ARCADE FIRE We Used to Wait

Artist’s Concept by : Chris Milk 9 June 2010

© milk/2010 Rather than a traditional music video for WUTW, this is more of a multilayered, interactive, public art piece. Because of its non-traditional structure, it’s a little more difficult to describe the beats of it in a treatment. Let’s give it a try though.

The project is entered by the viewer through a website. As discussed, its primary engine is HTML5, which allows us to do a lot of things still not widely seen on the web. The most important one to understand from a structural point of view is the ability for our project to open, close, move, and resize physical internet browser windows at will. Sometimes, we might have 2 or 3 browser windows open on the screen simultaneously. And an image might travel from window to window, moving out of one and into another. Or one window might grow larger to highlight it, while the others shrink. It’s not something most people have ever seen before. Even better, it allows us to take a different approach than the traditional music video, always confined to a single rectangle and broadcast in one direction.

So, I’m going to try to give you an idea where the boxes appear and disappear in relation to the song’s sections. It may seem complicated as I’m describing the individual in and out points of each window in relation to the song’s structure. Know that in practice though these moments just happen seamlessly and don’t require a paragraph to explain the timing. Sorry in advance if this gets a little verbose.

The song opens with the repeated piano notes. I’d like to – with your permission – loop this musical measure and have a pop-up window that says something along the lines of:

“To begin, please enter the address of the home where you grew up.”

Once the viewer enters the information and hits enter, Win’s vocal line comes in perfectly on the next loop and the piece begins... The first image to appear is a shot of feet running down the middle of a street at night. The footsteps mirror the tempo of the piano notes. We follow from behind as they run through pools of illumination created by streetlights overhead. The person running is wearing a hooded sweatshirt, so we can’t really see who it is, but it’s clearly a kid. There is just the faint- est hint of sunrise light beginning to illuminate the back of the kid’s legs. We don’t really see much of the surrounding. It’s more a shot about this kid running and the asphalt his feet are running on.

Then, the camera begins to dolly 360 degrees around the kid while keeping pace with the running. When it reaches the front, looking back at the runner, the sun is just cresting the horizon in the distance, which puts the face in silhouette. The camera continues its arc back around the other side of him until it ends up at the rear tracking shot once again. The street is noticeably more lit now. While all that is going on, a second window opens. It is, simply, a slice of orange sky – perhaps a sunrise, though we can’t see any horizon. A giant flock of black birds flies around in it. They move with that strange choreography of collective consciousness which we immediately recognize as a flock. They dance hypnotically, swooping to and fro and ever so slightly mirror- ing the movement of the music. This frame is also interactive; if you were to move your cursor over the window, the birds would adjust their fre- netic ballet to your motion. It’s a beautiful sight to behold.

After the line “I was lost standing in the wilderness downtown” there is what sounds like maybe a distorted guitar with some chorus on it (still have a rough mix so not positive). That sounds motivates a camera tilt down from the sky to the earth below. The flock swoops down with the frame. The first shot of earth we see are a little abstract, so it takes a moment to make sense of the image. It is, we soon discover, an upside- down helicopter tracking shot, with the earth moving away from us. The shot begins to tilt until we are finally right side-up, looking out over a neighborhood. The birds are still moving around in the shot, obscuring the lens for a moment, so we don’t quite notice the figure at first. But as the shot settles and continues, and the birds clear a bit, we see below us, a tiny figure running up the middle of a street. It’s the sweatshirted kid from the other box. We track along behind at the runner’s speed, observing from a vantage point very high overhead.

Now it starts to get interesting. As we reach the mid- song crescendo, the kid running in the first box makes a sharp turn out of frame and that browser window sud- denly disappears. Simultaneously, in the second window with the high perspective looking down, the kid makes the sharp turn and we see that it’s a house he’s running toward. He disappears into it. It’s only then that we realize this is not just any house. It’s our house – the one we grew up in. We may not have seen this house in a really long time, but it’s a place that holds so much emotional resonance and context it’s etched deep in our consciousness. It is a part of the very fabric of who we have become as adults. That kid running… that might have been us. As the music swells, the overhead shot moves in a giant 360 around our childhood home – an entirely new perspective on this place we know so well, this place with so much emotional weight to it. It’s like a shot you only see in a movie but this movie is about us, because this piece is customized for each of us.

Meanwhile, the birds swirl in the opposite direction of the camera move, further accentuating the drama and intensity of the image. As the crescendo reaches its pinnacle, the camera retreats even higher to broaden its scope. Now we see our neighborhood, back further - our town... our city... was I really this small?... our state. How could something so big for me be so small in the grand scheme of things? And yet the camera keeps pulling back: our country, our planet, perhaps even farther out, beyond our solar system to the blackness of space. The window disappears. A new window appears when we hear the lyric, “I’m gonna write a letter.” It is a white rectangular box with an overlay that says,

“Write a note to The Me Who Lived There Then” or perhaps,

“Write a memory you have from that place”

We can keep brainstorming what the given instructions are. While the canvas may appear to be plain white, the brush you write with is anything but ordinary. It’s a very special writing utensil designed by our friend Mr. Doob. You can see a few ideas very close to it here: http://quhno.internetstrahlen.de/graphics/canvas/harmony-mod.html#longfur

Try writing with the “web,” “squares”, “circles”, “shaded” or “long fur” brush. It will be something similar to this but a little more based on the architecture and growth of tree branches. What is so brilliant about Doob’s tool is that no matter what you write, it looks like a piece of art. You can have the worst penmanship in the world and it still looks beautiful.

This is the section where you get to write something to some- one. Here are some random examples...

All of those were done in less than 10 seconds on the most difficult peripheral in the world to write with, the macbook trackpad. Imagine what you could do with a mouse or an ipad.

While this note-writing is happening, a second window opens on the screen. It appears to be video feed from a security camera. It’s in an unknown location, and it is trained on a strange unknown object: an unique machine with lots of gears and levers, housed in a thick plexiglass case. We notice that every time we write in our Doob tool, it seems as if the machine is running in unison with us. We can’t see what it’s doing, but the gears and levers turn and flex with each of our brushstrokes. More on this machine in a bit...

As we get towards the last third of the song, another window opens. It’s a very basic black, blocky 3D CGI figure running in a white environment. Here is a visual reference for the feel but instead of a clock, imagine a sort of rudimentary 3D version of a figure running. Move your cursor around and you will see the camera posi- tion on the clock change. http://mrdoob.com/60/PV3D_20_Clock

The camera moves 360 around the figure in the same way that it did around the kid at the beginning. We realize that this is the digital form of the original being. Maybe it even has a sort of elementary vector-shaping of the sweatshirt hood. And finally, beside the running figure window, the last window pops up. It’s the overhead helicopter tracking shot with the figure running down below. Again, down our old street.

Towards the end of the song, it breaks into an instrumental that brings us into the sonically darker outro section. When this occurs, from out of frame, a flock of black birds flies into the white note writing window and begins to land upon the lines of the words we wrote, as if perching on tree branches. Then they sort of loom there in that way that only ravens can, looking down at you from the telephone wires with an air of impending danger. The song grows darker.

As the bass drum and toms come in, the birds take flight from our words, leaving the frame to swoop back into the browser window with the overhead tracking shot. They are now following above the running figure, just like before, only now the mood seems to have changed.

There is a moment in the song after Win sings the last “Hear my voice screaming sing the chorus AGAIN!” where everything kicks in really hard and really aggressive. Here, the last of the birds abandon our letter for the overhead shot window and the letter window disappears.

In the overhead window, the birds start dive-bombing the runner. You can hear the sound of it in the last section of the song, with the guitar string bends. They hit on the snare drums. We see them swooping from the sky in the digital running figure window as well. When they hit the ground though, a green tree jets up out of the ground and bursts into a full green bloom. It’s like the animation of an atomic bomb, but instead of a destructive mushroom cloud, it’s a life giving tree. Strangely they have the same silhouette. Side bar here for a moment. There are 2 windows open right now that I’m talking about: the overhead neighborhood shot and the digitally animated figure. It’s possible there could be a 3rd. The window of the security camera on the antiquated machine could still be open, with the machine’s gears now really going crazy in time with the music. The effect could be heightened by cutting between the various angles in time with the beat of the song. Another option could be (if the Google technology could be implemented) a window where we actually see the point of view of the little figure running down the street. This would be a view each one of us is very familiar with, because it’s own childhood neighborhood. It would need to be smoother than current street view allows, however. If it were possible though, at the very end of the song, we would see this POV turn in towards our old house (accomplished with a small short quick zoom) before the browser window disappears.

Synced with that moment in the overhead shot we would see the small figure disappear into our old house as the multiplying forest swallows up everything below. This happens right at that last crescendo before it cuts back into the original piano notes.

I’d like there to be some additional choices here at the end besides the compulsory “play again.”

First, “Continue Note”, for those who still want to work on it further.

Second, “Send My Note to The Wilderness Downtown”.

The Wilderness Downtown Machine will be a sculpture piece that I will be constructing. It will tour with the band and be setup in the lobby of each venue they play. Its main purpose will be to draw people at the shows into the project’s website. When you arrive at the show the machine will be printing cards of what people have writ- ten/drawn in the web interface. The machine will drop the cards from a slot in its plexiglass casing for anyone to take. Somewhere on the card will be printed the url for our project. What I’d really like to do is have the cards printed on compostable paper that con- tains tree seeds within the pulp. There would be a simple illustrated infographic on the front that would show you how to crumple it up, drop it in a hole, cover it, and wait for a tree to grow. It might just be one tree in comparison to the end of the video where the whole neighborhood is overtaken... but it’s a start. Ideally, this machine will run on a wireless 3G card so wherever it is, it just needs to be plugged into a power source and cards will print.

I have one other idea I’ve yet to discuss with the band. There could be an op- portunity to utilize some of the users’ drawings as background visuals for the song during the live show. In this scenario we would want to be recording the brushstrokes so they could be played back later. Perhaps the band could select their favorite notes/drawings to utilize each night. This might drive people to investigate the Wilderness Downtown Machine in lobby even further on their way out and pick up the url at the same time. One point I feel really strongly about as I’m sure will the band, the url on the card is acceptable; the url on the background stage visual is a no-no. Also at the end of the video, we might want to give people the option to explore their old neighborhood further through a simplified navigation tool. This can be a really cathartic experience, flying around through your old stomping grounds. While people are doing this, the song would replay, scoring the experience.

I think that’s everything. I know it takes a lot of words to explain the whole thing. This is maybe the one drawback to doing something so different for a music video – the treatments haven’t caught up with the technology. But know that in practice, it will be a smooth, simple, elegant and moving experience. It may seem complex but it is essentially 3 acts with 2 windows each.

Act 1 - Running kid and overhead neighborhood shot. Act 2 - Write your card section and wilderness downtown machine. Act 3 - Revisit of (now digital) running kid and revisit of overhead neighborhood shot.

Don’t worry, it will work. No one understood it the first time we pitched the Johnny Cash Project either.

Thanks, Chris

Contact: Jennifer Heath 310-664-4654 heath@radicalmedia.com