Arcade Fire And Chrome Make Best. Video. Evar.

The music video has come a long way since I was staying up late at a friend’s place to watch The Odds on MuchMusic. In fact, one could say this mode of music marketing has struggled to be relevant now that MTV hardly does music videos anymore. But the latest mix of online greatness (Arcade Fire, Chrome, and HTML5) has given us a glimpse into a likely future for the music video–a personalized, interactive experience.

“The Wilderness Downtown” is an interactive film by writer/director Chris Milk. It starts by asking you to input the address of your childhood home (hopefully available on Google Maps and Street View). As the multi-window video begins, it shows shots of your street matched with images of animated birds, trees, and a running man. Trust me, it’s worth checking out for yourself.

This video does an excellent job of showing off the capabilities of HTML5 for creating very cool web experiences that would be near impossible to create in, say, Flash. One of the most impressive moments in the video is when it prompts you to type and draw a letter to your past self. The following moments of animation both in your postcard and on your old street really capture the tone of the song (“We Used To Wait” from Arcade Fire’s latest album The Suburbs).

While it’s all very neato, some users will be disappointed if they can’t find their address on Google Maps and Street View (unfortunately highlighting some of the weaknesses of the not-quite-ubiquitous service). My recommendation is to just pick an address of one of your favourite downtowns (Edmonton, Alberta, perhaps) and see what happens.

And don’t forget to watch it on Google Chrome. The experience is definitely optimized for Google’s browser and makes it an ideal ad for its capabilities over another browser. Looks like everyone is getting an ad out of this one.

So check it out at The Wilderness Downtown… and then go buy some Arcade Fire.

[Google Blog via Mashable]