. In this video, it was extremely helpful because I was there during the creative process. I had that artistic experience while determining what this video was going to portray,” Greene stated. She followed up by saying, “I think there was absolutely an influence from the film I was doing at the time. I think that’s why it made sense to me. I thought, ‘Oh, yeah. This chick is going through and experiencing things that this woman I was playing in ‘Antiquities’ was also going through.’ It was one of those incredible experiences I had with the stars being aligned at the right place at the right time.”
What about the rain machine that made its presence felt during the shoot? Greene dished on her experience while helping create those epic shots in the rain. “The director did a fantastic job expressing what we were going through. It was cool. I will say though, part of the anguish on my face that you may see might have come from actually being really cold during the end of the shoot,” she laughed. She continued, “I’ve never done it before. It was a shock but it was absolutely something that added to the performance. The rain machine was a big win for us.”
Expect more big things from BANNERS in the future. Greene believes he is one of the most talented guys on the scene right now. “Honestly, in my experience, music captures you. I could listen to one of his songs a thousand times and I would still have the same emotional response to his music. I think that’s because he puts his heart and soul into what he does,” she grinned. Greene continued, “He hits on those key elements that we all experience. The feelings of love, loss, despair, hope and triumph. He does it in a way where people can really understand and feel it. For me, he reminds me a lot of this mixture of Jeff Buckley and Chris Martin. Not a bad combo, right?”
After giving the big compliment to her friend, Greene had one more in her. “BANNERS has a way about him where you can experience the atmosphere just by listening to his music,” she said.
