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Amy Ebersole CTCS 482: Transmedia Professor Henry Jenkins Extension Papers 25 October 2013

Music Videos: Adaptations or Extensions Arcade Fire, Google Chrome, and The Wilderness Downtown

Honestly, I’m not sure music videos can ever really touch you as deeply as music alone can. Music scores your life. You interact with it. It becomes the soundtrack to that one summer with that one girl. Music videos are very concrete and rigid because they rely on someone else’s vision. Sometimes mine. … By letting the audience participate in the visuals, we allow for more of an emotional connection. — Director of The Wilderness Downtown Chris Milk (2010) Some of us live far away from the places where we grew up, and I’ve often found something quite evocative and wistful about looking at photos of the streets where I used to live. A few of us decided to capture this feeling of nostalgia in an interactive music experience that we developed for the web. — Creative Director of the Data Arts Team at Google Aaron Koblin (2010) Using the indie-rock band Arcade Fire’s song We Used To Wait off the album The

Suburbs as the core text, I will examine the key characteristics of Director Chris Milk’s

2010 interactive music video The Wilderness Downtown and how it is a transmedia

extension that expands the initial auditory narrative into a visible, interactive and

emotional experience on the digital media platform. I will first describe The Wilderness

Downtown, its strategies for expanding the song, and its use of the distinct properties of

the digital platform. I will then build an argument that the extension’s target audience is

complicated because Google sponsored the video, which possibly causes it to function

more as a clever advertisement for showcasing what’s possible with the Google Chrome

Browser. Throughout the paper, I illuminate the specific trends toward the industry’s

personalization of content that creates a more active viewership; interactivity to create

deeper engagement; the fostering of fan evangelism and content spreadability; the use of

pull versus push strategies that emphasize the long-tail; and individual-targeted and

immersive advertising strategies that seek to evoke subtle marketing. I end by speculating

on whether music videos are adaptations or extensions of the song, pointing out the key

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components necessary for a transmedia text that have been reinforced throughout the

readings, lectures, and guest Q&As.

The Wilderness Downtown s is the first of Arcade Fire’s interactive music videos,

the later videos being Sprawl II (2011) and Reflektor (2013). However, it acts as another

important marker: the music industry’s movement toward and experimentation with

interactive music videos — a possibility opened up by the affordances of the digital

media platform. The Wilderness Downtown is a multi-browser music video listed as

being a highly personalized Google Chrome experimental project built in HTML5 meant

to show off the new browser’s potential storytelling capabilities. As a landmark for music

videos, it monumentally demonstrates its technological prowess and conveys a concrete

nostalgic emotive experience, influencing Time magazine to list it in “The 30 All-TIME

Best Music Videos” in 2011.

Visitors of the website, thewildernessdowntown.com, are asked to “enter the

address of the home where you grew up.” After entering the address, the song We Used

To Wait starts and a hooded person, which one can assume is a male because of the larger

structural build and more masculine clothing, is running on a street. Another browser

appears to show a flock of birds in the sky. There is then a sequence of aerial long shots

of the personalized street (entered by each individual user upon entrance of the website)

and street-view medium shots, rendered from Google Maps technology. Throughout the

course of the video, multiple screens show varied perspectives. The hooded person then

stops at a song climax, and a screen pops up, requesting for the viewer to “write a

postcard of advice to the younger you that lived there then.” The viewer can then type or

draw in that window. Branches grow out of the text while the other screens show three

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spinning machine-like cogs. The birds then fly onto the text and across the screen from

one window to the next. Animated trees start to grow across all the screens, suggesting

the letter acted as a seed for their growth.

At the conclusion of the video, the viewer is given options to replay their film,

share it (increasing the video’s spreadability and creating evangelists from fans), send

their postcard “downtown” (allowing it to be used as visuals at an Arcade Fire tour), or

respond to another viewer’s postcard (encouraging more interaction with the larger

community). There is a button linking to The Wilderness Machine where the site can

move the postcard from digital to analog where it will go on tour with the band.

According to the website, fans at the tour can pick up other people’s postcards, plant

them, and a tree will grow out of that postcard (pulling fans to concerts to reward them

with a physical manifestation and an extension that can actually be interacted with in

reality). View the Appendix for individual pictures taken from the video with

technological descriptions of how they were executed.

The Arcade Fire song, We Used To Wait is synchronized with the visuals in the

music video and generates an overall feeling of nostalgia. The Wilderness Downtown

strategically evokes that same emotional, nostalgic experience; yet it does it through

visuals of the viewer’s childhood street. It was stressed in multiple lectures by Professor

Jenkins that each extension must consistently convey the tone, feel, or iconic elements of

the world that allow for some continuity across media platforms, whether that means the

lightsabor in Star Wars or the reoccurring music, gritty style, and credits in Law And

Order (2013). By conveying the same nostalgic tone in The Wilderness Downtown, the

song was successful extended. I argue that this extension operates under the East-Coast

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Model, as there are various points of entry and the viewer doesn’t have to listen to the

song first before understanding the video; instead all the information necessary is

included in the video.

While this extension offers a personalized experience, interactivity that drives

deeper fan engagement, community development, and a route or link toward other

extensions in the overall world, the hooded person in the music video could have been

more androgynous instead of masculine in order make both genders feel as if they are

immersed within and represented by that character. Another critique is that the character

is running on cement. This is a problem for rural viewers or those from other countries

who may not have cement roads. But drawing on Michael Salar’s arguments in As If:

Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality, I see this video as

being designed in a way that allows the spectator to feel as if the world is true and real, as

it incorporates actual imagery of the spectator’s childhood home, building credibility and

helping the viewer suspend disbelief in the world of the video, making it all the more an

emotional experience (2011).

This video generated mass amounts of media buzz and visibility and was

promoted on Arcade Fire and Google Chrome’s websites. Fans of Arcade Fire as well as

Google technophiles evangelized to spread word about The Wilderness Downtown’s

release. This acted as a cultural attractor to the project and created a higher level of

discoverability for the media extension. The project then culturally activated its

viewership to spread the content, attend an Arcade Fire concert to pick up and plant one

of the postcards, and interact further with other people’s postcard comments. The video

also activated them to update or download the Google Chrome Browser. However, it

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didn’t link to Arcade Fire’s website, to their album on iTunes, or to their tour date. This

leads me to speculate on whether this extension was to generate awareness about the

world of Arcade Fire and the song We Used To Wait, and instead causes me to wonder if

it is rather more of an extension of Google Chrome’s brand, offering insight into

Google’s promotional strategy for getting both media creators and consumers to see its

browser’s potential. Or perhaps it operates to cross-promote each brand and is what

Professor Jenkins calls as “co-creation” (Jenkins 2006, 107). This may be something the

media world will see more of in the future on this platform.

The digital platform offers properties and affordances distinct from other

mediums and is opening up new opportunities for experimentation for the music industry.

This platform turns passive spectators into active participants as they enter their

childhood address and have an entirely unique location-based viewing experience. The

digital platform is also a ripe space for data collection. This characteristic helps the

content creator generate a more detailed view of their audience. The content creator can

gage the engagement of viewers, not just the traditional eyeballs measured by the Nielsen

Ratings in the television system. This qualitative measurement of highly engaged viewers

are more valuable from an industry point of view than quantitative measurements of

viewers, as engaged viewers are more likely to develop brand loyalty, according to

Professor Jenkins’ lecture (2013). This video attracts dual niche audiences: those

interested in Google technology and the dedicated fandom of Arcade Fire, who can then

spread it to the general public through social media platforms.

Ivan Askwith discusses the five logics of engagement that “reflect a distinct

motive or desire that might compel the viewer to engage with texts” and some of these

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logics are clearly expressed in The Wilderness Downtown (Askwith 2007, 101). It

operates under the logic of identification (the viewers can identify with the character and

the song’s emotional and nostalgic core), social connection (people can interact with each

other and respond to each other’s postcards), and immersion (they are able to deepen and

add a layer of emotion to their experience of both the Google Chrome Browser and the

song). The barrier to entry is low, as it is free to watch this video, as long as the person

has access to the Internet. The motive of Google Chrome, I argue, is to get more people

on the browser and to associate the brand with cutting-edge technology, and the motive

of Arcade Fire would be to continue to define its own brand as progressive, one that

pushes the boundaries of the music industry and is leading the way for interactive music

videos.

One could argue that some music videos are more adaptations than extensions. In

a lecture, by Geoffrey Long outlined some key characteristics of transmedia extensions,

emphasizing some important distinctions between extensions and adaptations (2013). An

adaptation would simply tell the same story on a different media platform. More and

more, transmedia stories are designed from the beginning with the total experience in

mind, according to Long (2013). Larger shifts are occurring in storytelling from being

monomedia to multimedia to transmedia. In order to be transmedia, it is crucial that “each

medium (makes its own) distinctive contribution” (Jenkins 2006, 334). Music videos add

a visual element that contributes to the unfolding of the story, but if that visual element is

just articulating the same story that is aurally conveyed, and if it doesn’t express any new

element, then it would be an adaptation. That “distinctive contribution” is a key

characteristic for defining whether or not something is transmedia. An adaptation would

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just be a reproduction on another media platform that doesn’t have any “additive

comprehension,” as discussed in Jenkins chapter “Searching for Origami Unicorn: The

Matrix and Transmedia Storytelling” (Jenkins 2006, 127). Without the extension adding

something to the world, it is just the movement of content across platforms, making it an

extension. The Wilderness Downtown, along these parameters, is an extension as it

expands the world of the song to include an interactive visual story. That interactive

component of writing a letter to one’s childhood self allows for the story to be expanded

and personalized.

The financing and production strategies of this music video demonstrate how

advertisers such as Google are moving toward intellectual property development to pull

rather than push audiences to their product. This technique is not unusual in the

entertainment world, as it mirrors the past strategies of advertisers during the sponsorship

era of radio and early broadcast television. Ivan Askwith in “Television 2.0:

Reconceptualizing TV as an Engagement Medium” states, “The current discourse

suggests that television’s future now relies on the industry’s success recasting it as an

active medium, capable of capturing and holding the audience’s attention, and effective at

generating emotional investment” (2007). He goes on to stress the importance of

audience “engagement.” The strategies of the video in its call for audience engagement,

emotional investment, and active interaction are an example of a piece of media that

mirrors Askwith’s argument.

The Wilderness Downtown markets the capabilities of the (then-recently updated)

Google Chrome Browser and its potential for telling interactive stories on the digital

platform. It not only is advertising itself to the dedicated fandom of Arcade Fire, but also

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to future music or content creators, technophiles, and the general public at large. The

Wilderness Downtown is an interactive extension of Arcade Fire’s We Used To Wait song

that builds on the world of the music, making it immersive, unique, participatory, and

emotionally engaging, allowing fans to interact with each other and easily spread the

song. It mirrors the movement of the entertainment industry at large from mass marketing

and push-strategies to more individualized tailoring of content — a possible glimpse at

the future of entertainment and advertising.

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Reference Page Askwith, Ivan. 2007. “Five Logics of Engagement.” Television 2.0: Reconceptualizing

TV as an Engagement Medium, Master’s thesis. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Pp. 51-150. http://cms.mit.edu/research/theses/IvanAskwith2007.pdf

“Chrome Experiments: Celebrating Creative Code for the Web: Arcade Fire The

Wilderness Downtown.” Viewed on: 25 October 2013. http://www.chromeexperiments.com/arcadefire/

Jenkins, Henry. 2006. “Searching for the Origami Unicorn: The Matrix and Transmedia

Storytelling.” Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York University Press. Pp. 93-130, 334.

Jenkins, Henry. 2013. CTCS 482. SCA 310. University of Southern California. Los

Angeles, Ca. Fall 2013. Koblin, Aaron. CTCS 482. SCA 310. University of Southern California. Los Angeles,

Ca. September 23. http://www.aaronkoblin.com/work.html Koblin, Aaron. August 30, 2010. “Street View and the Wilderness Downtown. Google

Maps. Viewed October 25, 2013. http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2010/08/street-view-and-wilderness-downtown.htmla

Long, Geoffrey. 2013. CTCS 482. SCA 310. University of Southern California. Los

Angeles, Ca. August 26. Phillips, Andrea. 2012. “Interactivity Creates Deeper Engagement.” A Creator’s Guide to

Transmedia Storytelling. New York: McGraw-Hill. Pp. 110-126. Salar, Michael. 2011. As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual

Reality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 25-104. The Wilderness Downtown. 30 August 2010. Chris Milk.

http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com “The 30 All-TIME Best Music Videos.” July 26, 2011. Time: Entertainment

http://entertainment.time.com/2011/07/28/the-30-all-time-best-music-videos/slide/a-ha-take-on-me-1985/

Vozick-Levinson, Simon. 8 September 2010. “Arcade Fire’s Revolutionary ‘We Used to

Wait’ Video: Director Chris Milk Explains How It Was Created.” Entertainment: The Music Mix. http://music-mix.ew.com/2010/09/08/arcade-fire-video-interview/

We Used to Wait. 2 August 2010. Arcade Fire.

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APPENDIX

“The Wilderness Downtown” Description of individual parts pulled from this website: http://www.chromeexperiments.com/arcadefire/

The Wilderness Downtown

Choreographed windows, interactive flocking, custom rendered maps, real-time compositing, procedural drawing, 3D canvas rendering... this Chrome Experiment has them all. "The Wilderness Downtown" is an interactive interpretation of Arcade Fire's song "We Used To Wait" and was built entirely with the latest

open web technologies, including HTML5 video, audio, and canvas.

HTML5 Canvas 3D engine renders a flocking bird simulation that reacts to the music and mouse.

HTML5 audio plays music and keeps track of timecode.

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Sequence system controls and synchronises effects and windows to the timecode.

HTML5 video plays film clips in custom sizes.

Choreographed windows are triggered by the music and placed relative to screen size.

Map tiles are rendered, zoomed, and rotated in a scripted 3D environment.

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Animated sprites are composited directly over maps and Street View.

3D sky dome is used to render Street View with scripted camera control.

Procedural drawing tool allows the user to create velocity influenced tree branches.

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Generative typeface triggered by keypress, uses an SVG path reader and individual canvas compositing for each letter.

Google Maps API for fetching dynamic routes to destination and checking Street View content at points

along the route.

Street detection for animated trees composited dynamically in place over Street View.

Color correction by combining canvas blending modes to enhance contrast and tint.

             

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The Wilderness Machine A postcard is created by an analog signal: you. This site takes that postcard and converts it to digital. The Wilderness Machine brings it back to analog. Look for it on tour with the band in North America. If you're lucky enough to get someone's postcard from it, plant it. A tree will grow out of it.