OK Go Finds Inspiration in Echo Park for Its Wacky, Awesome Videos

Treadmills. Dogs. Dance moves. And Maria the Goose. These are just some of the elements that have brought OK Go online fame. With extreme creativity, and a healthy dose of patience, this Los Angeles-based quartet crafts rocking tunes and eminently watchable music videos. Perhaps the most innovative element of their success is their willing embrace of new technology and the power of the Internet.

OK Go doesn’t see online content as a threat–they see it as an opportunity to connect to fans. As a result, their innovative YouTube videos have garnered tens of millions of views. Two of their recent videos, promoting songs off their third album Of the Blue Colour of the Sky, were filmed in Echo Park.

Most of the band’s members “live in spitting distance of Echo Park,” according to lead singer Damian Kulash. An abandoned warehouse on Glendale Avenue proved to be the perfect location for the months of preparation it took to create the video for “This Too Shall Pass.” Kulash describes it as a “big beautiful space” which was perfectly suited to building an elaborate and complex Rube Goldberg machine.

Starting with a red toy truck, the machine goes on to include a rolling tire, a tumbling piano, cascading chairs and a shower of umbrellas–all in one continuous shot. The entire process took about six months, from the initial recruiting of engineers to filming. About four of those months were spent in the Echo Park warehouse.

In a city where people are “not forced to share public spaces” and there are “walls between different societies,” Kulash says, collaborating on this video was a welcome “excuse to leap from one society to the next.” Plus, working with people who don’t make films day-to-day was a “refreshing” opportunity to share the experience with people for whom it’s still “thrilling or eye-opening.”

Their next video, for the song “End Love,” brought them out into a public space: the Echo Park Lake. Kulash cited the park as a great place to film, especially due to its considerably lower permit fees. The park also offered the perfect setting for the video’s time-lapse photography. The motion of the lake and the flow of city traffic help highlight the technique.

The video was shot in a 21-hour take–with plenty of planning, practice and choreography in advance. Kulash comments that there are “a million ways to make a film.” Whereas other bands might rely on production companies or directors to do most of the work, OK Go is strictly hands-on. “We do that stuff ourselves,” he says. But despite the hard work, making these videos can “feel like cheating” because it’s “so fun” to spend the time dancing, rehearsing with dogs or building a machine.

From day to night to day again, the band moves throughout the park. They are joined at the end by a crowd that was about “90% fans” who responded to the band’s call for extras. But that didn’t stop some regular park visitors from joining in. One park regular is hard to ignore in the video–Maria the Goose. Dubbed “Orange Bill” during filming, the band didn’t know “she was a she,” according to Kulash. And they didn’t realize how friendly she could be at first. “Geese can be scary and aggressive,” he says, so they attempted to chase her away. But Maria was persistent.

Despite a “contentious relationship in the beginning,” the band allowed Maria to tag along. She appears repeatedly in the video, waddling along as they execute their carefully choreographed moves. She was most fond of guitarist Andy Ross, who was probably the most reluctant to be near her. (She did nip him, drawing blood. “We forgave her,” says Kulash.) As to the renovations in the park, Kulash comments that he’s "glad they’re draining" the lake. The band had plans to jump into the water for the video–but their filming permit would only allow them to do so “in full hazmat suits.”

OK Go’s most recent video follows them for eight miles through Los Feliz and Hollywood, playing “Back from Kathmandu” with a band and a parade of followers, as they spell out their name using GPS technology. They have plans to play a few shows in the coming months, but their focus is not on touring. They’ll be working on a new record and shooting more videos over the summer.