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.
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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.
