Jay Kay Moonbuggy Draw Pictures

'..so, I get a phone call out of the blue from Sony/BMG: "We need a street legal Lunar Buggy for a Jay Kay music video in 10 days. Can you get us a quote and a feasibility?".. After about 5 seconds of pondering I rang Bob at Artem and 10 days later we had Jay Kay at the wheel of a replica moon buggy racing around the streets of London at 50mph. Job Done. Bob and his team copied, as exactly as possible, the Lunar Buggy that rolled out across the moon's surface over 35 years ago, quickly setting about cannibalising a dune buggy adding about 40% to its length, removing the role bars and dressing it with tonnes of space age paraphernalia. They did a great job.'

Phil Tidy, Producer, Draw Pictures

Artem had just 9 days to build a working replica of the Lunar Rover that graced the moon's surface in the 1970s, for Jamiroquai's Jay Kay to drive in his latest music video for the track Runaway. Direction was provided by the man himself through production company Draw Pictures.

With such a tight deadline there was no room for error; our skilled special effects technicians started with a brand new road legal dune buggy, from which we had to stretch and remove the roll cage before imaginatively dressing it to look like the 1970s version.

Jay drove it round various London locations - including Tower Bridge, Picadilly Circus and the A40 - wearing a space suit from the era and attracting plenty of interest from passers by and the media. The original vehicle had a top speed of 8mph. Once run in, ours was doing 50mph. Pretty good, but still somewhat slower than his Ferrari Enzo!

Despite the schedule, this was a dream job for us as we were allowed to use our imagination as well as engineering skills to come up with a creative solution. 

To view the video please click here.

Industry

• Music Video

Discipline

• Mechanical Rigs

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