Bringing Joy to the ‘toon’ and beyond with Smoove and Turrell's music video

What do Prod and Craig Charles have in common? A passion for the North East’s finest proponents of funk and soul, Smoove and Turrell.  Having worked with the band previously to live stream their infamous Christmas Party gig live from the Boiler Shop, we subsequently worked together through tough Covid times, helping with animations when filming live action wasn’t possible.

This time,  we leapt at the chance to get the band back together for the first single to drop from their new album, Red Ellen. 

Joy does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s an instant feel-good classic. John and Smoove came to see us with an idea for the video which we quickly bought into. With a little help from friends and relatives of the band members, we’d quickly found a location courtesy of Patrick Forster, just up the road from us on Highbridge!

Then it was fun, fun, fun as we got into planning the shots, buying and making some very silly props and working closely with band member Mike Porter’s hairdresser. Anyone who’s seen the band will know that Mr Porter takes his barnet very seriously  - and his hairdresser Lisa Jones did an amazing job in creating a wig for us to use.

The story sees a shaven-headed John enter the hairdressers in need of cheering up. Inspiration strikes and the hair salon crew set to work creating a hairstyle that nobody saw coming. The film ends with a celebratory march, singing and dancing through the cobbled streets of the ‘toon’ and John (Turrell) even gets down and breakdances at one point.

Shot on a shoestring, as is usually the way with music videos, we roped plenty of friends and family in for the finale. We had so many great shots that it was a case of what to leave out in the edit.

The song has soared and the film has received a lot of positive comments online. Watch this space for more collaborations between us and the band.