Trish Sie Reveals How OK Go Filmed In Zero-G

US alt-rock band OK Go are known as much for their eye-catchingly entertaining promos as they are for their upbeat and catchy tunes. Often featuring meticulous choreography and colourful settings the band always pushes the boundaries of what's possible.

For their latest promo, Upside Down & Inside Out, they've really reached for the stars, literally. Shot in zero-g the promo sees the band performing a gravity-defying routine in an aeroplane hurtling towards the ground.

To find out how the video was made, shots talked to the director, long-time collaborator and sister of lead singer, Damian Kulash, Trish Sie.

Where and when did the idea for this video first originate?

Damian and I first hatched the idea when we flew on NASA's version of the "Vomit Comet" back in November 2012. This is the plane that flies parabolic manoeuvres, giving you 25-30-second stretches of simulated weightlessness.

We came away from that fact-finding mission with the sense that the amount of time, preparation, coordination, money, and effort required to create the kind of precision and structure for which OK Go videos are known would forever render it an impossible fantasy. 

I have to ask, is it genuinely all in-camera, zero-gravity footage?

YES! It really, truly is all in-camera, zero-g footage! True weightlessness is like nothing else, you couldn't quite get this effect with wires or green screen or animation. There's a unique quality to zero-g that just can't be manufactured.

It's an unfamiliar look for us, since we don't see it all that often. And our brains want to attribute it to CG or camera gimmicks, but the fact is, things don't move quite the same way when hanging on threads or pieced together in a computer.

There's nothing like the pure freedom of an actual body or a solid object just dangling in mid-air, free to move in any direction and at any speed (so long as you can find something to push off of and something to stop it!). The dreamlike quality and utterly surreal effect of objects and people floating around seems so magical-that's what drew us to this concept in the first place.

Despite all the motion-sickness and feelings of disorientation or stress you may experience up there, it also feels like a miracle. It's like being in an alternate universe or another dimension for a moment. We wanted to capture that.

From a technical standpoint, you can see there are seven points throughout the video where gravity returns. This is because we only had weightlessness for about 27 seconds at a time. So we divided the song into 8 segments, each fitting inside one zero-g period. We performed them all in sequence.

When each chunk of song/choreography/weightlessness was finished, the band stayed perfectly still while the plane climbed up for the next parabola. Our editor, Meg Ramsay, stitched the sections together in order and used a morph to smooth over the seams. 

How did you and the band rehearse for this, with the zero-gravity moves obviously not being easy to replicate?

Planning and rehearsal was the biggest challenge here, since OK Go are so committed to impeccably and methodically planned choreography that requires lots of practice and fine-tuning.

We divided the production into three stages: Play Time and Testing, Roadmap Creation and Rehearsal and Shoot.

For the first stage we went to Russia and spent a week flying in zero-g, gathering information about what was possible and what was out of the question; what moves were effective and which ones were disappointing;  what objects, textures, and movements stood out and made you say, "Wow."

We filmed everything and we timed everything; each parabola, the way the flight crew communicated, every experiment we attempted. Then we came home to LA and watched ALL of it, sifting through the tests and assembling a vocabulary of our favourite bits.

For the roadmap stage, we got together in a dance studio here in LA and assembled a rough sketch of what we imagined was going to be a well-shaped dance that could keep people's interest and continue changing and developing as it progressed.

One thing we learned from all our tests was that everything looks pretty much the same in zero-g. The way objects hang in the air tricks your brain into thinking you're watching slo-mo all the time. And controlling yourself and your momentum is very difficult. So combatting those choreographic challenges- brainstorming about ways to create impact and contrast- these were priorities.

For the last stage, we returned to Russia and spent a week rehearsing and refining our roadmap up in the sky. A lot of what we had planned was working; a lot had to be reimagined. We were finishing the set and figuring out costumes, props, lighting and camera rig issues and such at the same time. Then we spent a week shooting. We got three decent takes on that last day, but one of them was the clear winner.

It all looks like it’s shot in one take, as is the usual OK Go approach; is that the case here too and if so, were there added difficulties because of the environment?

We shot the dance in a single take-that was significant to us. We absolutely did not want a montage of cool things people could do in weightlessness. We were going for the OK Go brand of meticulousness and the unfolding shape that their videos achieve so well. Each take took about 45 minutes - eight parabolas per take. 

Can you tell us about the partnership with S7 airlines?

S7 was a terrific partner. They gave us a lot of room to breathe and they were incredibly patient and respectful of our unorthodox creative process. I'm sure it made them anxious that halfway into this thing, we still couldn't give them a clear idea of exactly what was going to happen, but they trusted us to do it our way in order to get the result we all wanted. It's so smart and progressive of them to enable an incredible dream like this, then step back and let it happen in a very natural and creative way.

How long did you/the band spend in a zero gravity environment, and how did you cope with it during and after the shoot?

We figure that we spent about 160 or 170 minutes in weightlessness over the course of this entire project. That was a luxury, of course-it's pricey to be in zero-g! But it's also not a lot of time to hone your piece and work out all the kinks. Most OK Go videos require HOURS and HOURS of rehearsal. We did 21 flights in all, with 15 parabolas per flight. This was over the course of a month, total. 

It's stressful on the body and mind, for sure. I mean, you're in a giant Russian aircraft accelerating toward the earth at high speeds. When you stop to think about it, you can get freaked out.

And you get sick, of course. There's a lot of vomit up there. And we had quite a few crew members give up and walk off the project it was just too uncomfortable. Motion-sickness patches were our best friends.

It looks like it was a tremendous amount of fun, is that really the case?

It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times! The euphoria of actually FLYING makes you feel giddy with freedom. It's enchanted. But of course, you get a few seconds of that exhilaration, and the rest of the time you're on the floor of a soaking wet airplane, sometimes in DOUBLE gravity, sure that a herd of elephants has dropped on your chest and your kidneys are being squeezed out, as the plane pulls out of the parabola.

You're dealing with a crew that speaks a different language and is not always sure what the hell you're trying to do. There's no airport hangar- between flights you stand out on a barren airstrip in the middle of nowhere, clinging to a little paper cup of hot water and waiting to go up again. It was tough, but it was ecstatic at times, too.

What was the hardest part of the whole production process?

The hardest part was creating a timing system. We needed to get a reliable way for the pilots (all TEN of them) to signal us when zero-g was coming in time for our playback man, Roman, to play the correct portion of the track, including a count-in section and a certain degree of overlap from the previous section. Getting the right part of the music to come in just as gravity was departing was a big hurdle.

And once we had that system in place, we had to account for the fact that the song broke down musically into 21-second chunks, while the weightless periods were more like 27 seconds. The pilots can't pull out of the manoeuvre early-they need a critical amount of downward momentum for power.

And cutting the music while everyone is in the air means we could never match that position again for the next section of choreography in the next parabola. So we ended up solving this by slowing playback of the song by 28.5 per cent. We sped the footage up inpost, which also counteracts the slo-mo feeling that everything has in zero-g.

OK Go’s back catalogue of promos is fantastic; does that put more pressure on each video to surprise, excite and resonate?

I think the band feels some pressure to top themselves with each new video, sure. But we also look at each video as its own creation, a stand-alone thing.

Most people want to do new things. To improve the things they do, to take on new challenges or visit new places creatively. So this is no different. When it's time to make something new, it's time to make something new.

So you think of something you haven't done before, and then you do it the best you possibly can. And then you tell yourself that's not good enough, and you do it a little better than that, and you get better and better at that process the more you do it. So I think outdoing themselves with each video is more an OUTCOME of a creative philosophy than it is the driving force for that philosophy.

Are you surprised that other artist’s promos, in general, aren’t more interesting, creative and fun?

Sometimes I wish people went out on limbs more often. Or went further, worked harder, pushed the boundaries more. Especially mainstream artists who get a lot of eyeballs on their work- why not be ballsier? Why not be braver? People will watch and love you, no matter what. Do something weird!

But I also know how much it takes out of you to truly extend yourself and your work to a place that feels so dicey and so uncharted. It takes a lot of guts to put yourself out there, so how can I judge anyone for what they make? The fact that you create something and slap it up there for the world to look at and criticize and pick apart-that's courage right there.

So, sure, I like people who are gutsy and fun and original with their work. But more importantly, I just appreciate that people make and share things at all.

Do you already have plans for the next promo and if so, can you reveal anything about it?

No plans right now! I think we all just need a good rest. I brought home some truly killer Russian vodka, I'm gonna work on that for a while!