If you were on Fstoppers last week (or anywhere on the internet for that matter), you probably saw the newest music video from popular band OK Go. The band is known for their incredibly complicated filming, choreography, and performances which go into each video. Their latest song "Upside Down & Inside Out," is no exception as they take their act into a Zero Gravity filming situation. As they've done past for past music videos, this one was also followed up with a behind the scenes look at how they accomplished their latest viral hit.
The concept for this video took the band all the way to cosmonaut training facility outside of Moscow, Russia. There, the band learned how to maneuver in a weightless environment; a feat that when first attempted often empties ones stomach, or let's you work on your mid air swimming technique. With a great deal of practice, a routine was developed and a system put in place to communicate with the pilots of their plane.
Since weightlessness can only be achieved in a plane for periods of 27 seconds, the crew had to break up the song into 8 different sections. Each section was filmed with a weightless period followed by a period of double gravity. The plane then had to take 4-5 minutes to climb back up to a safe altitude before the maneuver could be repeated. This meant that the performance had to stop every 27 seconds and each person had to hold their position perfectly to create a clean video cut. If you watch the BTS, they point out the moments where gravity begins to shift and the cuts were made. Another interesting point made in the BTS video was that each section of the song is 21 seconds long when played in real time. To compensate for slow movements that result in zero gravity, their performance on the plane done to a slow version of the song that took 27 seconds and then sped up in post to match the real time rhythm of 21 seconds.
OK Go's ability to put such careful preparation and imagination into so many projects is truly inspiring. If this doesn't motivate you to dream about projects bigger than what you think you can achieve, I'm not sure what will.
O_O AWESOOOOOOMEEE!
I just want to know how they kept all that paint off of the lens!
Lucky take...
"Anyway, on that final day, we didn’t really get the perfect take on our two flights. We had an okay-ish one and we had a good one that, sadly, was ruined by paint hitting the lens in the final scene. We were offered one extra flight, just 8 parabolas, one final attempt before leaving and calling it a day."