OK Go Uses an Ungodly Amount of iPhones for New Music Video

What do you get when you have 64 smartphones and a shitload of patience? You get this mind-blowing piece of art

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Published: 22 January 2025

Since the release of their "Here It Goes Again" (treadmills have never looked more fun), OK Go has played with time ("The One Moment", "End Love") and choreography ("I Won't Let You Down", "Upside Down & Inside Out") to elevate their music videos to be more than just people performing on a stage. The quartet's latest endeavour is "A Stone Only Rolls Downhill" and even when you know how it is done, you're still wrapping your mind around how they do it.

OK Go's frontman, Damian Kulash worked with filmmaker Chris Buongiorno on the concept of the music video. From an Instagram post, Kulash stated that the song is about having a split-screen view of the world and the future: That, on one hand, you're watching the world crumble but one the other, you have to be optimistic for the next generation.

"And so that split-screen... I wanted to make a split-screen, but not like a magical, digital one that [just happens] behind the camera," Kulash says. "[I wanted] one that is made by us. By a very human, practical split-screen. Even though it's all phones, it's all very digital stuff. Recording of images like this is magical in the first place. I wanted to feel the people-ness of being split across all these different realities, and try to make it come together as one picture."

Using 64 iPhones (so far, there's no word on whether Apple came in as a sponsor) to act as a mosaic of 64 different videos that create a larger image. Filmed over eight days, the final draft consists of over two hours and 20 minutes of single-take clips and sometimes the images don't work in uniform but the overall feel feels like a tug-of-war, where all these smaller, different parts are struggling to form a single whole.

This isn't the first time that OK Go used dozens of smartphones as mosaics; Kulash directed an ad for the ASUS ZenFone 5 with dancing Ian Eastwood boogieing to the band's song, “I’m Not Through”, while donning a suit of 89 ZenFone 5s, in front of a wall of 1139 more ZenFone 5s.

If you're the sort who loves to find out how the magician saw the woman in half, there's a behind-the-scenes look at how "A Stone Only Rolls Downhill" music video came to be.