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?