Arcade Fire, Interactive Videos
I’ve been meaning to write a post on this for a while but I never got around to it. So here goes…In an attempt to take control of current music video situation (the fact that these days people are more likely to watch a music video on YouTube then on MTV) Arcade Fire put out an interactive video for Neon Bible. Vincent Morisset, the web content developer for Arcade Fire, and the band decided it didn’t make sense to spend a ton of money shooting a beautiful video that would just end up on YouTube. Instead they spent $15,000 and made something really interesting.”Since it will end up on a computer, let’s take advantage of the possibilities that medium offers.”As Win Butler sings you can click on his head and hands amongst other things to affect what he’s doing. I really like the visual simplicity of it and the ability to participate in an otherwise passive experience.
(www.beonlineb.com)In a second interactive video we have control over the audio, not the video. By pressing the numbers 1 through six on your keyboard you can toggle different layers of the song on and off. By isolating some of the fainter portions of the song, like tracks 3, 4 and 6, I was able to hear some things I had missed before. Depending on which tracks were playing the video seemed to take on different meanings.
(vwww.rorrimkcalb.com)I really hope that they continue this this trend of allowing people to, in a sense, chose their own music video adventure. This seems like one of those situations where the limitations helped spark innovation a la The 5 Obstructions.I wonder if they found giving up some control to be difficult or not. Either way, it seems like they’ve struck a great balance of retaining the essence of the song and the tone of the video while still allowing for some playfulness.