OK Go 'A Stone Only Rolls Downhill' by Damian Kulash & Chris Buongiorno
David Knight - 24th Jan 2025
It's been a while, but OK Go are back for their first music video-cum-visual art project in several years - seemingly prompted by Donald Trump's return to power.
The band's frontman Damian Kulash co-directs the visual for A Stone Only Rolls Downhill with Chris Buongiorno, which begins with a title (in a familiar font) simply stating: 64 Videos on 64 Phones. It then presents the four members of OK Go through a varying, increasingly complex arrangement of phone screens, moving from phone to phone , or have a number of screens composite part or all of the image, and employing an escalating number of phones for ever-greater and ingenious compositions, also involving hand-based choreography.
In other words, it's very clever. Not as spectacular as some previous outings, but just as magical and distinctively OK Go-like as ever. There's a peek behind the scenes, on how this very complex job was created and project managed in the BTS video.
However, unlike their previous videos the visual is also a poignant counterpoint to a lyric that's akin to a person gently breaking some very bad news: 'I wish I could tell you it'll all be just fine.' It's pretty clear what that refers to.
"We invested all this time and effort into this so that you could have three minutes of wow in your day and a real sense of joy about other humans in the world," Kulash expains in the BTS. "That's a very precious commodity now."
OK Go have responded to the world going to shit in a very OK Go way.
Featured sponsors
David Knight - 24th Jan 2025
Credits
Featured here in the credits?
Production/Creative
- Director
- Damian Kulash, Jr.
- Director
- Chris Buongiorno
- Head Of Production
- Chelsea Schwiering
- Line Producer
- Omer Dagan
- Production Company
- PP
- Executive Producer
- Jackie Kelman Bisbee
- Executive Producer
- Caroline Kousidonis
- Executive Producer
- Michaela McKee
- Production Coordinator
- Felicia Tomiyasu-Gravante
- Production Assistant
- Monica Sanchez
- Technical Camera Researcher
- Jessica Schaefer
- Additional Brainstorming
- Timothy Legasse
Lighting/Grip
- Gaffer
- Gustavo Perez-Santos
- Gaffer
- Bryan Kaing
- Key Grip
- Gino Nix
- Grips
- William Tricarico, Ben Sex, Justin Kaid, Clint Klang, Shai Keston-Nix
Art
- Art Director
- Benjamin Voutour
- Production designer
- T. Hunter McCann
- Set Construction
- Depict Inc.
Wardrobe
- Hair & Make-up
- Heather Coleman
Choreography
- Choreographer
- Phillip Chbeeb
- Assistant Choreographer
- Emilio Dosal
- Hand Dancers
- Daniel Norwood, Franklin Yu, Mikhail Metelkov, Phonix Banuelos
Editorial
- Editor
- Justin Clare Hand
Misc
- Dancer
- Emilio Dosal
David Knight - 24th Jan 2025