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OK Go Rube Goldberg video: meet the makers!

Mark Frauenfelder at 9:55 am Mon, Mar 8, 2010

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Becky Stern of Make: Online interviewed the crew of the latest OK Go video, which was a single-take Rube Goldberg machine.

Becky: How many takes did it require to get the final?

DB: I lost count. I think we did that first sequence about 70 times. When we got past the tire, we knew we had a chance. When the piano dropped without triggering the flags or chairs, we started getting excited. If the sledgehammer blew up the TV we were in the home stretch. It was a tense video to film!

...

PyroPenguin: Did you need to employ failsafes? If a component didn't activate because the component intended to trigger it was off by just a hair, did you have a system to activate it manually?

BD: Not re ally. I think if we were more film oriented rather than machine oriented we would have built in more manual "cheats". As it is, I think we did some things (or at least I did) that didn't play as well to camera as it could have just because I was preoccupied by the mechanism. But we were pretty determined that the thing work. In some cases, we spent a lot of time working out a mechanism that doesn't even show up on camera- like the pneumatic paper airplanes. it's a really reliable mechanism that is triggered by the machine, and yet that's happening amid such chaos that in afterthought I guess we could have just had a guy pushing a button. But I don't think anyone even considered that. There was a little assist in the curtain pull, because the curtains had a tendency to stick together, so if that was having trouble there was someone available to pull a little string to help things out. But I think that's it.

OK Go Rube Goldberg video: meet the makers!

Previously:
  • OK Go's LED Jackets Gadgets
  • OK Go explains the screwed-up state of the music industry

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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  • V

    Any of the Makers want to take credit for the cameo by your ’24 Hours of Lemons’ racer?

    http://jalopnik.com/5485731/lemons-racer-appears-in-ok-go-rube-goldberg-video

  • Anonymous

    The performer roster for the 2010 Bonnaroo Festival names is slowly being released. The June 10th to June 13th event so far has locked down Jay-Z, Dave Matthews Band, Stevie Wonder, Kings of Leon, Jeff Beck, John Fogerty, OK Go, Martin Medeski & Wood and the Avett Brothers.

    New issue just released! Visit Illumina Records All Area Access for news, album releases, show dates, and much more. http://www.illuminaallareaaccess.com/

  • nigelfootpowder

    Brett Doar here. I was on the make:way team, and I’m one of the builders of the machine. So I brought the car in.