“This Too Shall Pass” is the second single off OK Go’s third studio album Of the Blue Colour of the Sky.  And the music video for it is INSANE.  The entire video was shot in one take and it features the most intricate Rube Goldberg sequence you will ever see.  You know what the Rube Goldberg sequence is–you just never heard the name before.  Named for an inventor of the same name, the word “Rube Goldberg” is an adjective defined as accomplishing something simple through complex means.  In the case of this video, an OK Go band member drives a toy truck into a line of dominos (at the beginning) to result in the four band members getting sprayed in the face by paint (at the end).  A simple action reaches a reaction through a complex process.  Get it?  Now watch this video a couple times and try to fathom how truly insane it is.

So how’d they manage to do it?  OK Go teamed up with creative engineers Synn Labs and built the elaborate contraption in a warehouse in LA.  It took a 55-60 person team about a month and a half to construct, with much attention to detail.  Though the video was shot with a single camera in one unbroken continuous shot, it took over two days to shoot because they couldn’t get it to work perfectly until about 60 shots had failed.  They brought the concept of ‘trial and error’ to a whole new level.  And it was important for OK Go lead singer Damian Kulash that this whole thing be done without computer manipulation: “Computers can do any of this.  But the whole point is that we’re doing it, like it’s homemade, it’s real things knocking into each other and falling over.  It’s a celebration of actual root level physics.  Screw computers.”  Interested in more behind-the-scenes scoop?  There’s a bunch of videos waiting after the break…

[Via Wired]