Throwback Thursday Video Of The Week: A-ha “Take On Me”
Here we go with our first ever Throwback Thursday Video of the Week! We’re kicking off this new feature with one of the most cutting edge music videos of all time.
Prior to the release of their 1985 album, Hunting High and Low, very few people outside of Norway had heard of A-ha. That all changed when the video for their single “Take On Me” debuted on MTV.
The video was partly filmed in a London cafe using a technique called rotoscoping. That’s a combination of live-action shots and pencil-sketch animation. The live-action footage was traced over frame by frame to give the characters realistic movements. Approximately 3,000 frames were rotoscoped and the entire process took 16 weeks to complete.
At the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards, A-ha’s “Take On Me” won six awards: Best New Artist in a Video, Best Concept Video, Most Experimental Video, Best Direction in a Video, Best Special Effects in a Video, and Viewer’s Choice. It’s easy to see why:
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