Tag Archives: Chris Milk

Advertising for the 21st Century: B-Reel, ‘storytelling’, and mind control

Erin Schulte at Fast Company introduced me to B-Reel, a digital production company, via her Sept. 30, 2011 posting,

Though Swedish hybrid production company B-Reel has been around since 1999, merging film, interactive, games, and mobile to create new methods of storytelling, it exploded into the broader consciousness with 2010’s “The Wilderness Downtown.”

The interactive short film dreamed up by Chris Milk and the band Arcade Fire for its song “We Used To Wait” is a Gen-Y paean of childhood nostalgia, where the singer pines for a simpler, not-so-far away yesteryear where people wrote love letters on paper and anxiously awaited the arrival of an envelope in return.

Here’s a description (followed by B-Reel’s promotiional video) of the Wilderness Downtown project, which was initiated by Google, from the company website,

Featuring Arcade Fire’s new single “We Used To Wait” from their latest album The Suburbs, The Wilderness Downtown is an interactive music video built in HTML 5, using Google Maps and Street-view for Google Chrome Experiments. The film takes an intimate approach by prompting users to input an address from their childhood which then places them at the center of the film’s narrative. Viewers see themselves in the film as they run through the streets of their old neighborhood and finally reach their childhood home. This is tied very closely to the song’s lyrics to make for a powerful emotional experience.

Here’s the video,

The making of the Wilderness Downtown. from B-Reel & B-Reel Films on Vimeo.

A subtle form of advertising for Google, this showcases some of the more innovative approaches that B-Reel takes to its work.

I did watch the Fast Company video interview with Anders Wahlquist, B-Reel Chief Executive Officer, which is included with Schulte’s posting, and he mentions that he founded the company with the intention of combining filmmaking, storytelling, and interactivity. It’s interesting how often the words storytelling and story are used  in the service of advertising and marketing but to replace those words, i.e., it’s no longer about advertising; it’s about telling your story or possibly it’s about mind control. From the July 21, 2011 posting on the B-Reel website,

From B-Reel’s secret laboratory comes a brain-bending experimental project utilising a number of cutting edge tech tools. B-Reel’s UK creative director Riccardo Giraldi led the development of the project, and you can view the explanatory video here, as well as some of the creative musings in a write up below.

The idea is quite simple.

What if you could run a slot car race using your brain?

We did a bit of research on this and it didn’t take long to realise we already have all we need to make these ideas come to life; we just needed to connect the dots and find an easier way to integrate different disciplines to make the magic happen.

These are the steps B-Reel went through:

– researched components and library we could have used

– procured a device that reads mind signals, a Scalextric, Arduino, some tools and electric components

– designed a small electronic circuit to connect Arduino to Scalextric

– wrote the Arduino script to control the Scalextric

– wrote a small Processing application to control the car with the computer mouse

– connected the brain reader device signal to the Scalextric

There are few commercial devices that claim to safely read your brain signals. We ended up choosing the Mindwave headset from Neurosky for this experiment because of its unobtrusive design and its affordable price.

Then we got a basic version Scalextric and started to play around with it. Slot cars are awesome. Digital is already the past – tangible is the future. The principle is straightforward: there are two cars on separate tracks that you can control with a handset. The more current you let pass through the handset, the faster the cars go.

Here’s the ‘mind control’ video,

B-Reel Performs Mind Tricks from B-Reel & B-Reel Films on Vimeo.

I wrote about rats with robotic brains and monkeys (at Duke University in the US) that control robots  in Japan with their thoughts in my Oct. 4, 2011 posting.  I find the resemblance between these projects disconcertingly close and I have to admit I would not have considered advertising applications at this stage of the technology development.

If you are interested in more about mind control projects, Ed Yong at his Not Exactly Rocket Science blog (on the Discover blog network) has written an Oct. 5, 2011 posting titled, Monkeys grab and feel virtual objects with thoughs alone (and what this means for the World Cup). Excerpted from the posting,

This is where we are now: at Duke University, a monkey controls a virtual arm using only its thoughts. Miguel Nicolelis had fitted the animal with a headset of electrodes that translates its brain activity into movements. It can grab virtual objects without using its arms. It can also feel the objects without its hands, because the headset stimulates its brain to create the sense of different textures. Monkey think, monkey do, monkey feel – all without moving a muscle.
And this is where  Nicolelis wants to be in three years: a young quadriplegic Brazilian man strolls confidently into a massive stadium. He controls his four prosthetic limbs with his thoughts, and they in turn send tactile information straight to his brain. The technology melds so fluidly with his mind that he confidently runs up and delivers the opening kick of the 2014 World Cup.

This sounds like a far-fetched dream, but Nicolelis – a big soccer fan – is talking to the Brazilian government to make it a reality. He has created an international consortium called the Walk Again Project, consisting of non-profit research institutions in the United States, Brazil, Germany and Switzerland. Their goal is to create a “high performance brain-controlled prosthetic device that enables patients to finally leave the wheelchair behind.”

I’m not sure what the* intention was in 1999 when the company name, B-Reel, was chosen but today the wordplay has a haunting quality. Especially when you consider that mind control doesn’t necessarily mean people are in control. After all there’s my Sept. 28, 2011 posting about full size vehicles titled Cars that read minds? If you notice, the researcher at B-Reel has to shift his brain function in order to exert control so who’s in charge the researcher or the model car? Extending that question, will you have to change your mind so the car can read it?

* ‘the’ added May 15, 2014.