Upside Down & Inside Out

"Upside Down & Inside Out"
Single by OK Go
from the album Hungry Ghosts
Released February 11, 2016 (2016-02-11)
Format Digital download
Recorded Tarbox Road Studios
(Cassadaga, New York)
Genre
Length 3:08
Label Paracadute
Writer(s) OK Go
Producer(s) Dave Fridmann
OK Go singles chronology
"I Won't Let You Down"
(2014)		 "Upside Down & Inside Out"
(2016)		 "The One Moment"
(2016)

"Upside Down & Inside Out" is a song by American rock band OK Go. It was released as a single from their fourth studio album, Hungry Ghosts.

The band released a video for the song on February 11, 2016 that featured the members in a zero gravity environment created via flight in a reduced gravity aircraft. They produced the video with support from the Russian S7 Airlines.

Music video

Production

The music video for "Upside Down & Inside Out" features the band moving about in zero gravity created by the parabolic flight path of a reduced gravity aircraft in concert with the song, performing various stunts otherwise impossible at normal gravity, including the use of props such as laptop computers and tablets, dozens of balls, and paint-filled balloons. Two trained aerialist acrobats, Tatyana Martynova and Anastasia Burdina, also perform during the video, acting as air hostesses from S7 Airlines, and performing various aerial acrobatics,[1][2] including a demonstration of the conservation of angular momentum.[3]

Band member Damian Kulash had the idea of doing a zero gravity video for some time, and was excited when commercial space travel efforts were started around 2007 with SpaceX and Virgin Galactic. He and his co-director sister Trish Sie, had been able to ride on the NASA "Vomit Comet" in November 2012,[4] but at the time considered the possibilities of realizing a music video aboard one to be limiting.[5] Kulash had met representatives of the Russian S7 Airlines at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, who offered the band the funding and aircraft support to make their video.[5] Additional support for the video production came from Good Morning America, Facebook, and Instagram.[6] The use of "Upside Down & Inside Out" as the song for the video only came after they recognized the opportunity to create this video, rather than planning the video when creating the song. By happenstance, the song's lyrics are about "discombobulation", according to Kulash,[2] and included the line "gravity's just a habit that you're pretty sure you can't break", making it a perfect fit for the video.[7]

Once they had secured S7 and made necessary arrangements over several months, the band traveled to Moscow to develop the video, spending three weeks of training and filming at the Roscosmos State Corporation center.[5][8] The first week was used to train and get used to the flight patterns while experimenting with various motions and props they could use. By the second week, they had decided on what elements would be in the video and used subsequent flights to plan out the choreography, and used the third week to film the various takes.[9]

A representative parabolic flight profile used to create zero gravity for the video

In planning the video, they wanted to maintain the appearance of a single take, but also wanted to make sure they did not just use zero gravity for random antics, but for something choreographed.[5] They also had to figure out how to handle the three-minute long song considering the nature of parabolic flight using the provided Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft, which typically provides around 27 seconds of zero gravity.[5][6] They found they could break the song into segments that they timed with the periods of weightlessness, slowing down the song about 30% for recording to match the flight timing better and help set up more complex shots. Between periods of weightlessness, they adopted still positions, which they used to trim out the periods of non-weightlessness and morphing the transition between these cuts, though still within the same take.[6] The resulting video effectively includes eight periods of zero gravity, taken over the course of 45 minutes of flight time. To get a single take they were satisfied with, a total of 21 flights were made with the aid of about 30 people including the camera crew and the plane's pilots.[5] The shooting took a toll on the band and crew, with Damian Kulash passing out during one of the shoots.[10]

Release and reception

The video was released to the band's Facebook page on February 11, 2016; by the following day it had gone viral, with over 24 million views.[11] Though previous videos have been posted through their YouTube channel, Kulash stated that they felt using Facebook was a way to experiment with distribution of their music to their fans. Adweek writers Christopher Heine and David Griner noted that the band had previous difficulties with YouTube; their 2010 video for "This Too Shall Pass" was restricted from being embedded on other video sites due to record label concerns, and in 2012, the band stated revenues from their videos on YouTube was marginal.[9] A version of the video had been uploaded to YouTube by S7 Airlines, but had to be taken down within a day of posting due to the video's exclusive release on Facebook. OK Go and S7 uploaded the music video on their YouTube channels two days later on February 13.[11]

References

  1. ↑ Sullivan, Lindsay (February 11, 2016). "OK Go Gets "Upside Down & Inside Out" In Zero-Gravity Music Video". Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved February 12, 2016.
  2. 1 2 ""Upside Down & Inside Out" FAQ". OK Go. February 11, 2016. Retrieved February 12, 2016.
  3. ↑ Allain, Rhett (February 12, 2016). "The Physics of OK Go's Epic New Zero-G Video". Wired (website). Retrieved February 14, 2016.
  4. ↑ "The Making Of Upside Down & Inside Out: Ok Go". The Ransom Note. Retrieved February 13, 2016.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Lacey, Gemma (February 11, 2016). "OK Go: How They Made Their Zero-Gravity Video". Red Bull. Retrieved February 11, 2016.
  6. 1 2 3 Brown, Eric Renner (February 11, 2016). "OK Go return with first zero gravity music video". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved February 11, 2016.
  7. ↑ Haskoor, Michael (February 11, 2016). "OK Go Go 'Upside Down & Inside Out' in Gravity-Defying New Music Video". Music Times. Retrieved February 12, 2016.
  8. ↑ Kreps, Daniel (February 11, 2016). "Watch OK Go Defy Gravity in 'Upside Down & Inside Out' Video". Rolling Stone. Retrieved February 11, 2016.
  9. 1 2 Heine, Christopher; Griner, David (February 11, 2016). "Why OK Go Went Facebook-Only With the Debut of Its Buzzy, Zero-Gravity Music Video". Adweek. Retrieved February 11, 2016.
  10. ↑ Meurer, Jeff. "OK Go Singer Passes Out During Music Video Shoot. See The Footage". Guff. Retrieved February 13, 2016.
  11. 1 2 Spangler, Todd (February 12, 2016). "OK Go Viral Video for 'Upside Down & Inside Out' Pulled From YouTube". Variety. Retrieved March 2, 2016.
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