mrschristine.com

This too shall pass

Published March 4, 2010

If you haven’t seen the latest music video from OK Go, then you must view it now.

I know. Wow. Right?

It’s taken me a while to be convinced that it is actually real but after reading a great behind the scenes piece on it, I’m gonna go with it. Some facts you need to know:

  • It took about a month and a half of very intense work, with people on-site all the time
  • 55-60 people worked on the project in all
  • 30 or more people to help reset the machine after each run
  • Even with all those people helping, resetting the whole machine took close to an hour
  • The video was shot by a single Steadicam
  • It took more than 60 takes, over the course of two days, to get it right

Now, the reasons this is MFC, aside from being awesome? The attention to detail that has gone into this is something that has been lacking in music videos for a long time. OK Go have, from the very start, treated their videos as a piece of art, something they know will go viral and spread that way, rather than be promoted heavily by a distributor. The songs are nothing to write home about, but the moving pictures is where it’s at.

Secondly, the video is sponsored by State Farm. They get a simple thanks at the very end, and that is all. It turns out that State Farm have also paid “an undisclosed sum” to allow the video to be embedded - as we have done in this post. Previously, OK Go videos have been banned from embed functionality, as, of course, the record industry don’t make money from them.

All in all, a great success. Even though the idea of everything just working like that still boggles my mind. If you’re keen to learn more, there are some “making of” videos available, too.

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