we shot this video in London while on tour in september 2006. my friend Roderick is a big shot advertising director in the UK who had just shot a Mentos spot in Russia that involved a guy dressed like a giant bear. there were 4 rolls of 16mm film left over from that shoot, and he convinced the entire crew (from ridley scott’s production company, RSA films) to do work on my video for free. all i had to pay for were the hard costs (catering, costumes, etc). so this is literally a $250,000 video for which i paid $3700!
while i wrote the song, i cannot take an ounce of credit for the genius that is the video, as the entire idea was Roderick’s, from initial concept all the way to the final edit. i’m generally so uber involved with luxxury, as i write all the songs, sing and play all the instruments, etc, that it was a huge pleasure and relief to be able to totally trust and rely on him for both the vision and details. and i adore the result!
i mean he literally said “i picture a kitten becoming gigantic and attacking london…” and i said “yes!” then he said “and then we cut to you teleporting into your sex police outfits, fighting the cat with your music, and then defeating it in a ghostbuster-esque grand finale” all i could say was “when do we shoot?” (i’ve enclosed the treatment and storyboards, it might be fun to show them as a before and after thing).
anyway we shot the video in two days – the “hangin’ out in the luxxury lair” scene was shot at a bar in shoreditch, we arrived super late and the bar owners were being really literal about our not staying a minute past our alloted time (for which I had to pay $250 or something) so we were limited to just 2 or 3 takes for that scene. luckily by the last one we were getting the hang of of lip synching without looking like complete idiots, but there’s also a bit of clever editing happening as well…
day 2 was the best, as we started with a ’shopping’ trip to this amazing costume warehouse outside of london where the had recently done films like “marie antoinette”, “the queen” etc. we got fitted for our sex police outfits and made our way to the soundstage where we got into costume, makeup etc and shot performances against a green screen. you can see photos and lots of behind the scense stuff about this day of shooting here.
and that’s it!
- Baron Von Luxxury
