THE MAN behind the video created to promote the Droitwich heritage app has said it had ‘exceeded all expectations’ after it had more than 20,000 views within the first week.
This time last week the Droitwich Augmented Reality Trail (DART) was launched at the town’s heritage centre by local actor, writer and video producer Joe Chambers and town mayor Coun Bill Moy.
To help with its unveiling, Joe put together the comical ‘This Is Droitwich’ song and YouTube video where he played Roman soldier Romulus Maximus and Salt King John Corbett.
We caught up with Joe to ask him what he thought of the response to the film.
He said: “When Paul mentioned he was making the app I immediately thought we need to make something to accompany it.
“I’ve made video content professionally for a while and love making music videos, I also have plenty of experience as an actor having previously been a CBeebies presenter.
“I just thought Droitwich needed something like this – even though I am from Droitwich I’ve lived outside it for over ten years, and nobody ever knows where it is when you mention it to them.
“Obviously Worcester has the sauce, Birmingham has the Peaky Blinders and Droitwich has just never quite seemed to have made it onto the map.
“I thought of course we have John Corbett and the Romans so the history is there, lets bring it back to life and shout about it – whilst putting a smile on people faces.
“I feel like I executed the characters effectively – I play both characters in the video but local residents all seem to think the video features two different people judging by the comments, which is hilarious!
“My mate Oscar Bell (from Worcester) agreed to help us record the track.”
Joe said it was a ‘full on’ week-long shoot of pre-production and then he and his friend Gavin Stewart – also from Droitwich – shot it with the help of his parents, Judith and Paul Chambers.
“Really we would ordinarily need seven or eight pairs of hands to pull off this kind of shoot but we pulled together and grafted for 14 hours on the shoot day.
“There were six costume changes in total and roughly 60 different shots. I somehow managed to direct it whilst playing John and Romulus which was very full on but worth it.
“I slept for about three days afterwards.”
Click the link above to see the video.
The Droitwich Augmented Reality Trail Heritage App
The Droitwich Augmented Reality Trail (DART) app is free to download from both the Android Play Store and the Apple Store.
It uses a 3D map similar to Minecraft to guide users around the town where 22 points of historical interest are marked out. When each one is reached, markers can be zapped, similar to Pokemon Go and that leads to a video about that particular point and a Horrible Histories style quiz question. Users will get a virtual bag of salt for each point reached and another for each quiz question answered correctly. There are 69 bags in total to complete the trail.
Click here for more.
