CMU School of Drama


Monday, November 28, 2016

Ok Go's latest music video was filmed in four seconds

www.dezeen.com: A series of digital triggers set off several hundred events in the video for Ok Go's The One Moment, which was filmed in just four seconds.

The video for the band's new track was directed by lead singer Damian Kulash, who wanted to create a literal visual representation of the song's title.

9 comments:

Kelly Simons said...

I love Ok Go. Not simply from their music, it actually is pretty generic in its sounds. No, I’m much more impressed with the care and craft that they put into their music videos. I remember watching the music video where the band members are dancing on the treadmills, and the music videos have gotten better and better since then. Ok Go’s videos are pure art, all of which are so cleverly created. Everything from the film direction to the color choices to even the video’s pacing is spot on. I love that Ok Go’s production team tries to make their music videos more of a performance art than just a music video. Most music videos simply cut from the band singing into the camera to weird disjointed imagery that the director finds “important”. I’d really like to work for OK Go’s artistic or production team, I don’t think that job would ever grow tiresome.

Unknown said...

I don’t listen to OK Go very often but I always enjoy watching their music videos. They have a lot of talent in finding unique ways to tell a story within the time frame of their songs. This one in particular is so unique and definitely not something they could have done randomly one day. I could tell a lot of thought and planning went into each section. I wonder how they timed out each moment when the ball would burst or explode to the music? Did they ever do test run to see how it would go or was that their only run? It seems like it would be very difficult to test and then reset every time because of all the destruction and mess they made. I am curious who on their team has the scientific knowledge to do all that math and calculations. I went and watched some of their previous videos and each one is so unique but so pertinent to their message in their music which I like.

Unknown said...

I actually watched this video as a part of a Morton’s salt campaign to discuss the power of the actions taken in a single moment. I honestly had never watched an OK Go video prior to this one, and the specificity of the timing and the effects taking place over time is just incredible. If they show this much attention to detail in all of their videos, they must spend a lot of time conceptualizing the images, especially since they only have one take to get the video right. I cannot even imagine how much post-processing of the video it takes to get the timing to line up exactly correct with the music, including tempos, spikes on the beats. They explain the fact that there is no acceleration or deceleration but rather a jump in tempos (of a significant difference between moments). I would be interested in seeing more of these videos and figuring out how they were made as well to see if the same tempo jumping system was used to create those.

Drew H said...

This is a perfect example of the word “unbelievable.” While I can assume the creators of this video and article would not lie to me, I really am having a hard time believing it. I suppose it is not a perfect definition of unbelievable because I do believe what I am being told, but it is as close to unbelievable as I can get while believing it. Make sense? I think what I am trying to say is that this is INCREDIBLE. I haven’t posted anything to my facebook timeline myself since I have been in college (maybe longer but I stopped looking back) but I think this video might just make me break my silence because everyone needs to see this. The precision, dedication, and figuring that went into this is beyond my reason. I cannot conceptually understand how this was done so perfectly. I understand parts, and see how adjusting the speeds at various times can help, but all in all, this is beyond my comprehension and that is why it is so amazingly appealing. I want to do that.

Annie Scheuermann said...

Woah. This group, Ok Go, has made some really incredible videos in the past, and I think this as their sadly last one, is very impressive. I remember last year their was another article that I commented on, for some of their other projects and was super blown away. I think part of the charm is that everything is so clean and maybe the singing and music isn't the best, but its sort of endearing at the same time. I love the concept of just 4 seconds of so much, and then slowing it down and watching everything happen individually, their is something magical about it. I do think that their are many times in our lives that we live so much in just a few seconds, and those are some of the normally most important moments, like the bad ones of a car crash, or the good ones - when you win a significant award. There are a lot of events now in my life that I would love to be able to watch back and watch in slow time as well. Ok Go has done such an incredible job in their artistry in everything I have seen of their's, I wish that they would continue to make more interesting videos like this, or maybe one step further and do live performances.

Julian Goldman said...

I was really excited to see that Ok Go had made a new music video when I saw it a few days ago. I think the concept of “The One Moment” was both really cool visually as well as really interesting technically. I watched a video interview with Ok Go, and they talked about how they feel like they captured something that seems like nothing you’ve ever seen before because it is a video of slowed down moments that are impossible to perceive in day to day life. I also think the idea of trying to show the complexity of a single moment by slowing down a series of a events that occur in the blink of an eye is a really strong concept. This music video is also very impressive technically because of how specific the mechanisms themselves had to be in order to trigger each explosion at the correct time.

Unknown said...

Wow that video is incredible! I cannot even imagine the amount of time that went into making sure all of the timing was perfect. All of those effects were really cool, but I think one of the craziest things was how they did the flipbook of the singer. I wonder how long it took them to make sure there was the exact number of pictures and his mouth was moving in the right way so it looked like he was singing along with the song. It timed out really well. OK Go always does really cool and different things with their music videos and each time it is more creative than the last. All of those actions worked really well with the song and timed out perfectly. I know they changed the speed of each event, but that still takes a lot of skill in editing to time it out perfectly. It was really cool to see the water balloons pop because you could still see the water in the form of the balloon floating there for most of it because it was slowed down so much.

noah hull said...

I’d never heard of Ok Go until a few days ago when I saw another one of their music videos, one based around a Rube Goldberg machine, going around. After seeing that I knew I was going to have to see the rest of their videos, needless to say, I was not disappointed. The level of craftsman ship and attention to detail they put in are spectacular. This most recent video certainly lives up to the previous ones in terms of complexity and visual spectacle, enough so that I feel like they could have just let it stand on its own. The whole thing about how it was filmed in 4 seconds feels like a bit of gimmick. It is certainly cool that it was filmed all at once like that but saying the whole video was filmed that fast feels a bit deceptive. Mostly because when they’re going through the slowed down segment it gets to the exploding guitars that act as the end of the full speed segment and then there’s another minute or so of song that has paint exploding everywhere with people on trampolines. Definitely a part of the video, and definitely cool looking but also not included in that first four second count. But that is possible the most and petty complaint possible and should in no way take away from how impressive it is that they filmed the first part as one continuous action.

Sasha Schwartz said...

It’s very cool that Ok Go is known for their technically innovative and incredibly intricate music videos. It’s not too often that the main spectacle of a music video is the technical feats and the scenic/ prop elements as opposed to the musician(s) themselves. This particular video is interesting because even though it’s clear that it took an insane amount of time to plan and time out and synch up so perfectly, the idea of it being shot in 4 seconds is completely different than that of many other Ok Go videos that are filmed in real-time, or even sped up to include everything they need. I think this reflects the main message of of the song itself, which i think is really beautiful, of unpacking a single moment and of understanding and coming to terms with our inherent temporariness as humans. It’s very cool how they connected multiple cameras and used robotics and device triggers in order to achieve this concise, and very successful, visual effect.