And, besides, in the last behind the scenes video on this page, you see documentary footage of the balls, disco ball, and even paper from the piñata, so I don’t know how much more evidence is wanted here. This has gotten into moon landing territory here.
At this point I would consider it way more impressive that they released all this behind the scenes material with cgi balloons than taking the cheap, easy route of just having them flying around during the takes.
Now, now. 
coremelt has already said he believes the balloons to be real–it’s the balls and disco ball and paper from the pinata that are somehow suspect.
I stand corrected.
nvm
Have you seen the Maroon 5 video for “Sugar”?
It didn’t take long for people to call them out and question how authentic the set up was. They finally admitted most of it was staged reactions.
So you think it’s fake, but in none of the ways, and for none of the reasons that you originally argued?
At least two of the weddings on there were real, I believe. One of them one of my colleagues/friends was working at when it got crashed by Maroon 5 see here. A good bit of that video was staged, though, but not that wedding and I believe not one of the other ones.
I’m also not sure Maroon 5 has a reputation for making unstaged videos and presenting them as real, do they (which was an important caveat to the question.)
I haven’t flown a vomit-comet with 27 second parabolic weightless intervals, but I have flown airplanes with a number of instances of pulling g’s, weightless intervals, negative g’s, and other effects. All the bits flying around look plausible to me based on those experiences. Objects do not react in 0g the way we expect them to, because our intuitions are based on living under 1 g.
When they open the suitcases and the balls fly out that’s a well known (to some of us) effect of opening a box or drawer in zero-g - stuff flies out of the container. But an object just sitting there may or may not move during fluctuating g forces in the way you expect. I had a flight instructor once who’d demonstrate his control of the airplane by releasing a clipboard and using various “tricks” to make it fly to the front or back or side of the airplane (actually, it’s a matter of moving the airplane around it) and meanwhile our flight bags would remain unmoved in the back seat behind us. Simple friction between two objects may be sufficient to prevent them from moving while other objects in the air are not so constrained.
As noted, the point here wasn’t to produce an effect as cheaply as possible, it was to film a sequence of events performed in a particular manner. You could just as easily argue that they guys who make videos of themselves jumping off mountains in wingsuits are all using CGI effects, except, of course, for the bloody smears left on the mountainside by the folks who miscalculate on their last trip down.
The irony here is that we have the OP, who used to work in visual effects, who thinks that something that is actually real doesn’t look real. This might be why some CGI looks somewhat off. I know a lot of it is really good to the point we are not aware of it, but some of it looks wrong and it seems to be cases where visual effects people don’t know what reality looks like because they have no experience with the reality they are trying to mimic. The first example that comes to mind is heavy objects moving with a lack of inertia or appropriate cause and effect, such as an aeroplane that turns before it has enough bank angle appropriate for the turn or a motorbike in a game that leans before the rider has shifted position.
Imagine if the OP had created a CGI version of this video. All of his gripes about things that looked unrealistic would be fixed to fit his version of reality. Balls would roll forward, float up etc. People would be more out of control, jerkier. The result would be all wrong.
It is similar in concept to people who think the 911 tower collapses weren’t real because they think it looks unrealistic, failing to realise that they have no understanding of what a tower collapse looks like.
I think you’ve hit upon it. The OP has experience with how things look in weightlessness as CG’d but no experience with how things behave in a weightless environment in real life. How many of have been up in a vomit comet?
I have no doubt they spent a lot of time doing multiple takes on a zero-g flight like they said they and we are seeing plenty of it in the video.
On the other hand I do know that it takes plenty of hours upon hours post filming to edit and polish and re-edit and re-polish these things into what makes the final product.
I’m similarly suspicious of their Needing/Getting video. Lots of footage and cool ideas put into that video but I’d put money on that final sound mix being done in the studio to get the desired result.
I’m sure the vocal track was dubbed in but that’s true for all the videos.
i imagine it’s too loud inside the car and trying to sing and hit the instumental sections at the exact needed speed is a bit much to expect.
The title of this thread is “Was this OK Go video really shot in a vomit comet?” The answer is yes.
It asked nothing of sound mix touch ups. Save your white-knighting for a worthy cause.
Actually, the title is:
“Was this OK GO video really shot in a vomit comit?”
The only reason I opened the thread was because I wanted to know what a comit was.
Yeah, we’re going way off topic, but they were pretty transparent about that in the Needing/Getting video in this interview, which, from the writing, sounds like it was made before the video was released.
Yeah, what happened to their music? Their earlier stuff had a lot of energy, but as they’ve focused more and more on the intricacies of their Rube Goldberg videos, All their songs seem to have acquired a sort of scratchy, slightly bland same-ness to them. I guess the music has taken second place.
I agree. I love their first couple of albums but they’ve gotten boring musically.
Interesting article that delves into this.
Several of their videos that appear to be a single take are actually multiple takes stitched together. The Rube Goldberg (This Too Shall Pass) one is at least 2 segments. When it passes between floors through a curtain, the light beyond the curtain moves suddenly, for example.