It may be a favourite in top 100 lists, countdown TV shows, 80’s compilations and consequently a cliché choice but I love it. A mixture, (like Justice’s ‘D.A.N.C.E.’,) of live action and animation which perhaps works most effectively when combined in the same frame. Of course in this output from 1985, computer generated graphics are not in use.
A technique called rotoscoping is employed, whereby the action is shot on ordinary film then each frame is traced over by hand to produce the animation. This decision creates a work that over twenty years later is still visually impressive.
In terms of remediation this video is a palimpsest- remediating the actors' original performance to film, remediating film to animation then layering the two to create a third medium, that of celluloid and cartoon combined.
Aesthetically it couldn’t be any more of its time- the clothes, the hair, the melodrama, the synth driven pop, the sidestepping dance moves, even the sketchy cartoon style seems inseparable from what we retrospectively consider to be ‘the 80’s.’ Combined with a strangely compelling (if not bizarre) plot, this video stands up as a classic.
Sunday 21 October 2007
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2 comments:
I think the level of rotoscoping allows the band to differentiate between their roles: in the 'real world' they are largely just band members but in the rotoscoped reality they take on more matrixed roles, participating in the story.
Congratulations to Claire for bringing out this brilliant classic from the decade in which we were made. It's a hilarious excercise in making band members the objects of female teenage fantasy. Even as a teenager of the late 90's it makes me feel nostalgic. I love the fact that the lead singer gets given a cartoon persona in the rotascoped world that is vastly more dashing than he seems in any of A-ha's other videos, and that the girl somehow rescues him from that world, consequently appearing with him on the magazine cover at the end.
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