Textual Analysis – Music Video

Take on me - A-ha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914

Take on me – A-ha

The Norwegian band have sold 60 million albums and 15 million singles worldwide. It all kicked off with the groundbreaking video for their first single, “Take On Me”. 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. What resulted was one of the most innovative and original videos ever made.

Andrew Goodwin’s 6 Features of Music Videos

In his book Dancing in the Distraction Factory Andrew Goodwin points out characteristics and features that can be found in music videos.

1. Music videos demonstrate genre characteristics. - Take On Me falls into the pop genre and therefore demonstrates characteristics through the fact it is all about a romance between man and woman, however their is a unique twist as it features rotoscoping and that mix of real life and animation.

2. There is a relationship between lyrics and visuals. The lyrics represented with images. - The lyrics in Take On Me, generally didn't match the video itself but flowed well with the storyline as a whole. However there was an exception half way through the video at the chorus it says ‘take on me’ and a hand comes out the page and reaches for another, demonstrating lyric and visual match.

3. There is a relationship between music and visuals. The tone and atmosphere of the visual reflects that of the music. - Take On Me follows this feature as at one point in the music video a woman is about to throw the comic strip into the bin, which the girl has just been dragged into and the music turns very serious and panicked.

Andrew Goodwin’s 6 Features of Music Videos

4. The demands of the record label will include the need for lots of close ups of the artist and the artist may develop motifs which recur across their work. – This is apparent in Take On Me because there are regular cuts in the middle of the video to show the band playing their instruments.

5. There is frequent references to notion of looking and particularly voyeuristic treatment of the female body. – The main girl in the music video is given a lot of screen time and slow paced editing is used to capture her features, to give that voyeuristic treatment.

6. There are often intertextual reference. - In Take On Me there isn't much intertextual reference other than the fact it merges with a comic book throughout the video.

Lyrics & Tempo

Talking awayI don't know what I'm to sayI'll say it anywayToday's another day to find youShying awayI'll be coming for your love, OK?

These are the lyrics for the opening verse of Take On Me. This verse sets the tone and the genre for the rest of the song. The genre is pop, however it has a sub genre of romance, this is apparent because in the video it is all about a man and a woman running away with each other and like the lyrics say ‘coming for your love’. The tempo and pace however contradicts the stereotypical idea of a love song because it is very up beat, but still all about the idea of love between a man and women.

Editing

Take On Me features very fast paced editing, this is because it cuts from one part of the comic to the next to make it seem like the characters are in continuous movement. This is to give the effect of the characters having life like features and create this new and unique style (at the time).

Camera Work

Take On Me used variety of different camera shots and angles throughout the video, especially once it had got into the part after the rotoscoping, as at this point the comic book characters were completely alive and this could be expressed through all the different shots such as close ups and mid shots. The most interesting part about the camera work in this music video was at the start when it simply focussed on the comic book. At this point it was zoomed out and showed several parts of the comic book, however it then began to zoom in and use close ups on one particular extract from the comic book. At this point the new (at the time) rotoscoping began to take place, giving the comic book character life like features.