Skip to main content

OK Go’s new music video is an explosive, slow motion visual feast

OK Go – The One Moment – Official Video
Where do you go after making some massively popular, and highly innovative music videos? If you’re rock band OK Go, you slow things down. Right down. The video accompanying the band’s song The One Moment has just 4.2 seconds of footage, that’s shown is spectacular slow motion to last the entire length of the just over 4-minute song.

OK Go previously caught video fans attention ten years ago with Here It Goes Again, shot while the band dances on treadmills, and more recently, the incredible zero gravity video for Upside Down & Inside Out. The One Moment continues the tradition of visually arresting, excitingly creative music videos.

Recommended Videos

More: 12 of the greatest Rube Goldberg contraptions, from OK Go to Mythbusters

Please enable Javascript to view this content

The video opens with the 4.2 seconds of footage played in real time, then when the song begins, it’s played back at a fraction of the speed. Highlights include many, many exploding balloons, breaking glass, oversize flip books, and a lot of colourful paint being spilt. There are 318 special events in the video, all set in motion by digital triggers, synced up to cameras attached to robotic arms. If you’re counting, these include 128 gold water balloons exploding, 54 salt bursts, and 23 paint buckets spilling their contents.

Although it may look it, the action isn’t actually played back at a single speed; but it’s the frame rate that varies, going as low as 60 frames-per-second, up to 6,000 frames per second when the guitars explode. All the timings were worked out on a spreadsheet 400 rows long and 25 columns wide, meaning the video is as much a mathematical masterpiece as a visual one. It was also impossible to capture the footage with a single camera movement, as no rig can match the speed needed to do so, so it ends up featuring seven movements all connected together.

The band’s lead singer Damian Kulash directed the video, and also made a short making-of video, which can be seen on the band’s Facebook page. If you’re wondering where the #WalkHerWalk hashtag comes from, it’s a campaign run by Morton Salt, supporting young people working on environmentally important projects. Morton Salt worked with OK Go on the video, having approaching the band after thinking the song’s message suited the campaign.

Download The One Moment now

Andy Boxall
Andy is a Senior Writer at Digital Trends, where he concentrates on mobile technology, a subject he has written about for…
How to download music from SoundCloud on desktop and mobile
Soundcloud Interface on a Macbook.

If you’re a huge music fan, you’ve probably combed through the many playlists, artists, and albums of your Spotify or Apple Music subscription. But what about all the indie artists of the world? Some music-streaming platforms are better than others at celebrating the
‘unsung gem’ acts, but one of the most reliable forums for new, off-the-grid tunes is SoundCloud.

Founded in 2007, SoundCloud has always prioritized music that’s a bit under the radar. With over 320 million tracks in its library, the platform will even let you download a majority of its songs and albums.

Read more
The best kids headphones of 2024: for fun, safety, and sound
Two kids using the Puro Sound PuroQuiet Plus to watch something on a tablet.

Kid-friendly consumer tech is all the rage these days, so it’s no surprise that there’s an entire market of headphones designed exclusively for young ones. But when we think “kid-friendly,” sometimes we imagine products that are built to be a bit more throwaway than their adult counterparts. That’s not the case with the products on our list of the best headphones for kids, though.

We want our child-tailored headphones to include parental-controlled volume limiters, to ensure our children aren’t harming their eardrums. Pretty much every entry on our list checks this vital box, but we also wanted to point you and yours toward products that offer exceptional noise-canceling, built-in mics for phone and video calls, and long-lasting batteries for schooldays or a long flight.

Read more
How to master your equalizer settings for the perfect sound
An equalizer from eqMac.

While most people will simply flip on the radio or load up Spotify to listen to music, audiophiles like to dig a bit deeper and customize their experience. This often comes in the form of adjustments to the equalizer, which offers the freedom to tweak every aspect of the sound booming out of headphones or speakers. Even some streaming services now have built-in EQs, giving you more ways than ever to play with your music and find something that best fits your ears.

Tinkering with the equalizer can be daunting to newcomers, as there are tons of cryptic settings you can manipulate. And if you mess with the wrong one, your sound quality might take a nasty hit. Thankfully, learning the basics isn't too difficult.

Read more