An Inside Peek at the Genius of OK Go [PICS & VIDEO!]

Published on Monday, June 28 2010

Written by Super User

With their constant audio-visual innovations and signature one-take technique, this is a group whose videos are so reliably viral that even Jonas Salk would find his hands full.  Thus you can imagine my excitement when I found out I could be a part of one.  

This past January, OK Go released a music video for their hit single, “This Too Shall Pass.”  This version wasn’t filmed in a warehouse though, and there were absolutely no dominos or bowling balls.  It was an alternative video shot in South Bend, Indiana.  OK Go filmed it last October with the help of the University of Notre Dame marching band, and as a clarinet-playing member of the ND band, I had the privilege of witnessing the making of a real OK Go video.  Win.

Step back about one year.  In November of 2008, the Notre Dame band traveled out to USC for the annual Notre Dame vs. USC football game.  During the half-time show, ND entertained the crowd with a rendition of OK Go’s famous “treadmill song.”  The band formed giant stick figures on treadmills, and even performed segments of the treadmill dance.  Check it out here:

OK Go caught wind of the performance, and eventually contacted the ND band about collaborating in a music video for “This Too Shall Pass.”   They loved seeing ND perform “Here it Goes Again,” and wanted to have us play their new single in a video.  This wasn’t going to be just any music video though.  They wanted to record all of the sound live, creating an alternate version of the song for this alternate version of the video.

Fast forward to Fall 2009.  The details had been ironed out, and about 100 members of the ND band were staying on campus during fall break for the video.   The first two days were mostly sound recording and blocking, but things really got rolling on the third day of shooting.

The concept of the video was to add band members gradually throughout the song.  These band members aren’t just fingering along with the music though; they are playing it live as they enter the frame.  This way, the video increases visually, coinciding with the gradual build-up of the music.  The ND band members were added in pretty interesting ways too.  The first group pops up from behind prop-bushes in full-on ghillie suits.  Usually reserved for military snipers, these suits made the instrumentalists almost invisible to enemy forces/the unsuspecting Youtube viewers.  Another ghillie-clad ensemble joins the music, and shortly thereafter a group enters from the trees to make a purple jacket and ghillie (PJ&G) sandwich. 

From there, the camera pans around to my favorite part of the video.  A large portion of the ND band is arranged on bleachers, and each person is holding a piece of bi-colored poster board above their heads.  By flipping these at certain times, the song title is spelled out.   Finally , both bands and the ghillie monsters come together to from a marching pinwheel filled with a frenzied mob of scream-singing, streamer-waving preschoolers.  This isn’t your average music video.

As you can imagine, it took more than a few takes to capture all of this in one shot.  What you might not imagine though, is just how fun it was to make the video.  The guys in OK Go are passionate about what they do, and they truly march to the beat of their own drum.  Just about every other music video you see today will have the artist green-screened over some spectacle of a setting or crowd of people, but OK Go flew out to South Bend and shot this video in a muddy field.  There were no hired dancers (unless the preschoolers collected a check), and the crew consisted of about four people.  The costumes were either purchased from a military surplus store or borrowed from a local high school marching band.  There was one crane, one camera, one microphone, and one take.  Who does that?  The same group that takes their name from an old art teacher’s catchphrase and the same group that releases two videos for one of the title songs off their new album.

Here's some more pics from the shoot:

One thing that struck me about OK Go was the way they interacted with the Notre Dame band and participating preschoolers.  With the amount of takes that we did, it was easy to become bored.  They worked hard to keep morale up frequently with words of encouragement and some funny antics.  The guys were great.  They spent downtime hanging out with us and came off as genuine, dedicated people.  It was fun to see them goof off with the preschool kids who would flock to drummer Dan Konopka’s drums after a take for some hardcore rock out sessions on the snare.  Even the crew would dance around with the kids during off time.  After shooting had wrapped up midweek, the guys invited us to screen a rough cut of the video.  They also showed us a sneak peek of their “WTF” video, and presented each of us with a signed poster board that we had used during the shoot.  They stuck around a couple extra days and followed the ND band around for the game day activities that weekend.  It was a great experience from start to finish.

So that’s what its like to be in an OK Go video.  It’s entertaining, it’s out of the ordinary, it’s tedious at times, but above all it’s exciting— it’s exciting to witness these four guys at work and it’s exciting to be part of something so unique.  Plus, my fine clarinet-playing skills are now immortalized in an OK Go video— take that, future grandkids!

Check out the video in its glorious entirety:

- Patrick Berry, YH Staff