In their explosive new song, One Moment, the band plays with time bending techniques and advertises for Morton salt while they talk of the temporariness of human existence.
Ok go, the Chicago based indie-rock band has been experimenting with music distribution for years, but what they are most known for is their innovation in videos. The now notorious, “Here it Goes Again“, had them going viral for their synchronized moves on the treadmill. Since then, they have created numerous innovative videos like Rube Goldberg-machine themed short film for “This too shall pass” and driving a car while creating music for “Needing/Getting”.
Their latest video for the song “The one moment”, took only 4.2 seconds to film, but the whole thing was slowed down to a four plus minute it took the band to sing the song. “We triggered 325 events with extremely precise digital triggers to create the choreography, which unfolds over a little more than four seconds”, explains lead vocalist and director, Damian Kulash, Jr. A total of 325 discreet events occur in that time span, from exploding guitars, to band members coming alive via flipbook. Those 4.2 seconds are then stretched out to the song’s full length, with some of the moments slowed down by 20,000 percent from real time. Remarkably, like the Ok go previous videos, the group manages to sync the whole thing using …we don’t know, math?!
“You’re right,” frontman and director Damian Kulash sings, his image animated as bassist Tim Nordwind flips through a book. “There is nothing more lovely, there is nothing more profound, than the certainty that all of this will end.” In real time, the pages fly by in less than a second. But somehow, slowed down, they matches Kulash’s mouth.
“The song One moment is a celebration of those moments in life when we are most alive,” the band says in the video credits. “Humans are not equipped to understand our own temporariness; it will never stop being deeply beautiful, deeply confusing, and deeply sad that our lives and our world are so fleeting. We have only these few moments. Luckily, among them there are a few that really matter, and it’s our job to find them. (We had no idea when we wrote the song that we’d be releasing its video in such a critical moment for our nation and the world. It’s one of those moments when everything changes, whether we like it or not, so the song feels particularly relevant).” Kulash also mentioned that “When the biggest music streaming service on the planet is YouTube and it comes with a visual channel, the idea that all musicians aren’t visual artists is kind of crazy,” he explains. “You still get a video channel for your music, it might just be a still of your album cover.”
Curiously though, the video also doubles as an ad for Morton Salt’s “Walk Her Walk” campaign, a movement that aims to inspire positive change. The “her” in this case appears to be the young girl that is the logo for the salt company. It’s like they say—all it takes to make a band is a song, a guitar, and an international corporate sponsor. OK Go reveals more details about how the video was made, including a cue sheet, on the band’s website.
