“Gimmick” can be a dirty word when it comes to movies and TV, but some of the most enduring tools and techniques began as gimmicks. Color, 3D, animation, Steadicam – almost every major cinematic development was a neat little twist on something that already existed, designed to create new attractions and put more butts in seats. The word “gimmick,” in particular, implies something in its nascent stage – a thing that has not yet caught on or perhaps never will, and a thing that a creator or studio has inserted in a desperate attempt to cash in or attract more attention.

But gimmicks are not always a bad thing. In fact, sometimes, audiences will fully recognize a gimmick and still appreciate it simply because of its ingenuity, creativity, and originality. So it goes with short-form content, such as music videos, and in today’s case, the work of the band OK Go, whose primary calling card is top-shelf gimmickry.

Here OK Goes Again

One need only remember the music video for their 2005 hit “Here It Goes Again,” a one-take piece with all four band members dancing on eight treadmills. Needless to say, it’s singular in the realm of viral videos, but for OK Go itself, it’s more than just a one-off; it’s an ethos that the band would replicate across all of their music videos to come.

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Visually, the band employs a creative, anything-goes approach that exists somewhere on the continuum between Michel Gondry and a family-friendly Tenacious D. Each video is high-concept in nature, employing eye-catching techniques and clever in-camera effects. Their light and bumpy power-pop anthems lend themselves nicely to dynamic, colorful expression. And while there are loads of good music videos out there with an endless number of creative approaches, nobody sticks so rigidly to a brand as OK Go does – their brand being a commitment to high-level, labor-intensive gimmicks. And treadmills are only the beginning.

The Visual Feast of OK Go Music Videos

A video might be centered around a single visual feature like lag, stop-motion, or time-lapse, and exploit the creative possibilities of that form to their highest potential. The particularly impressive video for their song “End Love” begins as a stop-motion dance piece, but gradually evolves into a dazzling experiment in light, staging, and the passage of time. Another stop-motion music video, the meticulously detailed “Last Leaf,” illustrates its story entirely over slices of toasted bread.

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But OK Go does not stop there. The productions get more complex as they go, with high concepts like the use of Rube Goldberg machines, elaborate optical illusions, and dancing show dogs. Other concepts truly defy explanation and must be seen to be believed, including an antigravity plane, an array of HP printers, and an overhead dance number that threatens to undermine Busby Berkeley. One piece called “Needing/Getting” involves the four band members riding around a custom course in a janky, heavily outfitted Chevy Sonic, using that vehicle as their primary musical instrument. (You’ll have to check it out on YouTube below to see exactly what I mean.)

The band’s videos are not always the most elegant. Because many are shot in one take and are so difficult to set up, little mistakes often have to be included. But this seems like part of the point. OK Go wants its audience to engage with the production process (to the extent that they teamed up with Playful Learning Lab to create the OK Go Sandbox educational tool for kids); they want people to get a sense of how things are made, and to appreciate the difficulty of the feats they are able to pull off.

On more than one occasion, a video will end with the production team emerging into the frame, 30- or 40-odd people celebrating the success of the take. These are people who, up until this moment, you have not seen, and you might have believed it was just the four guys doing all of this incredible stuff on their own. But by including these tactile behind-the-scenes moments, OK Go is letting you know that they can’t do it alone, and that they are indebted to the dozens (or hundreds?) of hard-working, talented people who support them.


Every creator, aspiring or otherwise, has a moment where they say, “I wish I had thought of that.” In the case of OK Go, you might say, “Well, I don’t know if I’d have the patience and perseverance to do all that.” Thank goodness for these incredible workhorses who put their unique, ambitious, spectacular videos on YouTube for all to watch, and thanks especially to the people who put in so many hours to help them do it.