When it comes to totally unique, visually arresting music videos, OK Go won’t let you down. Their latest triumph — for the song “I Won’t Let You Down,” natch — may just be the band’s most impressive yet, and that’s saying a lot. (Remember their treadmill choreography in 2006’s “Here It Goes Again,” or their Rube Goldberg machine in 2010’s “This Too Shall Pass”?)
This time around, bandmates Damian Kulash, Tim Nordwind, Dan Konopka, and Andy Ross had something bigger in mind. Much bigger. Though the video starts with just the four of them dancing and zipping around on seated Segways, it quickly grows to include a troupe of about 30 synchronized dancers with colored umbrellas — and then thousands upon thousands of synchronized dancers with colored umbrellas.
Near the end of the song, the camera flies up by remote-controlled drone to offer a bird’s eye view of the display. Seen from above, it becomes something like a larger-than-life Lite-Brite, with the open umbrellas acting as neon pegs and forming pictures and words with each beat. (You have to see it to truly appreciate it.)
The video — unveiled Monday, Oct. 27, on the Today show — was shot by film director Morihiro Harano, according to Billboard. And it took “approximately 50 to 60 tries to get it right.”
“Usually people make films by thinking of the thing, and then making the thing,” Kulash told the Today anchors of how the video came about. “We think of the thing, then play with it for a month, and then make the thing. And by the end of that month, it’s always a wildly different thing than you would have started with.”
Watch the video for “I Won’t Let You Down” above!
