by Mandy J Watson

Posted: 1 October 2009 << Previous Page

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Many web sites were launched as part of the online viral-marketing effort to promote District 9. In this showcase we will look at those sites (collectively referred to as "The District 9 Movie Experience"), and more, to see how they related to, and complemented, the real-world marketing campaign. (Plus, for fans, find out about some amazing items and downloads you may have missed on each site.)

Requirements: Flash 9.0 or higher; webcam; printer/"Initiation Marker" printout
Recommendations: Headphones/speakers; hand-eye co-ordination; patience

If you have speakers switched on or are wearing headphones you'll immediately notice the looped audio in the background of the training-sumulation web site - it's the same corporate fell-good music that plays in the background of the MNU intro video. As a bonus, it's been edited to loop, but badly (on purpose, I would presume) so the audio skips and irritates all at once, just like real corporate audio thrown together by some guy in marketing with no multimedia experience (or talent) often does!

The music (which you - thankfully - can switch off) contrasts sharply with the purpose of the web site, which is to educate you in a simulated environment with the "first reaction course batallion".


The site requires the use of your webcam and Flash 9.0 or higher and you need to download and print the "Initiation Marker" (432 KB PDF here) before it will work. This simulation is designed to recognise the square non-human-banned logo (or "augmented-reality symbol") in the PDF. You can print it out in black and white, as I did, if you don't have a colour printer, but make sure that when you hold it up to the webcam that your finger isn't covering any of the logo or its border and that the full logo and border is on your screen or the simulation won't work properly.


For the "soldier" section a little 3D MNU soldier will pop up on the screen when you are holding the logo correctly in front of the webcam. As you move the logo around or move it closer to, or further away from, the webcam it will manipulate the orientation of the man and zoom your view of him in or out. It's a bit hard to see what you're doing at times because you have to hold the damn thing in front of you so that the webcam can see it and if you move it out of range of the camera the avatar disappears. Then, by clicking the "rappelling", "non-human arrest", or "shooting" links you get an animated simulation of that activity. For example, for the non-human arrest a non-human will suddenly appear in front of the MNU soldier and he will demonstrate the necessary arrest technique on the non-human.

In the spaceship section you can rotate the ship (if you can even get it to appear on screen) and in the non-human section you can see a demonstration of a non-human shooting, attacking a human, and jumping. He jumps about three times and half the time it's off the screen so you never know if you've made him disappear by accidentally moving the logo (as by now your arm will be tired, and your patience worn out) or if it's part of the animation.


One you've gone though all the options your "training" is complete. The entire system is a bit sluggish and you will spend so much time trying to get the angle of the symbol right that you will miss the explanations of the action that are provided by the voice-over narration the first time you view them. You can go back and replay the sections, which is worth doing if you want to catch all the audio that you missed while you were swearing at your computer, but you will have to go through each section and option systematically. You can't just view whichever one interests you as it will replay the animation, but not the audio.

What a cumbersome way to demonstrate something that could have been quite fun to play with. Why must you use the logo and your webcam? Why can't you just rotate the avatars with the arrow keys on your keyboard? Why must this be an augmented-reality demonstration when it's clearly an inappropriate use of the technology? (Just because you can doesn't mean you should!) I can't answer any of these questions.

It was a bitch trying to take screenshots. I'm no prawn and I only have two hands. (You're welcome.)

Web: http://www.multinationalunited.com/training/

On The Internet

Official Site: District 9