Timing Is Everything!

If you like planning in milliseconds, super efficiency, and slow motion, you will love the new OK Go One Moment Music Video. It was shot in 4.2 seconds but when you see it in slow motion, you will be amazed at the visual ideas, strategies, and precision of execution. In those 4.2 seconds, there are hundreds of digitally triggered events. Seeing it in slo-mo reveals that the timing is down to the millisecond. Lead vocalist and director Damian Kulash planned every frame of video on a spreadsheet.

It’S All About The Math

As Kulash says of the OK Go One Moment Music Video “It’s not that hard to figure out how long it takes something to fall 12 feet. It’s not that hard to figure out that if the camera is moving 50 feet per second and it’s rotating at 360 degrees per second and you’re on a 24mm lens, how much ground you can cover at 20 feet away. That’s all math that you could do once you’ve gotten through trigonometry.

But the fact that that number then flows downhill to affect all the numbers behind it and all the numbers in front of it makes it very hard to find any solid ground, because you still have so many questions. ‘What frame rate will we be using at this point?’ ‘Are we going to be zoomed in at all?’ Every single part of it had to be thought out in advance, because you can’t adjust anything on the fly. It’s all happening too fast for you to react.”

They spent a month going to the special effects shop to test the timing and look of the video. Watch these behind-the-scenes videos:

Visit the OK Go group’s website. In addition to the official video, OK Go partnered with Morton Salt, Inc. to create an interactive version of the video that honors five individuals who have created groundbreaking organizations to help others. This version if available on the Morton Salt website Walk Her Walk.