Ok Go Says Ok to Stop Motion Animation

I can remember the first time I saw Rufus Wainwright perform. I was sitting in a theatre in Northampton, Massachussetts, with my sister, anxiously waiting for him to take the stage. However, a band we had never heard of, Ok Go, was slated to take the stage first as the evening's opening act. We had no idea what to expect.

When the curtains parted, four scruffy dudes took their places on the stage, flanked by guitars, synth keyboards, drums and basses. Within the first few chords of their opening song, my sister and I knew we were in for a treat. The band attacked their instruments with vigor, ripping into strings and keys, bopping to the beat, and singing with their heads thrown back, clearly having the time of their lives. Their energy and enthusiasm seeped out into the audience, and within minutes everyone in the auditorium was on their feet, dancing along to the music. When Ok Go got to their last song, they outdid themselves by putting down their instruments, lining up on the front of the stage, and dancing an extremely complicated and intricately choreographed number that had the audience roaring with delight and laugher. Here was a band that was not only extremely talented musically, but able to have a great time while performing and not take themselves too seriously.

Flash forward to Summer 2010 and Ok Go has had a number of solid and successful records under their belt. One of the reigning bands in the Indie scene, they have made a huge name for themselves by releasing amazing viral music videos that people can't stop talking about. One of these videos, a four and a half minute masterpiece for the song "End Love" makes use of incredible technology and stop-motion animation.

To make the video, Ok Go choreographed an intricate dance number (in outrageous outfits of course) and had a videographer record them dancing in an urban setting. I wasn't able to find the details on the making of the video itself, so I researched stop-motion animation, and found a simple explanation on answerbag.com. Conventional film is made up of a series of pictures that, when strung together rather quickly, become a fluid, seemingly continuous motion. The gaps between the different pictures are so fast that our brain cannot interpret them - about 24 frames per second.

Stop-motion animation, however, has a slower rate of frames per second. The gaps between the images are bigger, so our brain can clearly see when images change from one to the next, making for a more jilted stream of motion. Stop-motion in film can be created a number of ways. Two common options are photographing a scene, moving the images just slightly, then photographing them again until an action sequence has taken place; or filming a scene as you normally would but dropping frames here and there in post-production. I suspect that Ok Go must've used the second option, as this long video would have taken forever to film the first way!

And now, without further ado, the video for Ok Go's "End Love." Enjoy!



If you'd like to see some of Ok Go's other awesome music videos, follow the links below.

Here it Goes Again
This too Shall Pass
Do What You Want