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OK Go “This Too Shall Pass”: Rube Goldberg Music Video with Syyn Labs

A one-shot music video built as a giant Rube Goldberg machine. I fabricated the opening dominos and the chairs that fall in time with the music.

  • Interaction Design
  • Fabrication
  • Prototyping
  • Collaboration
Colorful jumpsuit of OKGO band member infront of tire slope
My role
IxD Fabricator
Owned the falling chairs and the opening dominos
Client
OK Go
Official music video
Team
Syyn Labs, 30+ people
Including Heather Knight and the Rube Goldberg team
When
2010
Built in a warehouse in Echo Park, CA

The quick version

OK Go and Syyn Labs set out to film an entire song in one take, with every moment driven by a chain reaction. It had to work from start to finish, and every piece had to hit its beat.

I joined a Syyn Labs team of 30+ as an interaction design fabricator, working with Heather Knight and the Rube Goldberg team to get a single, clean take. I owned two parts of the machine: the chairs that fall down in time with the music, and the dominos at the beginning. That meant building them, testing them over and over, and tuning them until they ran on the beat.

Results

  • 80M+views of the official music video

The music video

The official video, filmed in one shot.

Behind the scenes: testing

Making chairs fall on the beat took a lot of tests. In these three, a ball drops into a net, the net pulls a lever, and the lever lifts chairs that fall like dominos.

Bike to chair test.
Chairs test.
A chair fall test that didn’t go as planned.

In the warehouse

Photos from the build, February 2010.

Dominos standing on a printed track with lyrics
Dominos. A printed track with the lyrics, ready for dominos.
A tall wooden stand holding a blue ball, with a basket and wires at its base
Early rigs. A tall stand holding a ball above wires and a basket.
A tall wooden stand with a blue ball on top in the warehouse
The set up. The same stand with its ball on top.
A tape deck mounted on a wooden frame with strings running across it
Mechanisms. A tape deck on a wooden frame, wired into the chain.
Rows of mousetraps lined up on a wood floor
Mousetraps. Rows of traps set to trip one another.
A close-up of a single mousetrap
One trap, up close.
A small green hill model with the letters OK GO, a palm tree and toy figures
The scale model. A miniature OK Go hill made to plan the set.
Rainbow fabric and a line of mousetraps, blurred by motion
Rainbow run. A line of traps through bright fabric.
A person in white overalls splattered with green paint standing beside a long wooden ramp, a tire and lamps
On set. A wooden ramp, a tire and lamps in the warehouse.
Crew members standing in the warehouse near a work table and stacked boards
The warehouse. The crew and the build tables in Echo Park.
Three people kneeling on a wood floor setting up a line of mousetraps with wires
Setting traps. The team laying out a line of mousetraps.
Several people crouched around a line of mousetraps running through rainbow fabric
Rainbow build. The team placing traps through the fabric.

What it shows

  • Interaction design with real materials. Chairs, dominos and timing, built and tested by hand until they held a beat.
  • Tuning through repetition. Many small tests, including the ones that failed, got the machine to run in one take.
  • Collaboration at scale. I worked within a team of 30+ and shared the work with the Rube Goldberg team.

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