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Watch OK Go Bend Time To Their Will In The New 'The One Moment' Video

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Nov 23, 2016 3:51PM

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Still from "The One Moment" video courtesy OK Go

We figured something was up when a slew of short videos and stills from OK Go on the set of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert showed up in our Instagram feed Tuesday evening. The band was on set taping a performance to celebrate the release of their latest video "The One Moment,” one of our favorite songs off their last album, Hungry Ghosts.*

OK Go has a history of pushing the boundaries of the art of the music video, and “The One Moment” continues that tradition. The band has come a long way from their days of choreographed backyard treadmill routines though. Hungry Ghosts alone has already featured videos shot in zero gravity and captured by elaborately choreographed drones.

“The One Moment” was shot in a period of time spanning 4.2 seconds—get it, one moment?—and features 325 individual events controlled by digital triggers.

Damian Kulash, the band’s lead singer, explained the process in a statement released this morning: "We shot with extremely high-speed cameras, which allows us to stretch those few seconds over the full length of the song. Our fastest frame rate was a little over 6000 frames per second, which effectively slows down time to be 20,000 percent slower than we normally experience it. At those moments, we're seeing things move through the air that, in real life, are moving faster than the speed of sound."

Yeah, that sounds confusing to us too. We just enjoy watching the dang thing.

It’s been too long since the band’s last album, so perhaps they’ve stretched time in a similar manner when it comes to the recording studio? Well, at least “The One Moment” proves they’re not just sitting around doing nothing.


(Full disclosure: “The One Moment” was the recessional music at this writer’s wedding, so I may have a bit of a sentimental attachment to the tune. But the video is pretty great even if you don’t take that into account.)