As well-known for their videos as their music (if not more), the quartet known as OK Go has delivered some visually impressive music videos over the years. From an elaborately choreographed routine captured by a flying drone camera, to a zero-gravity adventure aboard the “Vomit Comet,” to a slow-motion extravaganza of destruction made from just four seconds of video, their videos are technical masterpieces.
The video for their latest single Obsession, from the 2016 album Hungry Ghosts, stars lots and lots of printers. 567 of them, to be exact. The enormous double wall of printers behind the band pumps out reams and reams of paper, creating a kaleidoscope of shapes and colors during the song. Although it features lots of stop-motion, the video was shot continuously, and perhaps the most amazing thing is that not a single printer jammed up.
Renowned digital artist Daito Manabe conceived and designed the project known as “Paper Mapping” using Double A paper. “Because of the huge scale of the printers, we only have one-time shoot,” he said. “It has been a trial and error process to make perfect synchronizing system.”
Karen Singh created the designs printed on each sheet of paper, and well-known choreographer MIKIKO conceived the movements of the band members, which included spinning in the air while suspended in front of the weall of printers.
The video was directed by band member Damian Kulash, Jr. & Yusuke Tanaka and was shot in one take over five days of filming in Japan. From initial concept to release, the video took more than two years to complete.
The video was actually delayed in publishing to YouTube, as the site’s Auto HD function caused some problems. “Just leaving it on ‘Auto HD’ results in some pretty intense distortion during a few sections, because when the colors and patterns get crazy, there’s actually just too much information flying by for YouTube’s normal HD compression. We broke the matrix.” They recommend manually setting the resolution to 1440p or 2160p.
If you’re wondering what happened to all that paper, the band has promised that it was all recycled and the proceeds donated to Greenpeace. No word on the budget for ink cartridges, though.
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