If you happened to be cruis­ing near the Avalon Skate Park a couple of week­ends ago, you may have been lucky enough to wit­ness a most unusu­al scene, loc­al band Claude Rains were film­ing their first music video for their upcom­ing, self-titled first album.

Heath­er Weir, Mur­ray Hewitt and Andrew Bains aka Claude Rains

Dir­ect­or Gwen Isaac pulled in some favours and there was a bunch of stars from the Hob­bit on set.

James Nes­bitt and sing­er Heath­er Weir
A beau­ti­ful bevvy of dwarves and rock stars and chil­dren and dir­ect­or of pho­to­graphy

I was there with my cara­van to provide cups of tea and mor­al sup­port. It was ter­rific­ally fun, I even had a title, Craft­somethin­goroth­er, which seemed pretty apt. Here is a pic­ture of us watch­ing the play­back of the vari­ous ver­sions of the video (my cara­van is the real star, fyi).

The crew and band and off­spring watch the play­back.

In addi­tion to Hob­bit folk there was also a take with roller derby girls and a loc­al cyc­ling club, it was both hil­ari­ous and quite lovely to see. Watch this space for the release of the fin­ished video, the album is beau­ti­ful and the whole exper­i­ence was a truck­load of fun. I quite fancy a new career sit­ting around drink­ing tea and chat­ting. What?