The San Francisco Chronicle
JULY 20, 1998, MONDAY, FINAL EDITION
A New Dimension in Music Videos;
MTV gets a run for its money with interactive videos
Laura Evenson, Chronicle Staff Writer
As voices croon the lyrics to "Sexy Boy," a cartoonish stuffed monkey rises over skyscrapers onscreen. Nudge the computer mouse and up pop the words: "Help! Jessica Lange! Fay Wray! Anybody!"
What looks and sounds like an MTV twist on "King Kong" is the latest innovation on the World Wide Web: the interactive music video. Music videos themselves transformed and expanded the world of pop music when MTV was launched in 1981. Now, the creators of interactive music videos hope have a similar impact on the industry and to lure more music fans to the online world.
Today, an interactive version of the MTV video "Sexy Boy" by the French electronica band Air appears on ShockRave at www.shockrave.com. Visitors can also enter a new virtual swing club that features the big-band tunes of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, and play with a video that looks like an ode to flower power for the new pop band, 1000 Clowns.
The slightest move of the mouse can elicit new animations, text, colors and figures in a video box that takes up about a quarter of the computer screen. The only drawback is that these animated interactive videos take about five or six minutes each time they're played. By contrast, the thumbnail-sized movie music videos already on many music sites play instantly.
But those videos don't offer the fun and games found on ShockRave. Click on a video for 1000 Clown's "Kitty Kat Max," a song about a runaway cat, and watch candy-colored daisies mutate into images of band members, green tennis shoes, even fleas. Click on the "add" button in the dance club, and up pop colorful silhouettes of swing dancers. On the Air video, just move the mouse to elicit banter between the band's members.
"On chante comme des patates," says Nicolas Godin during one animated exchange. "He says, we sing like potatoes,' " translates Jean Benoit Dunckel.
The interactive videos are the latest addition to ShockRave, a free entertainment site on the Web that San Francisco-based Macromedia launched in February. Macromdedia's goal is to show off animation software used by Web page developers. It includes puzzles, games and animated cartoons ranging from South Park to Dilbert. Music activities already online allow visitors to create and mix music, and click images on the beat to change their color and shape.
Another area features a sample of radio channels from the TheDJ.com. Last week, that online radio site changed its name to Spinner.com at www.spinner.com, and formed an alliance with amazon.com so that online listeners can click straight from a tune they hear to the giant online book and music retail site at www.amazon.com.
While online audiophiles can sample songs and even play thumbnail-sized videos on other music sites such as The Rolling Stone Network at www.rollingstone.com or JamTV at www.jamtv.com, ShockRave may be the first to feature larger interactive videos.
"From the beginning, people told us interactive music video was what they wanted so we started talking to record companies, including Capitol, Caroline and Virgin," said Fabrice Florin, executive producer for ShockRave.
The interactive videos for Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and 1000 Clowns came out of discussions with such recording labels. But Florin discovered Air by appealing to one of the Web's most avid fans: his son Adam, 16.
"Adam is completely plugged into the Internet and so I asked him who he'd enjoy listening to online," Florin explained. "He suggested Air. He first heard the band on the radio, and then went online to find out more. He found a world of other 16-year-olds who were into it."
After discussions with Air's label, Caroline Records, Macromedia took the band's existing music video and added liner notes, quotes from the band, and little facts about Godin and Dunckel, such as their interest in the architect Le Corbusier. Frank Davis, the internet director for Caroline Records, said the label liked the idea because it offered "a technology that we didn't have in-house, and better sound and video." However, he says he's not sure music fans accustomed to instant movielike videos will go for interactive animations that "make you wait."
The wait "is worth it," says Kurt Sodergren, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy's drummer. "And the cartoon quality is what we're all about," he says, noting that virtual club's look is based on art work found inside the band's new CD, which includes a Tex Avery-style wolf.
Eventually Sodergren would like to see band members' faces on the cartoon figures that dance to three songs featured in the club, "Go Daddio," "You and Me and the Bottle Makes 3 (Baby)" and "Mr. Pinstripe Suit."
"That way," he says, "our fans could dance online with us." Go Daddio!
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