A-Ha: Take on Me

1 Video

8.6	IMDB rating

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Directed by

Steve Barron

Starring

A-Ha
A-Ha

Bunty Bailey
The Girl

Alfie Curtis
The Enemy

Magne Furuholmen
Magne Furuholmen

Morten Harket
The Man

Philip Jackson
The Enemy

Pål Waaktaar
Pål Waaktaar

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a-ha - Take On Me (Official Video)

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Description: Music video directed by Irish-born British film director Steve Barron. It was filmed in 1985 at Kim's Café (now called Savoy Café) (corner of Wandsworth Road and Pensbury Place, London SW8), and on a sound stage in London. The video used a pencil-sketch animation / live-action combination called rotoscoping, in which the live-action footage is traced over frame by frame to give the characters realistic movements. Approximately 3,000 frames were rotoscoped, which took 16 weeks to complete. The idea of the video was suggested by Warner Bros executive Jeff Ayeroff, who was pivotal in making "Take on Me" a globally recog Music video directed by Irish-born British film director Steve Barron. It was filmed in 1985 at Kim's Café (now called Savoy Café) (corner of Wandsworth Road and Pensbury Place, London SW8), and on a sound stage in London. The video used a pencil-sketch animation / live-action combination called rotoscoping, in which the live-action footage is traced over frame by frame to give the characters realistic movements. Approximately 3,000 frames were rotoscoped, which took 16 weeks to complete. The idea of the video was suggested by Warner Bros executive Jeff Ayeroff, who was pivotal in making "Take on Me" a globally recognised music hit.

Plot:
The video's main theme is a romantic fantasy narrative. It begins with a montage of pencil drawings in a comic-book style representing motorcycle sidecar racing, in which the hero (played by Morten Harket) is pursued by two opponents, one of whom is played by English actor Philip Jackson. It then cuts to a scene in a cafe, in which a young woman, played by Bunty Bailey (Harket's girlfriend at the time), is reading the comic book. As the woman reads, the waitress brings her coffee and the bill. The comic's hero, after winning the race, seemingly winks at the woman from the page. His pencil-drawn hand suddenly reaches out of the comic book, inviting the woman into it. Once inside, she too appears in the pencil-drawn form, as he sings to her and introduces her to his black-and-white world which features a sort of looking-glass portal where people and objects look real on one side and pencil-drawn on the other.

Back in the cafe, the waitress returns to find the woman missing. Believing the customer left without paying the bill, she angrily crumples and throws the woman's comic book into a bin. This causes the hero's two opposing racers to reappear as villains, one of them armed with a large pipe wrench. The racers smash the looking glass with the pipe wrench, trapping the woman in the comic book. The hero punches one of the thugs aside and retreats with the woman into a maze of paper. Arriving at a dead end, he tears a hole in the paper wall so that the woman can escape as the menacing opposing racers close in on him and they raise their pipe wrench to his face. The woman, now back in the real world and found lying beside the bin to the surprise of cafe guests and staff, retrieves the comic from the bin and runs home where she attempts to smooth out the creases to learn what happens next.

The next panel shows the hero, lying seemingly lifeless; and the woman begins to cry. However, he then wakes up and tries to break out of his comic-book frames. At the same time, his image appears in the woman's hallway; seemingly torn between real and comic form, hurling himself repeatedly left-and-right against the walls as he attempts to shatter his two-dimensional barrier (This scene is largely patterned after a climactic scene in the 1980 film Altered States.). He escapes from the comic book by becoming human and stands up. Smiling, the woman walks towards him.

The story is concluded in the opening of "The Sun Always Shines on T.V." music video. ... (more)

Release date: 1 September 1985

Tags: 1980s (1), 1985 (1)

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