I directed a few music videos between ‘A Fistful Of Fingers’ in 1995 and ‘Spaced’ in 1999. There were three for a band called ‘Ruth’ that I can’t seem to find online. And another one for The High Llamas for ‘Nomads’ that I directed when I was 22 and didn’t really know what the hell I was doing.

After ‘Spaced’ was finished in 2001, I directed a few more music videos while writing and developing ‘Shaun Of The Dead’. It was a funny period for music videos as the budgets were plummeting because of file sharing. Interestingly each of these videos had a lower budget than the last. That meant a lot of favours pulled in every department. Still, the best thing about doing them is to try out new techniques.

Here they are…

After Hours ~ The Bluetones – dir. Edgar Wright (2002)

This was my second video for The Bluetones (the first being ‘Keep The Home Fires Burning’) and is still one of my favourite things I’ve done. The Bugsy Malone homage came about because I remarked how Mark Morriss’ song had a Paul Williams flavour. The video is comprised (mostly) of a single Steadicam shot, of which we did 9 takes.

Choreography was by Litza Bixler, who also did the Don’t Stop Me Now sequence in Shaun Of The Dead. Where are the kids now?

Psychosis Safari ~ The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster – dir. Edgar Wright (2003)

This is a very low budget video I did for EMBLD for a single off their incredible debut album, HORSE OF THE DOG. The animation is by my big brother, Oscar Wright, Matt Piper and John Yeo. Am still proud of this video and still love the song. If you have never heard that album, it’s still fearsome.

Blue Song ~ Mint Royale – dir. Edgar Wright (2003)

Back in 2003, I remember Mint Royale’s label questioning my casting of Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt in this video. They wanted someone bigger, despite our low budget and the fact that both actors would work for free to help me out. I told the label that they would soon be huge. Cut to a few years later and they are now cult superstars all over the planet. See the young Boosh boys along with Michael Smiley and Nick Frost in my getaway driver musical number.

Summer ~ Charlotte Hatherley – dir. Edgar Wright (2004)

Here’s a video I did after ‘Shaun’ for the talented Miss Hatherley from her ‘Grey Will Fade’ album. The video contains an enormous amount of animation, flashcuts and subliminal frames (by the likes of Oscar Wright, among many others). It took an age to edit and failed the television standards epilepsy test 57 times before we got it passed.

Bastardo ~ Charlotte Hatherley – dir. Edgar Wright (2005)

Here’s the last video I directed in this period. Again it comes from the ‘Grey Will Fade’ album and it features a cast of David Walliams, Simon Pegg, Lucy Davis, Lauren Laverne, Alice Lowe and Julia Davis. This video cost 6K and was the result of a lot of hard work and pulled favours. It took so long to edit that it still exhausts me to watch. Ultimately it put me off doing music videos for a long while as you could only ask for favours so many times. But there is a lot of artwork and photography in this rapid fire clip and I’m staggered at what we all managed to achieve.

That was the last video I did. Well, until this…

Ten years ago today we shot the Queen scene fight which around revolved some quite complicated Steadicam shots operated by Paul Edwards. We had choreographed the scene with both a stunt co-ordinator, Jeff Hewitt Davis and a dance choreography Litza Bixler. We had it completely worked out beat for beat to ‘Don’t Stop Me Now.’

Steve Emerson who plays John the barman is a veteran stuntman with hundreds of credits. One that I only found out about after the fact was that he had already performed a head-into-the-jukebox stunt, in the 1975 John Wayne film ‘Brannigan’. In that movie the Duke himself threw him into a jukebox.

I think we had champagne for our 500th slate. On ‘Hot Fuzz’ we tried to have champagne on every 100 slates, but the idea was quickly abandoned when we shot 1200 slates during the shoot.

This was my second video for those lovely Bluetones boys (the first being Keep The Home Fires Burning) and is still one of my favourite things I’ve ever done. The Bugsy Malone homage came about because I remarked how Mark Morriss’ amazing song had a Paul Williams flavour.

The video is comprised (mostly) of one single shot, of which we did 9 takes. Choreography was by Litza Bixler, who also did the Don’t Stop Me Now sequence in Shaun Of The Dead.

Love this song.