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I seriously doubt anyone will top OK Go’s “This Too Shall Pass” Rube Goldberg Machine.

My comments posted over at Twenty-Sided:

A very big Thank You! to those evil capitalists at State Farm. Good neighbors, indeed.

It pays to download the HD version of this and single step through certain scenes. It’s hard to see how some of the stuff works in the regular YouTube window.

Some of my favorite bits:

At 00:23, when the big finger turns on the iPod playing the song, the speaker kicking out the ball bearing is reminiscent of another famous Rube Goldberg machine: Honda’s “Cog”. [01:39 Here.] That one had to be filmed in two takes, because it was too big to fit in the available space.

The sequence starting at 1:40, right after the piano falls (you can see scraps of wood from previous drops) and the shopping cart of film cans rolls down the ramp: a plastic saint ascends into heaven, which triggers the coming of an actual morning, portrayed by a yellow umbrella (umbrellas are a recurring motif), flying birds, and sprouting flowers, synched of course with the “when the morning comes” chorus.

Then, at 1:54, after the balls roll down the pin board (used in the classic demo of a “random” process generating a Gaussian curve): A small streamer flies over the flag-waving mousetraps to trigger the big red ball. I suspect the streamer had more predictable timing than the mousetrap chain.

The water machine at 2:15: there’s a little shiny weight swinging back and forth in time with the piano dinging

Forensics digression:
There’s a video out there claiming that the opening curtain covers a continuity break. A light can be seen through the curtain when it’s closed, but when it opens, the actual light is in a different place.

Stepping through frame by frame in HD, though, you can see that the first light is actually a specular reflection off the very shiny fabric. For two or three frames, after the light turns on, both the reflection and the actual light behind the curtain can be seen simultaneously.

Everybody sees the wrecked TVs behind the rolling globe — but at 2:36 you can see three or four reserve TVs, bound and gagged for sacrifice.

The car at 3:06 is the Make:Way race car from Make Magazine.

At 3:18, you can just see some of the gang graffiti that the crew painted over when they occupied the building. They had to rewire the place, too: the gang had stolen all the copper.

Finally, the big finale, after the flying dummy triggers the rain of umbrellas and the flock of paper airplanes at 3:20. (Just before the airplanes, you can see somebody standing up in the balcony.) The chorus is echoed by a string of painted boards unfolding like that little magic trick where the wooden cards, bound by cloth tape, seem to fall through themselves. The song ends in that wonderful crash starting from when the falling kitchen stove triggers the silent falling balloons.

At 3:32, off to the left, you can see painted silhouettes from a previous take.

Remarkable.

There’s another real time video for this song, done with a marching band and…but that would be a spoiler. The thing I love about that one is the kids beating on the drum at the end of the take.