i avoided them thinking such , glad i did <| sep |> I love a good tree postmortem <| sep |> Good God , you deserve the W <| sep |> More like borophyll <| sep |> Just to clarify , the entire video didn ' t take 4 . 2 seconds to shoot , just the first section . How long did the routine take in real time ? The first three quarters of the video , from the beginning of the song until I pick up the umbrella at the a cappella breakdown , unfold over 4 . 2 seconds of real time . Then I lip sync in real time for about 16 seconds we thought it was important to have a moment of human contact at this point in the song , so we returned to the realm of human experience and we return to slow motion for the final chorus paint scene , which took a little longer than 3 seconds in real time . n o t e s a n d f u l l c r editsfortheonemomentvideo