OK GO COLOUR

Client: Sesame Workshop

We’re pleased to announce that the latest in our series of music/art cross-over projects is now live. We’ve teamed up with Sesame Workshop to create a live-action interactive game, designed to introduce pre-school kids to mixing primary colours and starring top US pop band, OK Go. This hugely collaborative and great fun project utilises music and performance to educate about colour, leading on directly from the Back-Drop game in Zingzillas which used painting and mark making to educate about music.

Using live action footage filmed in New York, the interactive game takes place in an empty, white studio space, with the band appearing centre screen. Three band members are dressed head-to-toe in a primary colour, the fourth is dressed in white. Behind the band on the wall is a large, blank canvas. The Primary Colors game allows players to play with colour by triggering consecutive band members to go and ‘paint’ on the canvas. When the band member in white enters the relevant secondary colour is ‘mixed’. Once the canvas is full the pay-off is the full Primary Colours song, accompanied by the player’s own animated, painted journey through the game.

OK Go Primary Colours has been a great example of creative collaboration from everyone involved on both sides of the pond. After OK Go agreed to the project, there followed dozens upon dozens of trans-Atlantic phone conferences hashing out various ideas and potential plans. This was followed by some hand-held camcorder footage of different coloured lumps of Play Dough being danced around a café table whilst Sesame staff hummed along in the background. In turn, the ‘Sesame Play Dough’ version was followed by hours of sped up/slowed down English footage of Plug-In staff dancing along to the track in the car park out the back of the studio. We spent a lot of time experimenting with filming half time dance moves, which we then sped up to double speed in post production so that they re synch with the original song and achieve a more comic ‘silent movie’ -type performance.

With the style decided, the concept nailed down, the location found and the film crew hired, it was time for Dom to go to New York to direct the shoot with the band.

OK Go were fantastic to work with. They really engaged with the project and what we were trying to do. We had a lot of fun with the choreography and it was great to work with such talented and collaborative performers. They’re pop stars but also excellent physical comedians and in the end the shoot had more in common with a Charlie Chaplin movie than a music video. We got some great stuff and I’m very pleased with the project as a whole.” DM

“I’ve always been a huge fan Ok Go, so I was ecstatic when I found out we would be working with them to create this great game. With the help of the fantastic people at Plug-in, the experience lived up to my high expectations. And to see our vision realized in this game that manages to strike the perfect balance between educational and fun to play, well I couldn’t ask for anything more!” Andrea Palumbos, Sesame Workshop

2011 was a great year for creative apps here at Plug-in, with projects ranging from Create for Nick Jr, Bert and Ernie’s Printmaker for Sesame and the IMA award-winning Airbrush for Tate Kids, we’ve been up to our eyeballs in paintbrush SFX, splatter particles and piles of crumpled paper.

This latest project slots in perfectly to Plug-in’s long established niche for art and music interactive games as well as being a brilliant opportunity to again work with Sesame Workshop and of course, the awesome, OK Go. 

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