Crown & Owls deliver this highly watchable and engaging promo for Toby Gale’s single Showdown, in which a very pushy father gets his son to ‘man-up’ in preparation for his own, very special showdown…

“This is our first video to be released after changing our name from Brown Bread Films to Crowns & Owls,” explain the directors. “After hearing the first few bars of the track, it’s glaringly obvious that this is music from a certain time and place. So we began to pool together a list of references that would compliment the sounds that Toby produces.

“The video follows a pushy parent story, of an aggressive father who is forcing his son through the final preparations before ‘the big night’. But just what this night consists of remains unknown until we’re actually within it.

“We were in preproduction for a good six weeks – conducting a period piece on a tight budget requires strategy and relies very much on the right locations. As we couldn’t really afford to dress the sets we had to find relatively preserved places to shoot. And we spent several weeks casting for the the two kids, as (without giving too much away) one skill had to take priority over their acting abilities. Rueben Crossland-Jones, who played our lead character, was a true godsend partly because of his look, but his abilities were also very impressive.

“The video was a pleasure to shoot and the whole experience felt like a journey. We hope the video is as fun to watch, as it was to make!”

Toby Gale
Showdown
Director/Writer/Producer/DP: Crown & Owls
Production Assistant: Louis Bleazard
Costume: Katie Brown
Gaffer: Jamie Starke
Focus Puller: Adam Conlon
1st A/C: James Rhodes
Steadicam Operator: Matt Burton
Sparks: Giles Smith and Michael Battcock
Grip: Krishna Muthurangu
Cast:
Son: Rueben Crossland Jones
Father: Trevor Jones
Mother: Gayle Dennis
Opponent: Jacob Steers
Opponent’s Father: Simon Hirst
Referee: Frank Ryan
Boxer: Giovanni Marrocco
Special thanks: Provision Leeds, Production Light and Sound, Harvey & Austin Ascott, Left Eye Blind, Murphy’s Mill, Hunslet Boxing Club, John Taylor from Silsden Road Forest (Tilhill Forestry Ltd), Matt Burton, SPL College & Leeds college of Art and Design