How to find a wonderful idea | OK Go
Summary
TLDRThe video script is a performance by the band OK Go, known for their innovative music videos. Damian Kulash, the band's frontman, discusses the creative process behind their videos, which often involve complex and surprising concepts. He shares how ideas come to him, like finding patterns in visual chaos, and emphasizes the importance of wonder and surprise in their work. The script also delves into the challenges of planning and executing complex projects, illustrating the low odds of success when relying on high reliability from many components. To overcome this, OK Go immerses themselves in 'sandboxes' of untried ideas, playing and experimenting until they find a concept that is both surprising and reliable. The video concludes with a live performance of their song 'The One Moment,' which was created by exploring the 'sandbox' of ballistics and math.
Takeaways
- đ¶ The band OK Go is known for their elaborate music videos that often involve complex choreography and unique concepts.
- đ Damian Kulash, the lead singer, describes the process of creating their videos as a process of discovery rather than invention, emphasizing the importance of finding ideas.
- đ Kulash shares his personal habit of playing with perspective, which he believes contributes to his ability to visualize and create the band's innovative videos.
- đĄ The band seeks to evoke a sense of wonder in their audience, which involves finding ideas that are not only good but also surprising.
- đą Kulash discusses the mathematical challenge of reliability in complex projects, explaining why sticking to proven ideas can be a limiting factor.
- đČ To overcome this, OK Go invests resources into exploring 'sandboxes' of untried ideas, trusting that the process will reveal which ideas are both surprising and reliable.
- đ ïž The band's approach involves a significant amount of experimentation and play, rather than strictly following a plan from the outset.
- đ Kulash used a large spreadsheet to plan the video for 'The One Moment', demonstrating how they combine creativity with meticulous preparation.
- đ The video for 'The One Moment' involved a real-life ballistics display, showcasing the band's commitment to making their ideas a reality.
- đ The key moment in the 'The One Moment' video was just 4.2 seconds long, highlighting the precision and timing involved in their productions.
- đ€ OK Go's process is about collaboration, creativity, and a willingness to take risks in order to create memorable and impactful art.
Q & A
What is the name of the band that Damian Kulash is a part of?
-OK Go
Since what year has OK Go been together as a band?
-1998
What type of videos has OK Go become known for in the last decade?
-Elaborate music videos, including Rube Goldberg machines, zero gravity dances, and obstacle courses made of musical instruments.
What is Damian Kulash's compulsive habit that he believes contributes to his creative process?
-Playing parallax and perspective games with his eyes.
How does Damian describe the process of finding ideas for their music videos?
-It feels like finding ideas rather than thinking of them, by lining up disparate parts or chunks that are floating out there.
What is the specific feeling that OK Go is usually looking for in their music videos?
-Wonder, which includes a component of surprise.
Why does the traditional process of making things have a bias against surprising ideas?
-The process involves planning and double-checking ideas, which tends to favor ideas that have already proven to be 100 percent reliable.
What is the mathematical problem with having a complex project with many moving parts?
-The chance of success decreases exponentially as the number of parts increases, even if each part is 99 percent reliable.
How does OK Go approach the challenge of finding reliable yet surprising ideas for their videos?
-They identify sandboxes or areas filled with untried ideas, invest resources in exploring these areas, and play around to discover which ideas are both surprising and reliable.
What was the sandbox for the music video of the song 'The One Moment'?
-Ballistics and math, which involved creating a giant spreadsheet to plan the video.
What does Damian Kulash mean when he says that writing music feels like repeatedly going through the idea-finding process?
-It involves looking for the right combination of sounds, grooves, or chord progressions, and finding the perfect piece that fits like a puzzle.
What is the significance of the line 'this too shall pass' in the context of the script?
-It suggests the idea of letting go of burdens and not letting challenges or negativity weigh one down, as they are temporary and will eventually pass.
Outlines
đ” Creativity and the Process of Finding Ideas
The first paragraph introduces the band OK Go and their unique approach to creating music videos. Damian Kulash, the lead singer, discusses the challenge of coming up with innovative video concepts and how they feel more like discoveries than inventions. He describes the band's history, their elaborate music videos, and the common question they face about the source of their creative ideas. Kulash shares his personal habit of playing with perspective, which he believes contributes to his creative process. The summary emphasizes the band's philosophy that ideas are found rather than thought of and sets the stage for further exploration into their creative methods.
đ The Search for Reliably Surprising Ideas
In the second paragraph, Kulash delves into the nature of idea generation, comparing it to playing parallax games with his eyes. He explains that ideas are like disparate parts that, when observed and aligned correctly, can create a sense of wonder. The process of planning, however, often works against the discovery of surprising ideas due to its inherent bias for reliability and past successes. Using mathematical probability, Kulash illustrates the impracticality of relying on a high number of components, each with less than 100% reliability, to execute a complex plan successfully. The summary highlights the need to find untried ideas that are both surprising and reliable, which requires a different approach to the traditional planning process.
đ Embracing the Sandbox Approach to Creativity
The third paragraph describes OK Go's strategy to overcome the limitations of conventional planning and tap into the wellspring of untried ideas. The band seeks out 'sandboxes'âenvironments conducive to exploration and playâto discover ideas that are both novel and reliable. Kulash shares examples of such sandboxes, including optical illusions, dancing on moving surfaces, using a laser cutter to make toast, and zero-gravity experiences. He emphasizes that they invest a significant portion of their resources into these sandboxes to play and experiment, trusting the process to reveal viable ideas. The summary underscores the importance of embracing chaos and unpredictability in the creative process to find unique and reliable solutions.
đ„ The One Moment: A Ballistics and Math Experience
The fourth paragraph showcases the band's music video for the song 'The One Moment,' which was created using a unique sandbox of ballistics and math. Kulash reveals that he spent a month constructing a massive spreadsheet to plan the video, which involved intricate timing and coordination. The video, which lasts only 4.2 seconds, is a testament to the band's innovative approach to music and video production. The summary highlights the meticulous preparation and the creative use of a spreadsheet as a 'playspace' to orchestrate a visually stunning and brief moment of performance. It concludes with a live performance of the song, emphasizing the significance of capturing the perfect moment in both music and video.
Mindmap
Keywords
đĄParallax
đĄRube Goldberg machine
đĄZero Gravity
đĄPerspective
đĄDrone
đĄ
đĄSandbox
đĄReliability
đĄSpreadsheet
đĄWonder
đĄExecution
đĄChaos
Highlights
OK Go is known as much for their elaborate music videos as for the songs they accompany
The band's creative process feels like they find ideas rather than consciously think of them
Lead singer Damian Kulash has a compulsive habit of playing parallax and perspective games with his eyes
Idea generation involves lining up disparate parts in the right place to create surprising connections
Writing music is a similar process of finding the puzzle piece that fits perfectly with a set of sounds
When an idea clicks, it feels like it was discovered rather than created
The goal with OK Go's videos is to elicit a sense of wonder and surprise
The traditional idea-making process has a bias against surprising ideas
Planning a complex project with many moving parts has a very low chance of success
To find surprising yet reliable ideas, OK Go creates a 'sandbox' and experiments within it
Examples of sandboxes include optical illusions, dancing on moving surfaces, using a laser cutter, and zero gravity
The band spends a significant portion of their budget on creating the right environment to play and discover ideas
Playing in the sandbox involves trying many things to create chaos, increasing the chances of novel connections
When the right elements line up, the resulting idea feels discovered rather than invented
The song 'The One Moment' was created by exploring the sandbox of ballistics and math
Damian spent a month building a giant spreadsheet to serve as the creative playspace for the video
The creative process involves a lot of playing, experimenting and chaos before an idea emerges
The resulting ideas and videos feel discovered rather than consciously thought up
Transcripts
(Dominoes fall)
(Toy car)
(Ball rolls)
(Music: "This Too Shall Pass")
(Singing)
You know you can't keep letting it get you down,
and you can't keep dragging that dead weight around.
If there ain't all that much to lug around
better run like hell when you hit the ground
When the morning comes
When the morning comes
You can't stop these kids from dancing,
but why would you want to,
especially when you're already getting yours?
(Xylophone)
(Singing) 'Cause if your mind don't move and your knees don't bend,
well don't go blaming the kids again.
(Xylophone)
(Singing) When the morning comes
When the morning comes
When the morning comes
When the morning comes
When the morning comes
When the morning comes
(Xylophone)
(Singing) Let it go,
this too shall pass
Let it go,
this too shall pass
You know you can't keep letting it get you down,
you can't keep letting it get you down --
this too shall pass
If there ain't all that much to lug around,
you can't keep letting it get you down --
this too shall pass
When the morning comes --
you can't keep letting it get you down,
no you can't keep letting it
When the morning comes --
you can't keep letting it get you down,
no you can't keep letting it
When the morning comes --
you can't keep letting it get you down,
no you can't keep letting it
When the morning comes --
you can't keep letting it get you down,
no you can't keep letting it
When the morning comes
(Paint guns fire)
(Applause)
Damian Kulash: Thank you, thanks very much.
We are OK Go,
and we've been together as a band since 1998.
But in the last decade,
we've become known as much for the elaborate music videos,
like the one we just saw,
as for the songs they accompany.
So we will play along with another one of those in a few minutes,
but in the meantime,
we want to address this question that we get asked all the time
but we've really never come up with an adequate answer for it,
and that is, how do we think of those ideas?
The videos are not all Rube Goldberg machines, by the way.
Last year we did a dance in zero gravity,
and once we set up an obstacle course
out of thousands of musical instruments in the desert,
and then played them by stunt driving a car through them.
(Laughter)
For one of the videos,
we choreographed hundreds of people with umbrellas
in an abandoned parking lot outside Tokyo,
and then filmed them from a drone a half a mile in the air.
So it's all of these ideas that people are curious about,
and the reason we've had so much trouble describing how we think of these ideas
is that it doesn't really feel like we think of them at all.
It feels like we find them.
And by way of explanation --
well, I have a compulsive habit.
I play parallax and perspective games with my eyes pretty much all the time,
and it's something I've been doing since I was a teenager.
And I think the big contributing factor may have been
that this is how I decorated my high school bedroom.
(Laughter)
And being a teenager,
what I did in there, of course, was just talk on the phone
for staggering amounts of time.
So I was in this visual maelstrom
just pretty much usually sitting in one place,
and I guess just the overload in general --
my brain kind of tried to make sense of it, and I would --
If I could move my head off to one side a little bit,
the edge of the desk would line up just perfectly
with that poster on the opposite wall;
or if I put my thumb out,
I could close first my left eye and then my right,
and my thumb would bounce back and forth
between Jimi Hendrix's left eye and his right.
(Laughter)
It was not a conscious thing, of course,
this is just kind of the equivalent of doodling while you're talking,
and it's still something I do all the time.
This is my wife, Kristin --
(Applause)
Yeah!
Woo!
And it's not uncommon that we are out at dinner,
and in the middle of a great conversation she'll just stop mid-sentence,
and when she stops is when I realize that I'm the one who's acting weird
because I'm like bobbing and weaving.
And what I'm trying to do is get that ficus back there
to stick out of her head like a ponytail.
(Laughter)
The point of telling you all this is that --
for me this is what it feels like to have an idea.
It's like they're made of these disparate parts,
these disparate chunks sort of floating out there.
And if you're receptive and you're observant,
and crucially, if you're in exactly the right place,
you can get them to just line up.
So if you get used to --
if it's your job to think of ideas this way,
they'll start beckoning to you
the way that Jimi's eyes beckoned from that poster,
or the ficus beckons from behind Kristin's head.
Writing music feels like that process just over and over again,
like you've got a bunch of sounds or a groove or a chord progression
and you're just looking for that thing on the other side,
that little chunk over there, that puzzle piece that clicks right in.
And when it does click,
it doesn't feel like you thought up that puzzle piece,
it feels like you found it --
like it was a set of relationships that you unlocked.
But with the videos in particular,
we're usually looking for this specific feeling
which is wonder.
And there's always a component of surprise to wonder,
so we're not just looking for good ideas,
we're looking for good ideas that surprise us in some way.
And this causes something of a problem,
because ...
the process that we all use to make stuff,
it actually has a very strong bias against surprising ideas.
The process I'm talking about is the one you all know --
we all do it all the time.
You think of an idea.
You just sit and think of your brilliant idea
and then you come up with a plan
for how you're going to make that idea happen.
And then with that plan in mind,
you go back and double-check your original idea
and maybe revise it,
and then bouncing back and forth between the idea and the plan,
the plan and the idea,
eventually you come up with a truly great plan.
And then once you have that, and only then,
do you go out and you execute.
And this is like --
this is sort of a flawless system
in terms of maximizing your resources,
because this -- super cheap.
Thinking usually costs very little,
but this is really expensive most of the time,
so by the time you get there,
you want to make sure you're super prepared
and you can squeeze every last drop out of what you've got.
But there are problems with this,
and math will help us reveal the biggest one.
Go back to that video that we just showed you.
That Rube Goldberg machine,
it had about 130 interactions in it.
That was 130 things
that we had to have go according to our plan.
So let's assume that we want to make a new video now,
similarly complex -- 130 moving parts.
If we're really good planners in that system,
it seems like maybe we could be good enough
to get every part of that system to be 90 percent reliable.
90 percent sounds good, right?
Well, it's not.
It's terrible actually. The numbers say so.
The chance of getting all 130 things to not fail at the same time
is .9 for 90 percent to the 130th power.
So calculate that out and you get ...
(Ding)
.000001,
which is one ten-thousandth of one percent,
so your chance for success is literally one in a million.
(Whistle)
(Laughter)
I mean that's not a gamble I want to take,
so let's ratchet up that reliability to 99 percent.
.99 to the 130th power is ...
(Ding)
.27 -- 27 percent.
Significantly less daunting --
like this might even be usable.
But really think about that.
How many parts of your lives are 99 percent reliable?
And could you really get 130 of them all in one place at once?
And if you really could,
doesn't it seem like you deserve to succeed?
Like that is --
that thing is going to work, right?
But no, it actually fails three times more often than it succeeds.
So the upshot of all this
is that if your project is pretty complex --
like, you know, every ambitious project is --
if you've got a lot of moving parts,
you're basically constrained to just reshuffling ideas
that have already demonstrably proven that they're 100 percent reliable.
So now go back to me sitting with my thumb in the air
trying to line up something surprising.
If the only things I'm allowed to consider in the first place
are ideas that have already been done over and over and over again,
I am screwed.
However, there are ways around this,
because we all know that there are tons of untried ideas still out there,
and plenty of them will turn out to be every bit as reliable as we need,
it's just that we don't yet know they are reliable
when we are at this planning phase.
So what we do is we try to identify some place
where there might just be a ton of those untried ideas.
We try to find a sandbox
and then we gamble a whole bunch of our resources
on getting in that sandbox and playing.
(Laughter)
Because we have to trust that it's the process in the sandbox
that will reveal to us which ideas are not only surprising,
but surprisingly reliable.
So some of the sandboxes that we've started videos with.
Let's play with optical illusions.
Let's try to dance on moving surfaces.
Let's try to make toast with a laser cutter.
Or let's do something in one of those zero-gravity airplanes.
But then instead of actually trying to sit there
and think out what that something is,
we spent a full third of our budget getting in an actual Vomit Comet
and bouncing off the walls for a week.
So this may seem to you like testing,
but it really isn't,
because at this point we don't yet know what our idea is,
we don't have a plan to be testing.
So we're just --
we're just playing,
we're just trying everything we can think of,
because we need to get this idea space filled up with a chaos
like the one in my high school bedroom.
Because then, if we can do the bob and weave thing,
if we can put our thumbs up and get just a few things to line up --
(Ding)
chances are no one else has ever made those same things line up before.
And when we're done with that project,
people will ask us again how we thought of that idea,
and we'll be stumped, because from our perspective,
it doesn't feel like we thought of it at all,
it just feels like we found it.
So we'll play another video for you now and the song along with it.
This is for the song "The One Moment,"
and for this one, the sandbox was ballistics and math.
So I spent a full month putting together a giant spreadsheet for this.
It was like my playspace was 400 lines long
and 25 columns wide --
which I presume that if anybody is going to understand that, it's this crowd.
(Laughter)
Nothing is better than a giant spreadsheet, right?
(Laughter)
Well, thank you everyone, very much.
We are OK Go,
and this is called "The One Moment."
(Applause)
[The One Moment]
(Explosions)
[What you just saw was real
and it took 4.2 seconds]
(Video) Let me know when it's safe.
(Percussion)
[Here's the same moment ...
slowed down.]
(Music)
(Guitar)
(Singing) You're right,
there's nothing more lovely,
there's nothing more profound
than the certainty,
than the certainty that all of this will end
That all of this will end
So open your arms to me,
open your arms to me
And this will be the one moment that matters,
and this will be the one thing we remember,
and this will be the reason to have been here,
and this will be the one moment that matters --
Oh ...
(Guitar)
(Singing) So while the mud reclaims our footprints,
and while our bones keep looking back
at the overgrowth that's swallowing the path --
but for the grace of God go we,
but for the grace of God go we
But for the grace of time and chance and entropy's cruel hands --
So open your arms to me,
open your arms to me
And this will be the one moment that matters,
and this will be the one thing we remember,
and this will be the reason to have been here,
and this will be the one moment that matters
Oh ...
So won't you stay here with me
and we'll build 'til we've blistered our hands
So won't you stay here with me and we'll build us some temples,
build us some castles,
build us some monuments
and burn them all right down
(Music)
(Singing) So open your arms to me
And this will be the one moment that matters,
and this will be the reason to have been here,
and this will be the one thing we remember,
and this will be the one moment that matters
So won't you stay here with me,
we'll build 'til we blister our hands
And this will be the one moment that matters --
So won't you stay here with me and build us some temples --
This will be the one moment that matters --
Build us some temples --
The one moment that matters --
Build us some monuments --
The one moment that matters
Build us some temples --
The one moment that matters.
Build us some monuments --
The one moment that matters, oh
(Guitar)
(Applause)
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