A love letter to Michel Gondry that went unanswered and the increasingly integral role played by visuals in the success of music proved to be key catalysts prompting Damian Kulash—lead singer, guitarist and founder of rock band OK Go—to extend his creative reach to filmmaking. His diversification into directing has made an indelible mark as the last two years on the awards show circuit attest.
Via Park Pictures, Kulash directed Morton Salt’s “The One Moment” which won assorted accolades including six Cannes Lions this year along with a Wood Pencil at the D&ADs, and an AICP Show honor for Best Production. The Cannes bounty consisted of a Gold Digital Craft Lion, a Gold Design Lion, a Silver Film Craft Lion, a Bronze Film Craft Lion, a Bronze Film Lion in Viral, and a Bronze PR Lion.
Back in 2016, the S7 Airlines, OK Go short “Upside Down & Inside Out” directed by Kulash and Trish Sie won numerous awards. At the AICP Show the gravity-defying piece scored a Best Production honor while at the AICP Next Awards it earned honors in the Next Viral/Web Film and Branded Content categories.
As for the alluded to letter to famed director Gondry years ago, it took the form of a rehearsal tape of Kulash and his OK Go cohorts dancing in a backyard. “We wanted to send the tape to Gondry so he would direct a music video for us,” recalled Kulash. “We made it as a love letter for an audience of one but I don’t think he ever saw it. The rest of the world did, though.”
The goofy dance went viral in 2006 and it led to Kulash—who deemed it “a lucky accident”—delving more deeply into visual expression. Over the past decade-plus he has been chasing his creative ideas down an unexpected directorial path. Along the way he has collaborated with talented engineers, dancers, choreographers and filmmakers.
Also spurring on Kulash’s journey down this path has been the very nature of music. “YouTube has become the most popular streaming music platform on the planet,” he observed. “So whether you like it or not, your song has to come with a movie.”
Those movies over the years have included the band’s trailblazing brand partnerships such as: “I Won’t Let You Down,” which features Honda scooters and thousands of Japanese dancers doing a mind-bending routine with umbrellas; “Needing/Getting,” the Chevy 2012 Super Bowl spot in which Kulash himself stunt drives a Chevy rigged with robotic arms, performing the song live by bashing through a vast desert obstacle course of homemade instruments; “This Too Shall Pass,” which features an astonishingly elaborate Rube Goldberg-like contraption unfolding in perfect time to the song; the optical illusion-driven Red Star Maccaline ad, which was a huge hit for the Chinese furniture retailer, and was inspired by the band’s own “The Writing’s On The Wall” video; and the aforementioned “Upside Down & Inside Out” as well as Morton Salt’s “One Moment.”
Of the latter, Kulash remarked, “It’s hard to overestimate the bravery that took on the part of Morton Salt and Ogilvy—being willing to let us play with slow motion and to try to do something that hadn’t been done before. We wound up going into a room with a ballistics expert and slow-motion cameras, blowing things up for a month. You discover things that you wouldn’t fully know otherwise unless you play and experiment. I’m ten years into directing. I can promise you the work will be great going in but I can’t tell you yet exactly what it will look like. It takes client and agency trust to get the freedom to create something special.”
“The One Moment” video dovetails nicely with the brand’s “Walk Her Walk” mantra, inspired by the Morton Salt Girl. “Walk Her Walk” is a call to action for people to step up and become a force for good. The Kulash-helmed video underscores how just “one moment” can make a positive difference.
The song “The One Moment” is about those moments in life that truly matter, when you are most alive and experience wonder. The video opens on some four seconds of real time action, after which we see in slow motion how that brief moment came together. The piece showcases how a single moment can contain so much beauty, change and amazement. To develop the video, OK Go created and interacted with more than 300 choreographed moments. Shot in varying slow motion speeds, the clip is a visual display of color, energy and action that reveals the amazing things that can happen in a mere instant.
Park Pictures
Kulash joined Park Pictures in 2016, marking his first formal representation as a director. He gravitated towards Park through his wife Kristin Gore who as a screenwriter had worked with company co-founder, director Lance Acord. Kulash has an affinity for the people at Park and feels the production house understands his orientation which isn’t to merely keep busy but rather to take on select “big creative challenges. I’m expanding beyond the confines of music videos in which I’m a singer. I’m looking to take on more unique creative projects in all forms—from 30 seconds to 120 minutes.”
For Kulash that mix includes ongoing “inspiring” work with brands, an unconventional band tour, and a pending theatrical feature film. Regarding the feature, he shared, “My wife is writing it right now. We will direct it together. It’s a real and realistic narrative with some playful elements that are highly visual and right up my alley.”
And the band tour is hardly your typical rock show. Instead it’s planned as two hours worth of videos and live music, playing out at such venues as UCLA’s Royce Hall.
“Music and film have converged as art forms,” related Kulash. “And for years we’ve done an extremely visual rock show—at times, visually overwhelming. But rather than coming at it again from that side, this time we’re viewing what we’re doing as ‘a film tour.’ Our films are going on tour—with the addition of a live band taking the show over the top.”
