GearJunkie X Toyota — “New Dirt”
Brief
GearJunkie and Toyota are collaborating on a project called “New Dirt”, all about accessing adventurous zones and unique trail access. This collaboration seeks to tell a compelling story about exploring fresh trails — whether newly discovered or restored — and venturing into less-traveled areas. Toyota trucks play a central role, ensuring you and your gear are ready to tackle any adventure.
As part of this campaign, we’re producing a short film that highlights the journey of exploring these adventure zones, with a focus on trail access. The goal is to inspire audiences with a glimpse into incredible outdoor areas while fostering a deeper connection to both outdoor exploration and the Toyota community.
To showcase “New Dirt” we will tag along with musician, Griff Washburn, who is more commonly known by his stage name, Goth Babe.
Griff isn’t your typical musician — despite amassing a huge fanbase and selling out the biggest venues around the world. The moment touring is over, Griff radically switches gears and heads out into nature to recharge. Be it in his home, a sailboat, or his camper, Griff has traveled all over North and South America in search of new experiences and inspiration that feeds back into his music.
This video will aim to introduce Griff to our audience, explain his drive to seek out “New Dirt” when he’s not on stage, capture what he does when he finds it and demonstrate how Toyota fuels these adventures.
Approach & Location
To tell this story, we will venture around Joshua Tree, California with Griff in a Toyota Land Cruiser. This location will offer us off-the-beaten-path fire roads for driving as well as plenty of scenic areas to explore outside of the vehicle.
Activities will include: Hiking through slot canyons, setting up camp and cooking, making music in nature and bouldering.
Joshua Tree also serves as a relevant backdrop to Griff’s story. His interest in travel was born when he moved to LA to pursue music through a more traditional route in the city — one that made him questioned if it was really the road he wanted to go down. It was only after Griff decided to pack up his car, leave the city, and explore what else the west coast had to offer did he find his own path towards a more fulfilling life, inspiration to create music based on his travels and with it, musical success. Joshua Tree was one of the first locations that he checked out on this new path.
The goal of this approach is to introduce Griff as a character that the viewer will care about and tell the story of what the pursuit of “New Dirt” has meant to him. Returning to Joshua Tree will be a homecoming, in a way, stirring up old memories that naturally segue into him telling his broader story and reflecting on where life has taken him. Griff’s reflection will then be supported by him actively discovering new zones in the Joshua Tree area as he drives to new locations that further support the fun and impact that “New Dirt” continues to have on his life — and how the Toyota Land Cruiser enables this journey.
Production Approach
Production will be a blend of:
Verité documentary observation of Griff mic’d up, catching him talking out loud as he takes in his new surroundings
Interview with Griff telling us his story and what “New Dirt” means to him
Set up scenes of Griff climbing, making music, setting up camp, cooking and hiking the surrounding areas
High-fidelity driving moments — Car to car armed car shots, wide drone shots to provide a sense of place, and cameras rigged to the vehicle to showcase Griff behind the wheel
Archival video and photos of Griff to communicate his life as a musician and catch the viewer up to the present moment
Story Flow
1. We will start with driving footage around the desert as we hear casual strumming on the guitar. We then cut to see Griff outside of the parked Land Cruiser vehicle, noodling on his guitar revealing that he is the source of the music we’ve been listening to. He takes a break from playing and reflects out loud how its interesting to be in an area that you’ve been to before and thought you had discovered, only to realize that there is still so much you haven’t seen.
2. This intro will naturally segue into Griff’s past — Who he is, what he does, where he was in life when he first went to Joshua Tree, how he balances his music career with his explorations and where he has gone since. For this, we’ll rely on archival footage that Ian has captured over the last 3 years of working with Griff.
3. As his story begins to focus on the importance of exploring new areas, we will witness him actively doing so — driving around desolate roads in the Toyota Land Cruiser.
4. We will cut from driving footage to him exploring outside of the vehicle: navigating slot canyons, figuring out boulder problems, and finally setting up camp.
5. At camp, we will showcase how Griff pulls inspiration from the outdoors by setting up a music recording session in the wild by utilizing the power supply of the Toyota Land Cruiser.
6. The story will end with Griff’s big-picture reflections — An appreciation for the ability to spend time in beautiful places and the awareness that despite taking effort to get there, the pursuit is in fact the reward, and he doesn’t think he’ll slow down any time soon.
