Zero G video

[Dan_]

I am luke warm on their music on this one, but the videography is par excellence...

[MrG]

the planing that must of went into that was excellent, Man they trashed that plane in the end

[stevejahr]

Very cool and definite big cleanup after.

[Dan_]

the planing that must of went into that was excellent, Man they trashed that plane in the end

I just heard an interview with one of the producers of the video on NPR radio.   

They gave all the info on how they did it.   Can't remember much --I was driving in snow, but they shot it in one take... so to speak.  

Filming just outside of Moscow, they ran the music through only one time, but paused it after each 30 second parabola's weightless lip sync.  

The "vomit comet"  would then have to climb for 4 minutes.  8 parabolas per flight.  Can't remember how may flights, but I think they said 58 people were on board each time and 28 was the total upchucks...  

The band members all took heavy doses of Dramamine.

During the paint ball sequences they said the Russians washed the plane out every day, but it stayed wet and the floor was soaked.  They changed clothes 6 times a day during that part.  The stewardesses were trained gymnasts.

We'll see how much I got right, if I can find the archive later...

[Dan_]

We'll see how much I got right, if I can find the archive later...

Is this all one take?

Yes, it’s all one continuous take, but there’s a bunch of time removed.  Again, the longest stretch of zero gravity we can get is about 27 seconds, and then it takes five minutes to reset to do it again.  We wanted the whole video to take place in weightlessness, so we designed the routine in 27 second chunks, scenes that start and end right at the moments gravity is going and coming back.  After we filmed a scene, when gravity returned, we stayed as still as we could for the five minutes of the plane climbing, and then began the next scene as soon as we were weightless again.  When we were done, we chose our best take and cut out all of the long reset periods, so the routine is continuous and feels seamless.  Each full take of the video required 8 consecutive periods of weightlessness, and took about 45 minutes.

Did anyone puke?

The effects of zero gravity, and the double gravity you feel just before and after the weightless periods, can make people very nauseated.  A lot of our crew got sick; over the 21 flights, there were 58 puke events.  Luckily, this was a group of very committed adventurers, so we all soldiered through and eventually got accustomed to the crazy sensations.

Where did you shoot?

We were just east of Moscow, close to the the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center for ROSCOMOS, the Russian Space Agency, which is located in a place called Star City.

How long did it take to shoot?

It took months plan and set up, but we were actually on site near the Cosmonaut Training Center in Russia for 3 weeks.  During that time we did 21 flights, with 15 zero gravity parabolas per flight, for a total of about two hours and fifteen minutes in weightlessness.  For the first week we did test flights to figure out which ideas would work and which wouldn’t.  How hard is it to control yourself?  If you do a really cool flip once, can you repeat it?  What looks cooler in zero gravity: a chain or a string of beads?  Toothpaste or a shaken can of soda?  How hard is it to place place a tablet in the air and just have it stay still?  By the second week, we’d chosen our favorite ideas; we had our bag of tricks, and we assembled them into a routine and rehearsed it.  The third week was proper shooting, we just ran the routine 8 times over 8 flights.

Who is S7?

S7 Airlines is a Russian airline, and they were our partners in making this video.  Their mission is to empower people to chase their dreams, and together with their agency TUTKOVBUDKOV, they’ve supported us in doing just that.  The motto for this project was a lyric from the song: “Gravity’s just a habit.”

The S7 Air Hostesses in the video – are they trained acrobats ? Where did you find them?

Tatyana Martynova and Anastasia Burdina, our S7 air hostesses, are trained aerialist acrobats.  It was quite a challenge to figure out what type of performers would be best to work with in these very unusual circumstances.  We considered several types of acrobats, dancers, gymnasts, and swimmers, because each of those fields has some overlap with the set of skills we thought we’d need.  In the end, the pair of aerialists we chose were perfect for a few reasons.  First, the routines they are trained to do usually involve a lot of very fast spinning in circles, meaning that they’ve developed incredible vestibular systems (the bodily system for balance).  Most people get dizzy and sick from twirling around a couple times, but these ladies can spin around like the head of a power drill and not feel a thing.  Second, they really know how to control their bodies using only their own strength and balance.  Gymnasts push off the floor and swimmers push against the water, but aerialists have very little to push off of, so they develop incredible skills just using inertia and balance.  Third, Tatyana and Anastasia were already friends and were great at working together and coming up with their own ideas.  Since so much of our process is about experimenting with things and stumbling into new ideas along the way, we were excited to find a pair of performers who could jump right in, experiment together,and help us come up with the ideas.  The coolest tricks they do are all moves that they came up with themselves, or with the help of our incredible Cosmonaut Trainers.

How big was your crew, and who were they?

The full crew was around 60 people. On each flight, we had 3 pilots/navigators, 8 cosmonaut trainers, and 14 film crew, including the band and our aerialist dancers.  The directors were Damian Kulash and Trish Sie.  They are brother and sister, and Damian is the singer in the band.





Here is the full list of credits for the video:
OK Go:
Damian Kulash, Jr.
Timothy Nordwind
Andy Ross
Dan Konopka
S7 Air Hostesses/Acrobats:
Anastasia Burdina
Tatyana Martynova
[Directed by Damian Kulash, Jr. & Trish Sie
Produced by John O’Grady & Melissa Murphy for BOB Industries.
Director of Photography: Evgeniy Ermolenko
Line Producer: Vladimir Sigalov for Profilms
First Assistant Directors: Andrey Tomashevskiy & Anastasiya Chistova