In June of '16 when James Corden hosted the Tony Awards, Barbra Streisand was on the program. So I wondered here, "What are the odds Mr. Corden wouldn't seize on the opportunity to try and persuade Barbra to do one of his Carpool Karaoke segments? I'd say roughly zero, wouldn't you?"
I don't know for certain if he did or not but it wouldn't surprise me if the lady said, "Okay…when my next album comes out." Well, it's out and last night, they aired this Carpool Karaoke that was recorded partly in my neighborhood. I'm kind of fascinated by the technical end of producing these and I also like watching for familiar backgrounds. At least in the final, edited version, he and Barbra didn't drive past my house but they came within a block of it. I have seen my home in a couple of these, once with Amber's car parked out front.
Past articles have revealed that contrary to what some assume, Corden is driving the car and is not being towed. He's in a slow-speed caravan with crew cars behind and ahead of him but he's driving. Barbra allegedly drove in this one. It doesn't look to me like she really is driving but Corden sometimes doesn't look like he's really steering the vehicle. Maybe since it's a different car, they changed a few of their usual procedures.
(The storyline is that she's driving him to CBS and it ends with the car going into the guard gate. But before that, if you can recognize the scenery, you'll see that they go all over the place, including passing CBS at least twice.)
So I'm curious about some things. Where are the microphones? Where does the musical playback come from and who's controlling it since it's obvious they go back and do some songs more than once? Are they really recording both the music and vocals at the same time and if so, does that cause problems editing between takes?
There are moments in these when you see them drive past a recognizable building or tree in the background and then three seconds later, they cut from a two-shot to a close-up and they seem to be driving past that same recognizable spot again. I doubt they backed-up with other traffic on the road. Did they go around the block and try to do Take 2 in roughly the same spot?
Also, there are moments when they cut from a close-up to a two-shot or vice-versa and the backgrounds jump about twenty blocks. So I'm guessing the director is in one of the cars in the caravan watching the feed from one or more of the cameras suction-cupped to the windshield and he can communicate with Corden's car and say, "Let's try asking her that question again." Or maybe he can just hear them. Or maybe…
I don't know. The tech guys really worked this out well, doing something much more difficult than Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. They're also pretty entertaining segments.
It's too bad Corden can't be in two places at once. What I'd like to see happen is that he's driving some musical superstar down Beverly Boulevard and they're approaching Genesee Avenue from either direction and they get stopped by a massive traffic jam — as I have — by James Corden shooting one of his Crosswalk Musicals at that intersection. It would serve him right.