Written by new-contact on Feb 28, 2012. Posted in Production News

Caviar creates musical driving course on location in California with OK Go

Chicago rock band OK Go and Caviar Content have built a stunt driving course with a difference in the California desert. For their new video Needing/Getting they’ve turned a Chevy Sonic into a pick as they make music with everything from a modified xylophone to plastic barrels.

After scouting around California, the stunt course was built and shot on a private ranch out in Santa Clarita. The place looks good and gave them the time they needed to experiment with sounds, as well as the physical space to build.

Luke Ricci produced for Caviar: “It's a wonderful place to shoot, but bring a tolerance for volatile weather whenever shooting in the high desert. Plan for bad weather possibilities; we had one day of very high winds that took down a good part of our set. Not something we could have predicted, but something that we would definitely prepare for if we were to shoot there again.”

Plan for bad weather possibilities; we had one day of very high winds that took down a good part of our set.

Luke Ricci, Producer

The nature of the shoot meant a lot of testing was needed. The car was modified with all manner of external paddles and levers controlled by the band members inside, while a collection of microphones on the roof helped capture all the sounds.

Ricci adds: “The biggest challenge was making the music from a practical set. As their fans know, OK Go is not into ‘faking’ the things they do. They wanted to be able to legitimately create the song out of the materials we built. As you can imagine we needed a lot of testing time to make sure we could pull it off.

“Camera cars and special car mounts made up most of our special equipment, along with a lot of art department materials to make up the ‘instrument’.”

Some 280 guitars are strummed by the car along the route, while a tunnel of 100 arching spines held a host of other improvised instruments to be whacked by the Chevy.

Credits:
Band: OK Go
Production Company: Caviar, Los Angeles
Producer: Luke Ricci
Executive Producers: Michael Sagol, Jasper Thomlinson
Director of Photography: Yon Thomas
Directors: Brian L Perkins, Damian Kulash Jr