We’ve already highlighted OK GO‘s amazing zero-gravity video. But when you look at their previous videos, you’ll be overwhelmed by how creative they are too.
What’s even more impressive is that all of the videos are done without any digital special effects and usually in a single continuous take. Seriously, it’s mindblowing.
It’s some of the most perfect illustrations of artists turning their vision into a reality while working exactly within a series of constraints. In many of the cases here those are the laws of physics and probability, and the only way to overcome them are clever camera angles, editing and a serious dedication to both practice and a willingness to start again when something goes wrong (which apparently happens a lot for this group.
So without further ado, here are 7 more amazing music videos by Ok Go. We hope they inspire you to try something creative this week.
1. This Too Shall Pass (video above)
This video is a nearly four minute Rube Goldberg machine, with items colliding in time with the music. If you don’t know what those are, they are the crazy contraptions based on a series of chain reactions, where one item knocks into another, causing it to move and complete another step, and so on. Apparently this video took around 60 takes to get right, and you can see the remnants of failed attempts in splattered paint and broken items throughout the video.
It’s beautiful, destructive, choreographed chaos.
2. The Writing’s on the Wall
This video plays with your sense of perspective, fitting in a number of optical illusions based on clever use of the environment and camera angles.
3. I won’t let you down
Shot in Japan in conjunction with Honda to illustrate their new UNI-CUB personal mobility unit. While most of the video is impressive from a choreography perspective, it’s from about 2:30 that things become a bit mind-blowing, with hundreds and then thousands of individual schoolgirls with umbrellas seen from above acting like pixels on a screen, playing messages and shapes. Seriously, watch it till the end.
4. Needing/Getting
The band plays instruments by hitting them with a car. As in, by driving into them. The acoustics were picked up by microphones on the outside of the car. The sheer number of pianos, guitars,drums and bells lined up perfectly on the side of a desert road is breathtaking.
5. End Love
Stop motion humans, moving in between what was reported to be over one million frames of film. Yet still synching up the lips to the lyrics.
6. White Knuckles
W. C. Fields once famously said “Never work with animals or children”. Well, the dogs in this video seem to be born performers.
7. Here it goes again
Where it all began. The famous video where Ok Go dance on treadmills. Still holds up to this day.
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Nick Skillicorn
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