OK Go videography


The rock band OK Go has earned considerable fame for their creative but often low-budget music videos, most of which have been promoted through Internet video sharing sites like YouTube. Many of these have become viral videos; the 2006 video for "Here It Goes Again", in which the band performed a complex routine with the aid of motorized treadmills, has received over 50 million views four years later. Their video for "Needing/Getting", released February 5, 2012 in partnership with Chevrolet, debuted during Super Bowl XLVI and has over 32 million views on YouTube. Samuel Bayer, who produced many music videos in the 1990s, asserted that OK Go's promotion of music videos on the Internet was akin to Nirvana's ushering in the grunge movement. Many of the videos also use long or single-shot takes, which Salons Matt Zoller Seitz says "restore a sense of wonder to the musical number by letting the performers' humanity shine through and allowing them to do their thing with a minimum of filmmaking interference". The success of OK Go's music first won the band the 14th Annual Webby Special Achievement Award for Film and Video Artist of the Year. The video for "This Too Shall Pass" was named both "Video of the Year" and "Best Rock Video" at the 3rd annual UK Music Video Awards."This Too Shall Pass" won the LA Film Fest's Audience Award for Best Music Video, UK MVA Awards – Music Video of the Year Winner 2010, among others.
The band has worked with directors including Francis Lawrence, Olivier Gondry, Brian L. Perkins, Scott Keiner, and Todd Sullivan. The videos have been screened and displayed at museums, art galleries, and film festivals around the world including The Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of the Moving Image, The Edinburgh International Film Festival, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Los Angeles Film Festival, and the Saatchi & Saatchi New Director's Showcase.
In 2008, Damian Kulash said that the band had not produced the YouTube videos as part of any overt "Machiavellian" marketing campaign. "In neither case did we think, 'A-ha, this will get people to buy our records.' It has always been our position that the reason you wind up in a rock band is you want to make stuff. You want to do creative things for a living."

Style

OK Go's distinctive, choreography-heavy performance style first originated from a 1999 appearance on the Chicago-based public television show "Chic-a-GoGo"; WBEZ radio personalities Peter Sagal, Jerome McDonnell of Worldview, Gretchen Helfrich and Ira Glass pretended to play instruments to "C-C-C-Cinnamon Lips" as OK Go danced, because the band wasn't allowed to play live on the show. On August 31, 2006, OK Go appeared live at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards performing their treadmill routine for "Here It Goes Again". On November 7, 2006, OK Go released a deluxe limited edition CD/DVD of the album Oh No. The DVD contains their music videos, a video of 180 fans performing the "A Million Ways" dance for a YouTube contest, previously unseen footage, and a behind-the-scenes look at their treadmill rehearsals for the "Here It Goes Again" video and for the MTV VMAs.

Discography

;Studio Albums
  • OK Go
  • Oh No
  • Of the Blue Colour of the Sky
  • Hungry Ghosts
  • And the Adjacent Possible ''''

    Videos

Videos from ''OK Go">OK Go (album)">OK Go''

"Get Over It"">Get Over It (OK Go song)">"Get Over It"

  • Released August 2002.
  • Directed by Francis Lawrence.
  • 6 million YouTube views
  • The video features the band performing in a lodge while the camera settles on room details that interpret lyrics from the song.

    "Don't Ask Me"">Don't Ask Me (OK Go song)">"Don't Ask Me"

  • Released 2003.
  • Directed by Barnaby Roper.
  • 2.2 million YouTube views
  • The official video released by Capitol Records for "Don't Ask Me," the band's second single, features the band performing in a black and white room with a backup dancer. The video was edited to make it seem like there were multiple backup dancers.

    "Don't Ask Me (Dance Booth)"

  • Released 2003.
  • Directed by Brian L. Perkins.
  • 300,000 YouTube views
  • This video features fans and band members dancing against a red background. It was filmed during the band's tour with The Vines by frequent collaborator Brian Perkins.

    "You're So Damn Hot"

  • Directed by Scott Keiner.
  • 1.3 million YouTube views
  • The music video for "You're So Damn Hot" shows various clips of the band on tour, back stage, on stage, meeting fans, etc.

    "What To Do"

  • 460,000 YouTube views
  • Black & White, features a trombone player and woman sitting casually halfway-offscreen in addition to the band.

    Videos from ''Oh No">Oh No (OK Go album)">Oh No''

"[A Million Ways]"

  • Directed by OK Go, Choreographed by Trish Sie.
  • 5.3 million YouTube views
  • This simple video of the band practicing choreography in the lead singer's back yard became the band's first viral hit, even though it was not originally intended for public consumption. In a paper entitled "Here We Go Again: Music Videos After YouTube" Maura Edmond writes that the footage "became immensely popular on iFilm and other online video sites before the band had thought to use the footage specifically as a “music video” and before they had sought approval for the clip from their label." The video was screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2006.

    "[Here It Goes Again]"

  • Released July 31, 2006
  • Co-directed by OK Go and Trish Sie.
  • 59 million YouTube views
  • The video for "Here It Goes Again" features the band performing an elaborately choreographed dance routine on eight treadmills set up in the home of director and choreographer Trish Sie. The band practiced the routine for a week before shooting the video, and kept the master copy on Damian Kulash's laptop for a year before releasing the video on YouTube. The original YouTube video was viewed by over one million people in the first six days after it was uploaded, and was viewed over 52 million times before it was removed from the band's channel, making it the 42nd most viewed YouTube video and the 29th most viewed music video. It is also YouTube's 7th most favorited video and the #1 most favorited music video of all time. The video became the most played video on MTV and VH1 in the United States, the most purchased video on iTunes in the United States and the UK, and the #2 video at MTV2 in the UK, and was featured in a Nike+iPod commercial in 2007. As of September 2017, the new upload has more than 37 million views. OK Go performed the "Here It Goes Again" routine live on treadmills at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards, after spending a week rehearsing at the Alvin Ailey Dance Studios in Manhattan. The video won the 2006 YouTube Award for Most Creative Video and the 2007 Grammy Award for "Best Short-Form Music Video". In 2011, "Here It Goes Again" was named one of the 30 best music videos of all time by Time Magazine.

    "Invincible"">Invincible (OK Go song)">"Invincible"

  • Co-directed by OK Go and Mike Barnett.
  • 2.7 million YouTube views
  • The music video for "Invincible" is a split-screen video. On the right side, the video shows OK Go playing the song. On the left side, the video shows various household objects exploding.

    "Do What You Want"">Do What You Want (OK Go song)">"Do What You Want" (Party Version)

  • Directed by Olivier Gondry.
  • For this performance-style video, director Olivier Gondry employed 28 different cameras to capture a frenetic party scene.

    "Do What You Want"">Do What You Want (OK Go song)">"Do What You Want" (Wallpaper Version)

  • Co-directed by Damian ''Kulash, Mary Fagot, and James Frost.''
  • 3 million YouTube views
  • The second video for Do What You Want featured the band members and a number of performers from Los Angeles fully covered in the wallpaper pattern that was featured on the cover of the band's second album. In a publicity stunt before the video's release, the band wore suits made of the wall paper pattern on the red carpet of the 2007 Grammy Awards.

    Videos from ''[Of the Blue Colour of the Sky]''

"WTF?"">WTF? (song)">"WTF?"

  • Released November 17, 2009.
  • Co-directed by OK Go and Tim Nackashi.
  • 5.2 million YouTube views
  • "WTF?" was the first video released off of OK Go's third album Of the Blue Colour of the Sky. It is a single-shot music video filmed on a green screen, then edited to stack each frame filmed on top of the one before it, creating a psychedelic effect. In 2010, the band published a program made using Processing that allows users to recreate the effect seen in the video with a webcam.

    "This Too Shall Pass">This Too Shall Pass (OK Go song)">This Too Shall Pass" Official Video (Marching Band)

  • Released January 8, 2010 featuring the University of Notre Dame's Band of the Fighting Irish.
  • Co-directed by Damian Kulash and Brian Perkins.
  • 14 million YouTube views
  • OK Go's first video for "This Too Shall Pass" is a single-shot music video collaboration with 125 members of the University of Notre Dame's marching band and 50 students from Perley Elementary and Good Shepherd Montessori School in South Bend, Indiana. The video took 20 takes to complete correctly. The band contacted Notre Dame after seeing a YouTube clip of the marching band performing Here It Goes Again at a football game.

    "This Too Shall Pass">This Too Shall Pass (OK Go song)">This Too Shall Pass" Rube Goldberg Machine

  • Released March 1, 2010 in partnership with State Farm Insurance.
  • Co-directed by Damian Kulash and James Frost.
  • 71 million YouTube views
  • OK Go's second video for "This Too Shall Pass" is a music video of the band performing within an elaborate Rube Goldberg Machine built in a warehouse in the Echo Park area of Los Angeles. The video appears to be a single shot video, but the video actually shows 3 different takes. Production began in November 2009 and continued through two days of filming on February 11 & 12, 2010 with a total crew of 60 builders and production staff. The machine, which rolls metal balls down tracks, swings sledgehammers, pours water, unfurls flags, drops a flock of umbrellas from the second story, and shoots paint cannons at the band, was precisely designed to be synchronized with the song. The video took about 60 takes to be completed correctly, with one hour and a staff of 30 required to reset the machine between takes. This video was the 7th most-watched video of 2010, and as such was featured on the 2010 YouTube Rewind.