Watch Will.I.Am And Justin Bieber's Music Video (But Not For The Music)

Have you seen the recent video for the song "#thatPOWER" by will.i.am and Justin Bieber? It's been viewed over 78 million times, so it's a fair question. It's notable for its use of a strange kind of movement that makes people seem like they’re moving in slow-motion in a regular speed world.  You don’t need to watch it very long before you see what I’m talking about:

Wanna know where they got that cool effect from? It might have been from this Japanese group called World Order, whose Matrix-style effects is just part of an arsenal of synchronized movements:

Personally, I love the “floating coffee cup” at the 2:05 mark, but there’s a ton of crazy, inventive movements here.

Songwriter David Byrne showed me this video almost two years ago, and while the song itself isn’t much, the story is: David said the leader of the group, Genki Sudo, was a champion mixed martial arts fighter, and when he was finally defeated, he retired and devoted himself to a serious study of music and motion. Some of these moves require both discipline and a martial artist’s strength and body control. 

But I still haven’t figured out how they pull off the move at the 0:50 mark of this video:

So, good for will.i.am’s crew for bustin’ at least one of these moves on his current video. But there’s obviously more where that came from…