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OK Go’s frontman Damian Kulash and bassist Tim Nordwind sat down with director Aaron Duffy earlier this week to look again on 20 years of the band’s insanely intricate, choreographed movies.
All three spoke for panel with Display Each day movie critic Tim Grierson at a screening for From Treadmills to Industrial Robots: A Retrospective, held on the Fantastic Arts Theater in Beverly Hills on Wednesday. Duffy and the band additionally premiered their music video for “Love,” from their upcoming fifth studio album And the Adjoining Doable, their first album in a decade.
Through the panel, Kulash — additionally the co-director of the 2023 Apple TV+ comedy The Beanie Bubble concerning the ’90s Beanie Infants craze — recalled trying to get Everlasting Sunshine of the Spotless Thoughts filmmaker Michel Gondry to direct a music video for them within the 2000s as he was working with an up-and-coming Kanye West.
“Anyone we knew him and we heard that he had this unbelievable plan — this huge, superior, elaborate, choreographed video that he was doing for some rapper named Kanye or one thing,” Kulash stated with fun. “However we’re the dance band. So we made [a video] simply to ship to him, and it was earlier than YouTube and it went viral on this website referred to as iFilm as a result of folks had been laughing — as a result of it was ridiculous.”
Okay Go‘s Damian Kulash (far left) and Tim Nordwind sit down for a panel with “Love” and “The Writing’s On the Wall” music video director Aaron Duffy and Display Each day senior US critic Tim Grierson.
Danielle Directo-Meston
Gondry labored with West on the video for “Heard ‘Em Say” that includes Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine. Michel’s brother, Olivier Gondry, would find yourself directing a model of the music video for 2005’s “Do What You Need.”
Requested by Grierson if the band ever heard again from Michel Gondry, Kulash replied, “No! And no matter occurred to the rap man?”
OK Go has lengthy been identified for his or her music movies, successful a Grammy for greatest music video in 2007 for “Right here It Goes Once more.” That video was one steady shot of the band performing a treadmill dance routine choreographed by Kulash’s sister Trish Sie, who additionally directed Pitch Good 3. It has since racked up 67 million views on YouTube and was one of many most-viewed movies on the platform throughout YouTube’s early days.
“Sooner or later, we realized it had been downloaded as many instances as we had offered albums and that it was not our rock and roll followers, nevertheless it was individuals who we had been immediately related with,” Kulash stated. “It turned out in that two-year interval, YouTube had began and we had been one of many first issues on it, and it modified all the pieces. Nevertheless it wasn’t attempting to be humorous and even make a rock video as a lot because it was, ‘Superior, we discovered our folks. They like ridiculous stuff and we like making ridiculous stuff.’”
The “Right here It Goes Once more” video was filmed at Sie’s home in between touring for his or her second album, Oh No — with out the information of the band’s administration or their then-label, Capitol Data. Kulash says the band then sat on the video, calling it “not an pressing factor.”
“We instructed our administration we had been going to make one thing, but when we instructed them we had been going to take 10 days off the tour and spend like $4,000 to do that, they [would say], ‘completely not,’” Kulash stated. “It wasn’t till OK Go’s webmaster — Kulash’s “greatest good friend from working at NPR” — nudged the band to launch the video on an “up and coming website referred to as YouTube. I keep in mind being mad at him. However he was proper.”
Duffy additionally beforehand directed the music video for the band’s “The Writing’s On the Wall.” The video for “Love” was filmed at a historic prepare station in Budapest. The tune’s accompanying album And the Adjoining Doable is ready to launch on April 11. At Wednesday night’s occasion, the Kulash additionally mirrored on the evolution of their music video productions since their first launch.
“One factor that struck me watching so as that is that it’s clear that we had been a rock band that didn’t know what to do with the digicam,” Kulash stated. “The thought [was], we’ll stick the digicam over there and we’ll do the stuff. What you do on stage is what you do as a rock band. There was a really gradual growth from being like, ‘I suppose we’ll stick it over right here and dance over there or we may dance on the machine. So I suppose we are able to go to the digicam.’ It’s not been actually concerning the filmmaking a part of it as a lot as can we make an occasion that individuals wish to witness and be within the room for.”
