You have a tiny budget but the client wants to make a big impact. It’s too familiar, especially for music videos. The dilemma handed to director, Kiran Koshy, and production company, Raucous Content for Detroit indie rock artist, Sergio Gaetani, made their creativity fire.
Koshy’s answer for the Sergio’s indie-rock track, The Trail, tale of murder and revenge set to a blend of psychedelic outlaw country and Latin Narco, is a psych-pulp-sci-fi-Western music video.
The video is an homage to the Coen Bros movie, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. The track evoked the opening scene on first listen and inspired Koshy to imagine an alien protagonist in Monument Valley, he explains, but in an alternate and very trippy universe. Koshy juxtaposed a traditional musical genre with a surreal palette of visual elements and colour into a fascinating and fantastical tale.
The music video was filmed in Monument Valley, in a single day by just the director and two DOPs, with Sergio himself as the protagonist in a custom creature mask created by Erick Rodriguez of LA-based Imaginerick Studios. Tank3Asia crated the brilliant VFX. The film was edited by Peter Tarter and colour graded by Charles Gerstner. And all hail to the production team, it’s in the final shortlist for Colour Grading at Berlin Commercial Festival, up against Taylor Swift, Charlie XCX, and The Pet Shop Boys.
The Trail is the flagship track from Sergio’s latest album, The West That Never Was, a concept album about love, loss, revenge, murder, and empathy. It was recorded largely during Covid, at home by Sergio.
Credits:
Music Artist: Sergio Gaetani
Director: Kiran Koshy
Production Company: Raucous Content
Cinematographers: Eric Zimmerman, Joshua Hess
Editor: Peter Tarter
Colourist & Particle FX – Charles Gerstner
VFX Composition: Tank3Asia
Mouth FX: Shanaka Bethmage
Beam FX: Brook Boley
VFX Consultant – David Hannah
The Alien: Sergio Gaetani
Alien Mask: Erick Rodriguez @ Imaginerick Studios
Simone The Frog: Ambika Koshy
ARRI Amiras courtesy Joe Lomba @ Alternative Rentals
Special thanks:
Monument Valley Dinéh Trailrides: Jamieson and Lorraine Black, Rachel Watson, Kevin
Harrison, the late Garron Hathale, Tristan Begay, and Charlie the horse
The Navajo Nation Park & Recreation Department and the Navajo Nation
