New Town Kings - The Making of News Stand

It was a cold evening at the end of last year when I made my way to the town’s newest music venue, The Judge and Jury in St Botolph’s Circus, to catch up with local reggae ska band the New Town Kings as they filmed the video for their new single News Stand. It seemed kind of appropriate that having been at the launch of their second album MOJO, from which the single comes, I should see the job through and see the video being filmed too. However, if the truth be told, I was just going along for the final couple of hours of filming as the band and crew had actually been hard at it for most of the day shooting various scenes in the venue and around the town centre. The name of the game tonight, however, was to get shots of the band performing in front of a live audience made up of around 150 lucky New Town Kings fans who had been specially invited along for the event. And, not only were they going to appear in the band’s new video, once filming was over they were to be treated to a free gig as a thank you to finish off the night.

During a break in filming I catch up with Colchester filmmaker Will Wright who is producing the News Stand video. He is clearly enjoying himself and is pleased at the way filming has been going. Will tells me that the story behind the video is about the press publishing untrue stories about the band, and it also has a go at the whole tabloid culture of spreading lies about celebrities and artists. I ask him how he got involved with this project : ”I generally make music videos in London. But I know some of the members of the band from DJing in Colchester, and they have seen some of my work, so they approached me to shot the video.” And what is the crowd here for tonight? “The crowd’s role is to help with the transition of the video from a soundcheck, and rehearsal for the gig, to becoming more of a concert and music video.”

This should be good!

Spying Stu McClung and Tommy Merchant from the band I wander over and ask them how they are enjoying making their first ever video. “Very nervous!” Tommy jokingly tells me. “It’s very full-on and intense, but we’ve got a great director helping us along the way.” I ask Stu when we can expect to see the results of today’s work : “It’s out in January and will be on YouTube and all over our Facebook and MySpace, and our website.”

Numerous run throughs of News Stand later, to an audience that never seems to tire of hearing the song no matter how many times the band perform it for them, filming finally ends and the crowd get their reward. After a short break the band return to the stage and put on that much anticipated gig. They must be shattered by now after filming all day and evening, but as ever the New Town Kings do what they do best, they put on one heck of a show, giving it their usual 110 percent as they treat us to energetic performances of favourites including La La World and Dynamite. And the thing that strikes me the most, as it always does when I see them, is that the band always seem to be having have much fun as the crowd are. If not more so.

  And here it is :

 

As if that is not enough there is also a 'making of...' video by East6Media which features an interview with yours truly :

I run Media48, a Colchester based graphic and website design and marketing agency where we know a thing or two about how to market a business. If you would like to find out more about what we can do for your business then give us a call on 0800 756 1470 (we even pay for the call) or email me simon@media48.co.uk