Monday Music "Take on Me" by A-Ha

I mentioned this song last week so I decided to blog about it and I would post it on the next "Monday Music".  I had mentioned that this was the first "cd" that I saw.  My roommate in AIT at Fort Devens had bought a CD player for $400 at the PX.  The sound quality was incredible compared to the cassette and LP's that were prevalent at the time.    The video was also awe inspiring.  It was cutting edge the way they combined "real life" and the sketches.    We would watch video's in the day room before we would march to class.  MTV was very popular for all of us "young soldiers".  I saw Whitney Houston for the first time when she sang " How will I know"   a good song.  I also saw level 42 and a few others for the first time on MTV in the day room.

    
"Take on Me" is a song by the Norwegian synthpop band A-ha. Written by the band members, the song was produced by Alan Tarney for the group's debut studio album Hunting High and Low, (1985). The song combines synthpop with a varied instrumentation that includes acoustic guitars, keyboards, and drums.
The original "Take on Me" was recorded in 1984 and took three releases to chart in the United Kingdom, reaching number two on the UK Singles Chart in November 1985. In the United States, the song was the only A-ha song to ever reach the top position of the Billboard Hot 100 in October 1985, due in no small part to the wide exposure of its memorable and cutting-edge music video on MTV, directed by Steve Barron. The video features the band in a pencil-sketch animation method called rotoscoping, combined with live action. The video won six awards and was nominated for two others at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards. In 2013, both Cuban-America born rapper, Pitbull, along with American recording artist, Christina Aguilera, took a heavy sample of the song and for their hit song, "Feel This Moment", which, although not a cover version, charted at number five in the UK Charts and number eight in the US Billboard Hot 100 while they charted number one on both the dance charts in both of the respective countries.

Lead singer Morten Harket and actress Bunty Bailey in a scene from the music video, which features them in a pencil-sketch animation / live-action combination called rotoscoping.

The first release of "Take on Me" in 1984 includes a completely different recording, and was featured in the first video, which shows the band singing with a blue background. The second video was directed by Steve Barron, and filmed at Kim's Café and on a sound stage in London, in 1985. 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 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 seen drinking coffee and reading the comic book in a coffee shop. As the girl reads, the waitress brings her the bill. The comic's hero, after winning the race, seemingly winks at the girl from the page. His pencil-drawn hand reaches out of the comic book, inviting the girl 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.
Meanwhile, back in the restaurant, the waitress returns to find that the girl is not there. Believing that the girl has left without paying the bill, she angrily crumples and throws the girl's comic book into a bin. This makes Harket's two opposing racers reappear, armed with a large pipe wrench and apparently aggressive. The racers smash the looking glass with the pipe wrench, evidently trapping the girl in the comic book. Harket punches one of the thugs and retreats with the girl into a maze of paper. Arriving at a dead end, he tears a hole in the paper wall so that the girl can escape as the menacing opposing racers close in on him. The girl, now back in the real world and found lying beside the bin to the surprise of restaurant guests and staff, grabs 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 Harket lying seemingly lifeless, and the girl begins to cry. But he wakes up and tries to break out of his comic-book frames. At the same time, his image appears in the girl'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 girl runs towards him and he embraces her. The video story is effectively concluded in the intro sequence of its successor, "The Sun Always Shines on T.V.".
At the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards, the video for "Take on Me" won six awards—Best New Artist in a Video, Best Concept Video, Most Experimental Video, Best Direction, Best Special Effects, and Viewer's Choice—and was nominated for two others, Best Group Video and Video of the Year. It was also nominated for Favorite Pop/Rock Video at the 13th American Music Awards in 1986.

• Director: Steve Barron
• Production Company: Limelight Productions, London
• Producer: Simon Fields
• Cinematographer: Oliver Stapleton
• Editor: Richard Simpson @ Rushes Film Editing, London
• Animation: Michael Patterson & Candace Reckinger