Arcade Fire, an indie rock band based out of Canada, teamed up with Google to create an interactive music video online for their song “We Used to Wait.” The video titled “The Wilderness Downtown” is a new idea which has spawned a few similar interactive videos from other musicians as it appears Arcade Fire may have started a new trend. The video displays some of the capabilities of HTML5 as well as Google’s web browser Chrome.
Before the video begins you are asked to enter your address of the home where you grew up and after doing this the video will begin. Multiple windows will popup and they are all used in the interactive video as it takes you through images of your old home to recreate the experience of your childhood. Multiple images and video run without skipping a beat as you experience the video. At the end of the video you will get to create a postcard writing to your younger-self with the idea of giving yourself advice already knowing what you will have gone through.
Arcade Fire plans to use the postcards in several different ways to keep their fans engaged as they tour across North America. After watching this video I had to try several different addresses just to see how cool it really was. Is this the new age of music videos? What do you think?
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