Lost Art of Filmmaking represents my attempt to highlight examples of film language that no longer seems to appear on the radar of a majority of working filmmakers.

Each column, I’ll choose a clip from a movie that demonstrates a ‘lost art’ of some sort, ask you to watch it, and then go into detail about why this particular slice of movie is worth bringing back into focus…

OK GO’S “END LOVE”

I love it when people are  brilliant.  It’s just so much more fun that way.

Remember when you first realized that if you set up a row of dominoes just right… and if you knocked over the first one… and they were spaced out just perfectly…. well, you know what I mean, right? And if you messed up just one domino… or if you happened to knock one over by mistake… you had to start all over again…

That is some seriously patient work. Great execution of a domino line. A tremendous amount of skill and thought went into this. All for one single moment of terrific choreography. In a way… domino lines are one of the purest forms of a ‘fluid master.’

And OK GO just made a human domino line.

Granted. It’s a music video. And granted – it’s got people in it. But dominoes have the advantage. They just have to knock the next one down. That’s all they have to do. If PIXAR made a movie about dominoes, then the personality of the domino would be like a Japanese suicide bomber and each domino yells BANZAI as it knocks the next one down. Or something like that.

But a human domino line – set to music – is different. It’s not just about knocking the ‘next domino’ over – timing is crucially important.

They’ve done it before. I covered it in an earlier LAOF post about OK Go.

But as difficult as that Rube Goldberg/domino line was…. this one’s a bit harder. This one’s less about gadgets, and more about simple endurance.    And – if you think about it – a bit mathematical..

Unless my eyes are being completely fooled….. this video was filmed over two days straight. Outdoors. I think it’s Echo Park. Technically, it may not be one take, as the camera is not consistently rolling from beginning to end. I feel that it’s the illlusion of doing it all in one take that matters here.

This illusion alternates between camera speeds – going from 24 frames per second – then going into full stop-motion, ‘animating’ the band – then for effect, switching to super slow-motion – and then back again. There’s plenty of time-lapse photography to boot. I think the band actually slept in the park overnight while the camera was still shooting. It continues into the next day. And before you even realize it’s happening, the band ups the ante and everyone in the entire park becomes a part of the human domino line.

I really want everyone who watches this to consider the logistics and planning and passion that went into this in order to pull it off. In an industry where quick cuts and special effects and all that jazz have become a crutch to use during action sequences and big films and the like…. it’s wonderful to be amazed by a group of individuals who use the simplest camera tricks in the book to create a bit of magic.

LOST ART OF FILMMAKING: SERENITY
LOST ART OF FILMMAKING: CHILDREN OF MEN
LOST ART OF FILMMAKING: TOUCH OF EVIL
LOST ART OF FILMMAKING: BASIC INSTINCT
LOST ART OF FILMMAKING: OK Go – This Too Shall Pass
LOST ART OF FILMMAKING: SNEAKERS
LOST ART OF FILMMAKING: THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS
LOST ART OF FILMMAKING: HARD BOILED
LOST ART OF FILMMAKING: 48 HRS
LOST ART OF FILMMAKING: JAWS
FILMMAKING IS FADING

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