60 http://www.popularmechanics.co.za _ AUGUST 2017
Baby (Ansel Elgort) is a young man with a problem: tinnitus. To
counteract the ringing in his head and to drown out all the noise
of life, Baby is plugged into music 24/7. But aside from being a
music addict, Baby has found himself living a life of crime work-
ing as a getaway driver for Doc (Kevin Spacey) and his hired
bank robbers.
Baby finds enjoyment only in his music and cars, but he wants
nothing more than to leave behind his life of crime. After meeting
Deborah, a gorgeous young woman that he finally connects with,
Baby sees a way to escape. He is willing to risk it all to finally
find a happiness and freedom he has not experienced in a really
long time.
TINNITUS. Though described as a ringing effect, tinnitus can
involve whooshing or squealing noises. It is associated with
damage to the inner ear’s hairy sensors, typically through expo-
sure to loud noise such as concert-level rock music, but can be
triggered by certain medication, ageing, caffeine or excessive
salt intake. There is no cure; attempts to alleviate the symptoms
include “tuning out” the frequencies involved. Men are said to be
more prone and among the notable sufferers are The Who’s Pete
Townsend, composer Ludwig van Beethoven, naturalist Charles
Darwin, theologist Martin Luther and painter Vincent van Gogh.DRIVING TO HIS OWN DRUMBEAT
And the use of multiple cars?
You have multiples for different reasons: in case you crash one, in
case one of them breaks down. Sometimes they’ll want to be
mounting lights and cameras on one car, while you’re shooting
with the other one. With the Subaru, one of them was actually
converted to just rear-wheel drive and was putting out some pretty
good horsepower. We had another one that was built with special
aftermarket differentials in the front and the rear, and the motor
was worked on a bit. That one was over 300 horsepower and we
used it for some of the bigger stunts.
Edgar Wright has choreographed much of the action within
the film to work with a pre-selected 30-song soundtrack.
Did that extend to the car sequences as well?
Yes. Trying to create and then choreograph and execute these
sequences that would time out with music was really difficult. We
tried to come up with stuff that would allow certain things to
happen in the shot to roughly time out with the music. But then
the biggest problem was just how much time we would actually
have or not have in each song. When you come up with these
sequences, it’s very easy to go, “All right, we’ll cover such and
such, and from these angles.” We would pre-visualise everything,
shoot it on our own cameras, edit it together, time it out and
then realise we didn’t have time for all the shots. We would have
to distill it down to only the shots that we absolutely needed
because of the time limitations. It was a big challenge.
Was that the biggest challenge you faced during production?
Oh man, there’s always challenges. You get through one, and then
there’s two more obstacles you’ve got to overcome afterwards.
Trying to get certain locations was tough. Trying to come up with
new stunts that hadn’t been seen before was tough. Trying to
make the stunts work within the music was tough.
And then there’s always the schedule. We had one day in particu-
lar with four big set-ups. And as soon as we got one done, it was all
hands on deck: everything is getting loaded up, and we’re caravan-
ning over to the next location. No time for high-fives. No time to
bask in the glory of having just got a really cool shot, because we’re
on to the next one and we’re running out of daylight.
What kind of a road trip are we ultimately in store for?
The best thing about the car stuff that you’re going to see is that
it’s all real. I can’t say there isn’t any CG, because they might put
a sun-flare in there somewhere to block my face – that kind of
thing. But all the gags you see have not been enhanced
to make them possible. None of it is shot on green
screen and then put into a real environment. The best
part about it is everything you see is what we actually
did. And the stuff we did was pretty cool. I’ve never
been so proud or excited to see something I’ve worked
on up on the screen. At the risk of jinxing it, I think
this is going to be one of those movies that people will look back
on and say, “That was really something else.”
Baby Driver comes out nationwide on 4 August.
Baby Driver boasts an impressive cast including
Jamie Foxx and John Hamm. Director Edgar
Wright says that 150 cars, each specifically
modified, were used to make the movie.