Here It Goes Again Ok Go Hd
Kristin Dowling/PicturGroup
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[Also read our interview with OK Become's Tim Nordwind.]
Pop-stone quartet OK Get writes pretty catchy songs, but it's their wildly creative YouTube endeavors that have made them famous. If you're not already ane of the 60 million YouTube viewers who've seen their "treadmill video"—the song is actually called "Hither It Goes Over again"—then go watch information technology earlier you read (below) how they made it work. Speaking of making things work, the band's subsequent video blockbuster "This Likewise Shall Pass" involved a full-size Rube Goldberg contraption that filled an entire rented warehouse. (Why bother explaining? Go watch it below.) Their recent video, "White Knuckles" guest stars an unabridged pack of trained canines and their brand new one, "Concluding Leaf," involves thousands of pieces of toast. OK Get's videos, and its unique brand of fame, beg all sorts of fun questions—questions that vocaliser/guitarist Damian Kulash was kind enough to answer for us. (Nosotros also striking upwards his always-fashionable ring mate, singer/bassist Tim Nordwind, to talk about the music that makes his video-befuddled mind tick.)
Mother Jones: Tell us almost the taping of your treadmill video.
Damian Kulash: We made it with my sister, Trish Sie, who had recently retired from professional ballroom dancing, and nosotros spent eight days at her dance studio in Orlando working on information technology. The first mean solar day or 2, nosotros tried out arrangements for the machines, trying to maximize the diversity of moves that would be possible, and minimize the visual lark of the machines themselves. After that, we played on the machines for four or five days, which is to say nosotros hurled ourselves at them and saw what happened. Every then often we'd come up with a great motility. One time we had a sufficient bag of tricks, we sequenced together a routine and began practicing. If I remember correctly, at that place were 17 or 18 takes, just we merely completed the routine two or three times. Somewhat surprisingly, there were no injuries that required a infirmary visit—the worst we got were scrapes and pretty serious rug-burn. Or I suppose yous'd call information technology tread-burn.
The biggest claiming, choreographically, was figuring out how to keep something happening, how to keep something interesting in frame. Unlike normal trip the light fantastic moves, everything 1 does on treadmills ends by spitting you off-screen, so it took some work.
MJ: How long did it take to make your Rube Goldberg video?
DK: Just under half-dozen months. A team of a dozen engineers (now operating under the title Syyn Labs) responded enthusiastically to my posting and were willing to work within our nearly nonexistent budget. Within 3 months, we'd rented the warehouse and compiled a basic outline of how the machine would run. We'd mapped a basic arc of the vocal in wide, descriptive strokes similar "small-scale, marble-based stuff here, large colorful flying things there" and anchored information technology to a few specific moments nosotros knew we wanted to incorporate—similar the kabuki screens, the sling-shot, and the pigment cannons. A month afterward, the song had been broken up into half dozen-second segments and each was assigned to an engineer or grouping of engineers to piece of work on. 2 or three weeks before the shoot date, the band returned from bout and basically moved into the work space.
Everyone'south view of what exactly makes a Rube Goldberg Car magical is somewhat unlike, so these last few weeks were sort of a panicked rush to redesign and re-jigger parts of the automobile effectually the band'southward particular vision. Surprisingly, nosotros mostly ran into problems where the modules were also well-designed, or were the product of much builder-ly skill or high-tech trickery. Engineers tend to want to solve bug unambiguously, with generous margins of mistake, but we wanted the motorcar to be flirting with impossibility. Things that are built to be reliable look that way, and the spirit of the machine needs to be hitting tiny, unlikely bulls-eyes rather than building bulls-eyes that you tin't miss. The concluding calendar week was spent figuring out a photographic camera path, lighting the machine, and manically testing and redesigning things—there were major changes up until the moment we started shooting, and tweaks all the way through the last take. My dad and my roommate had joined the squad at this point. They and I designed the table of stuff that I'thousand sitting behind at the top of the first verse. I've never seen my dad stay up so tardily earlier—I recollect him trying to perfect the arc of the mousetrap catapult at similar 3 a.m. Nosotros shot for 2 straight days and did 89 takes. We only reached the end of the automobile three times.
MJ: What inspires your inner videographer?
DK: Simple ideas. I'k especially enamored of narrow creative boundaries—tight systems of rules that reveal human creativity pushing back. That'southward the master reason I like shooting things in single takes. You have to rely on the thought itself to acquit the full weight; you're always watching the thought, not the filmmaking.
MJ: Does it bug yous that OK Get is amend known for its visuals than for the music
DK: People ask us that all the time, and it follows from the traditional logic of music videos. They're supposed to exist advertisements, funded by tape labels to sell records. But our videos are our creative projects just like our songs, our albums, or our concerts are. We see them as endpoints, not ancillary promotional material. It sounds pat, simply nosotros become up in the forenoon because we dearest making things; nosotros live for the thrill of chasing exciting projects.
MJ: Has all this YouTube honey brought you any unusual offers?
DK: Sure. The twenty-four hours the treadmill video was released, we were playing a festival outside Moscow. Our characterization never promoted or even released our album there, but the success of the "A Million Ways" video led to an offer. We've headlined shows of thousands, occasionally tens of thousands, in other places where our characterization never promoted our tape: Johannesburg, Taipei, Seoul, Oulu (that's northern Finland—I'd never heard of information technology before). Our first gig in Brazil volition be headlining the Brazilian MTV awards. We've likewise been contacted past lots of really fascinating and sometimes totally crazy people online. Generally, it's pretty inspiring—nosotros tend to resonate with a brand of self-motivated creative people who connect with the independent, nontraditional spirit of the things we make, so nosotros become really amazing emails from nun-chuckers and roboticists and inventors. We almost ever invite further collaboration.
MJ: In a Washington Mail op-ed this past Baronial, y'all criticized Google and Verizon for hatching a plan that would undermine internet neutrality, and called upon the FCC to push button for regulatory action. What practice you think the online world will be like in five to ten years if internet neutrality isn't preserved?
DK: I recall it will substantially turn into cable Goggle box. The big telecoms will make up one's mind what gets to travel in the fast lane, and instead of the free-for-all meritocracy we have at present, we'll become whatever they decide to serve us. The engine of innovation and new ideas that the internet has been for the last several decades will turn into a slightly sexier, pan-advisory version of the on-need service you get from your cable provider.
MJ: What adventure do ordinary YouTube music fan take confronting the telecom behemoths?
DK: Information technology's the skillful erstwhile paradox of republic. We are individually pretty small drops in the bucket, but collectively we are all powerful. The bad guys in the net neutrality fight accept ii basic tactics, and both of them can exist defended against. The commencement is to offer wonderful new advances that they command. Everyone loves the idea of internet fast plenty that HD movies download in seconds, simply if merely the telecoms or their partners get to use the high speeds, it's not the internet: It's glorified cablevision. So we just demand to be careful not to autumn for the bait. Faster is not better if it's not yet open up, fair, and neutral. The second tactic is rhetorical: They'd like to convince us that the consequence is too complicated and technical for us to understand—leave tech policy to tech companies, because it's over our heads. Information technology's a classic. The bankers pulled off a similar feat, and expect where that got usa. Then all we need to do here is keep reminding everyone that there's cipher complicated about basic equality and fairness.
Source: https://www.motherjones.com/media/2010/11/damian-kulash-ok-go-interview/
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