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| Which OK Go video do you prefer? |
While most band’s toughest challenge is the difficult second album, OK Go’s biggest hurdle in recent years has been developing an adequate follow-up to the video for their 2006 single, ‘Here It Goes Again’. As well as accumulating over 49 million views on YouTube, the video, which famously saw the band’s four members construct a dance routine on moving treadmills, picked up numerous accolades, including the 2007 Grammy Award for Best Short-Form Music Video.
To most, the task of developing its successor would be an almost impossible feat. But not for OK go, whose video for new single ‘This Too Shall Pass’ looks set to eclipse the success of their world-renowned 2006 effort.
Shot over two floors of a Los Angeles warehouse in a single take, the single-shot footage of a working Rube Goldberg machine has already attracted more than two million plays on YouTube since its release on March 1. Here, the band’s bassist Tim Nordwind exclusively tells Gigwise about the idea behind the video, how hard it was to film and just what’s next in the OK Go locker.
Where did the idea for the video come about?
“Well, there’s a Japanese TV show - I think it’s called Pythagoras Switch - and a lot of inspiration comes from that show. Also, about a year ago our guitarist found a YouTube clip of an office…there was a bunch of people from an office who had used nothing but office supplies to build a Rube Goldberg machine. There was something, not only clever about it, but it was inspirational in that they were just using materials that most of us have - paperclips, pens, paper and books and things like that. That inspired us to build one of those on a really large scale and see what happened.”
Were you involved quite closing in the planning for the video?
“Well we worked with a group of physicists and scientists and circus riggers and engineers at a company called Synn Labs, and they’re based in LA. A lot of these guys work for NASA and places like that. We were very involved with them but they were really the ones that built the thing with their hands. We were conceptually very heavily involved from the beginning, although we had to go on tour though for a good portion of the time that they were building the machine so they really deserve a lot of the credit for just building up the thing.
“When we came back from tour we had about a week and a half until we filmed and we got in there, and there were actually parts of the machine that were scrapped because…they had really gone crazy and built slick contraptions and we were just like, well, it’s got to be something that your mum could make.”
OK Go - 'This Too Shall Pass'
What sort of preparation went into the filming? Did you have to rehearse?
“The director was working with the team of scientists the whole time. The tracking of the camera was obviously a big part of it because it was just one camera - one guy with a steady cam. That started about three months ago because the scientists had to always check in with the director to make sure that if they built a certain thing we would be able to work around it. So there was about three months preparation for the filming of it.
“The actual shoot for us took two days. But that was just done right at the very end. The machine is really the star of this video so it was really just about making sure that the machine was followable and aesthetically pleasing to watch. Then we just dumped ourselves into it and made sure that we could move with it in a pleasing way.”
How many takes did it take?
“We ran the thing about 60 times over the course of two days - it was a pretty intense shoot.”
Was it a frustrating experience when things went wrong?
“Very, yeah; exciting and frustrating. The frustrating part would be getting half way through and then something doesn’t trigger. And because the setup time took so long, once you got about half way through you started to get really excited because you think ‘Oh my God, this thing is working', and then the paint can doesn’t get triggered to knock off the red trash can and you’re like ‘Oh fuck’. We probably did over 60 takes.”
It must have felt rewarding when you finally did it in one take?
“Yeah, it was cool. We got to the end about three times and getting to the end is a little bit bitter sweet because getting shot by paint hurts (laughs). But, yeah, it always felt good to get to the end.”
Did you feel a certain about of responsibility having to start the actual mechanism going?
“It was more of an honour than a responsibility - it’s not too hard to hit some dominos. But there were a few times when it was kind of embarrassing because the dominos didn’t actually go and I was like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe I can’t push over some dominos’. But it was more of an honour.”
OK Go - 'Here It Goes Again'
Since the success of the video for ‘Here It Goes Again’, have you always felt a certain pressure to live up to that?
“It’s not really pressure as much as it’s love and desire to do these things. I think we got in this band to chase our wildest ideas and this is certainly a good example of that. I think we’re aware…I don’t think every video we make will necessarily blow up like the treadmills or this one appears to be doing, but that’s OK as long as we feel like our craziest ideas are getting realised and happen.
"And if people take to it like they’re taking to the video to ‘This Too Shall Pass', then that’s awesome - but if they don’t, then that’s fine. We don’t need to have three million people every time see the videos. I think as long as we keep the quality up and we’re happy with it we’ll be pleased to continue to make things.”
The video for ‘Here It Goes Again’ won the Grammy Award for Best Short-Form Music Video. Do you think your new one is destined for similar success?
“It’s hard to say with the awards. This certainly is very similar…I mean, the way this video has been going in the two days since it’s been out is very similar to how ‘Here It Goes Again’ went. If that’s any indication, then I’m sure it has a shot at getting some awards. I mean, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t - we’re proud of this video either way.”
Do you prefer it to the ‘Here It Goes Again’ video?
“I’m not sure, that’s like asking, ‘Do you like your son or your daughter more.’ I’m very proud of both of them and I like the spirit that both of them were made. They both feel very much like us to me, so in that sense I feel very proud of both of them. I’m not sure I could choose between the two.”
Have you got any other video ideas in the pipeline?
“We do. We’ve got three that…we’re shooting another one in March and then we are currently working out the ideas for the second one which I think will maybe get shot in June. Then there’s another one that features toast. So there are three that are in the making and there’s probably two more that are in conceptual stages. We’ll be making a lot of videos for this record. I’m actually excited to say that there are still some really good ones to come.”
How does the one involving toast go?
“That’s all I can really say. I guess it’s exploring choreography through toast.”
