Source: www.creativereview.co.uk
By Eliza Williams 27/11/2017
OK Go are renowned for their inventive, fun music videos, so the band’s new film, for song Obsession, quickly ratcheted up millions of views after its release last Thursday.
Created in collaboration with media artist and general tech whizz Daito Manabe and paper brand Double A, the video sees OK Go perform in front of a changing backdrop created entirely from printed paper.
“The art projects we like the best are finding a new sandbox,” says OK Go’s lead singer Damian Kulash. “It’s like someone goes, ‘here’s a new area to play in, what would you do if we gave you access to blank’. And in this case, they were like ‘we have this extra smooth paper, and we’ll give you as much as you want to make an art project’.” As the making-of film below shows, the band were filmed slowly playing their instruments and ‘flying’ in front of the printers as they spat out the paper. The footage was then sped up. “Because of the huge scale of the printers, we only have one-time shoot,” says Daito Manabe. “It has been a trial and error process to make the perfect synchronising system.”
Somewhat incredibly – and testament to the smoothness of Double A’s product – there were no hitches with the printers. “I wasn’t sure it was possible to get tens of thousands of prints through the printer with no errors…,” says Kulash, “[but] we had no printer jams at all.”
The vast amount of paper used was all recycled. In Japan, profits are made by recycling and these were all donated to Greenpeace.
The whole video was a labour of love, requiring 567 printers to build the set. It also took over two-and-a-half years to complete, and required three trips to Japan for the band. Now that, as the song says, is obsession.
Credits:
Creative Agency: SIX
ECD: Takeshi Nozoe
Creative Director: Jin Saito
Brand Agency: SPA-HAKUHODO
Technical Team: Rhizomatiks Research
Planning, Technical Direction, Software Design, Software Engineering: Daito Manabe
Production Company: AOI Pro
Directors: Yusuke Tanaka, Damian Kulash, Jr
Choreographer : MIKIKO