Krystal Gault is enjoying a half of lager ahead of the screening of her first music video at the New Continental on the August Bank Holiday. She takes a drag of a cigarette and greets me, she’s a little nervous ahead of the screening.

“This is our first music video”, she says, “I really hope people turn up!”

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Kitsch Monkey Productions has been going for five years and Gault, pictured above, runs it with her fiance Peter Wobser. He’s busy setting up for the screening, so it’s just me and Krystal to discuss how the video for Levi’s Genes by Preston band Thee Uncomfortables came together.

“We started work on it back in October 2008,” says Gault, “we got the concept sorted first and then we were filming it over a period of 10 months in-between other jobs that we were doing.”

The result of that concept is a video for a song that deals with the excess of the music industry, with children playing famous rock icons and a rather sinister clown. Gault was really happy with the cast that she got for the video.

She said: “The children were fantastic, in particular the lad who played Elvis. They really got into it and were very patient, they had a great time. Conor McGinley who plays the evil clown was brilliant as well, he even made his own costume.

“We had to shoot the video with no budget, so we were pulling in favours, getting equipment in kind and scrounging locations but hopefully the end result is worth it. If we were to have paid for this video it would have cost in excess of £15,000.”

Gault has been a director of Kitsch Monkey Productions since it started and this is their first music video, but they’ve shot short films before and she feels music videos give her the chance to be creative.

She said: “I like doing music videos, it was really good fun. I like music videos that tell a story, I don’t like just performance videos with the band playing the song – they are very dull. It’s great that the band said to us they didn’t want to be in the video, or if they were just as a minor part. A music video should have a concept and we’ve tried to do that with Levi’s Genes, doing a music video is a chance to be really creative. My favourite music video has to be Windowlicker by Aphex Twin, it’s just so weird and cool.”

Gault has also been branching out to put on film nights, her Cinematopia nights have been growing in popularity and she’s now expanding them to Manchester and Liverpool.

“It’s cool showing films in pubs and clubs,” she says, “but what’s unique about our nights is that we also show music videos in amongst short films and animations. It works really well and I hope that if the nights go well in Manchester and Liverpool then I can bring Cinematopia back to Preston again.”

Kitsch Monkey Productions definitely have a bright future ahead of them and as Gault finishes her cigarette and moves onto another interview, it’s clear from the reaction to the video premiere and the amount of people there that this won’t be the last music video she directs.

Image credit to Claire Wild

Related: Review: Levi’s Genes video premiere at New Continental