The OK Go ‘This Too Shall Pass‘ Rube Goldberg video is already at 3 million views after three days and looks like it will continue being the most talked about video on the web. It is already the #1 top rated music video on Youtube of All Time!
I got involved with the OK Go project in September when we sent the first proposal for Syynlab’s involvement in the video. Since I currently live in Santa Barbara I drove 90 miles to Los Angeles six weeks in a row during the build. Despite my part-time build schedule I was fortunate to get to work on several different parts of the “machine”. What follows is an overview of some of the machine elements I was involved in. An in-depth making-of documentary and interactive flash ‘blueprint’ of the machine will be forthcoming on the band’s website so stay tuned!
Sunrise

The sun is a yellow umbrella mounted on a counter weighted lever which is held out of view by a string that is pulled taut. When the holy-man moves upwards (triggered by the shopping cart hitting the red banner) the string on the sunrise releases.When the sun lever pivots up the counterweight strikes another lever which falls to trip the string holding the flowers down.

The holy man rises

The spring-loaded flowers
The flowers are attached to a drawbar which is pulled upwards by two bungee cords. A rod attached to the flower bar on the left side pushes up to flip another lever over. This lever’s movement releases two birds and also pulls a pin which held a bird nest in place. The bird nest zips down a rope to trigger the toy crossbow.

The shopping cart aftermath
Ping Pong Ball Shower
The ping pong ball shower rained over 1,000 orange ping pong balls on Andy, the band’s guitarist, and generally everywhere on the first floor. We put a makeshift shower curtain around the device during test shoots to limit cleanup time but for the real deal we let the balls go everywhere. This part alone took 10 minutes to clean up after each take!










