Upside Down & Inside Out

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] In June 2016, Russian ad agency, TutkovBudkov, conceived an idea of a partnership between the Russian S7 Airlines and OK Go that would have resulted in production of a music video aboard one of the airline's planes.[6] The agency further organized a meeting between Kulash and S7 Airlines' representatives at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the latter party agreeing to provide 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.[7] 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.[8]

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][9] 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.[10]

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][7] 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.[7] 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.[11]

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.[12] 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.[10] 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.[12]