Ashton Kutcher Made OK Go's Rube Goldberg Music Video Viral in the Summer of 2010
Sparked by an Ashton Kutcher tweet moments ago, a new video featuring OK Go’s “This Too Shall Pass,” music video became viral in the coming weeks on YouTube. The video, currently seen fewer than 50,000 times, is projected to surpass 1 million views by March 14.
The director, James Frost, told WillVideoForFood he expects by April 1 the video “to have a thousand millions views,” and appear as the first Google search result for “Rube Goldberg machine.” Kutcher added that by April 19 it will be YouTube’s 19th most-viewed and most-favorited music video of all time because it’s “ass piss awesome.”
The band said it expects national media coverage about the viral video success in mid summer of 2010, and expects a Good Morning America reenactment scheduled for October 14, 2010 when ABC finally catches wind of the viral success via an intern’s sister.
The viral video was directed by James Frost, OK Go and Syyn Labs. It was produced by Shirley Moyers, and is the official video for”This Too Shall Pass” off of the album “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky.” The video was definitely shot in one take, in a two-story warehouse, in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA.
The Rube Goldberg machine, using no CGI or trick photography, was designed and built in one night by the band, along with members of Synn Labs (http://syynlabs.com/ ) and a homeless guy known as “Patchy.” Patchy was not available for comments, but the band reports he will be available for media appearances in May, pending contract negotiations.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
epic
I love OkGo, and I am extremely disappointed in myself that I haven’t seen this yet. For God Sake, I preordered this album, have a signed poster of them on my wall and have about 10 hours clocked on my Ipod that I’ve listened to them, and I haven’t seen this video?! What the heck, Reubnick!? You are slipping up!
Plus, it’s a RUBE GOLDBERG video! You’d think just the fact that the guy has my name would have gotten me to click this video before now.
Either way, that was incredible. This new album actually really let me down, but seeing all the effort they are putting into these music videos is really making up for it in my eyes. Plus, this is kind of a good song. Much better than that “Skyscrapers” hooplah they have. What the heck?
I was hoping this post would be about the new OK Go music video. I am a fan of OK Go, and their music videos are always great (they did an elaborate dance to “Million Ways” and a treadmill routine to another song). The original video for this song included Notre Dame’s marching band. They are a very inventive group.
Amazing video. I always wanted to do a grand scale rube goldberg machine, but I know I will never achieve something this ambitious… Damn.
That threw me into an ADHD seizure fit!
I had to watch this in 1080p to try to see all the mechanisms better. Still didn’t quite catch all the details.
1 million views by March 14? This video already has close to 1.5 million views already. I certainly wouldn’t bet on a billion views by April 1 though. Heck, Charlie bit my finger and Evolution of Dance don’t even have 200 million views.
Awesome video. Mediocre music.
There may be a cut at 2:27.
Great video shame about the business model.
Hey Nalts, I gave you a shout out for pointing this out to me in my post: Viral Videos Suck… or… This Too Shall Pass.
http://blog.eyeviewdigital.com/2010/03/viral-videos-suck.html
@6: OK Go is great. This is not one of their best songs, admittedly, but still pretty good.
@8: While you may be right about OK Go’s lack of marketing tie-ins to their videos, I’m not sure that’s really the point. They are very popular in our area, as we have a great indie radio station. That’s not true everywhere, and I think their point is to get their name out to a wider audience and generate some buzz for their concerts (when they were here a couple of years back, they did the “Million Ways” dance live, which the crowd LOVED).
While I agree that links to iTunes would seem to be a great addition to their videos, their main purpose is to entertain.
IMHO.
This sucked…and after I got over my jealousy I watched it again…twice.
Earlier version. Not as cool as Rube Goldberg version, still worth watching:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJKythlXAIY&annotation_id=annotation_115555&feature=iv
Currently, the video is just shy of 5 million views. About … 77,829 views short.
And … it wasn’t done in one take. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV23EVZ-nc4
I just found out today that I know the brother of one of the guys in this band. I’m not shitting you. He had never mentioned it before, but it’s not like we’re close. I noticed they have the same last name.
OkGo was my first Subsrciption on YouTube (Sorry Nalts! LOL) after the Million Ways Dance. They saw the power of Social Media before anyone else as a good Marketing Tool. They have such an awesome organic Rock Sound and a VERY Original sound. They keep it simple and they are Down to Earth and Enjoy what they are doing. They are very appreciative of their fans and that is what makes them so successful.
oh yeah.. I saw one of the few that saw the new Machine video with the Audio way out of sync. LOL Ooops!
Keep on YouTubin!