Bleatings from the Sheep

"Take On Me"....Off the beaten road

I'm in the mood for blogging. Now, had I actually gone to see, "FairyTale: A True Story" tonight, I could've blogged about that. But since I didn't, I suppose I'll have to come up with something of my own. Hope this works....

So who here has ever seen the music video to the song, "Take On Me" by A-Ha? If not, you really should. It's only, like, the coolest music video ever. Hehe. If you're curious about it, you can watch it here:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=WayYcrx4Gv0

Anywho. The reason I thought I'd try blogging about this video is because it combines animation with live action, and in a sense, the video is about connecting the two.

Now, granted, it is an 80's song. And a pretty cheesy one, at that. Even the music video is a little on the corny side. But, c'mon...what girl wouldn't want to be dragged into a comic where the guy of her dreams was waiting for her? Haha...all joking aside, I really do think the concept is interesting. The woman starts out reading a comic, and she's really pretty interested in it. Then suddenly, the man from the comic reaches out from the other side of the comic and beckons her to go with him. She hesitates, but then follows. In the comic world, the man continues to draw the woman further and further inside. Meanwhile, in the real world, the waitress just thinks the woman skipped out on her bill, and throws the comic away. Flash back to the comic world, where our two protagonists are threatened by the man's arch enemy. The man first ensures the woman's safety, and gets her back to her world, then it cuts back to the woman in her world sitting next to the trash can with the other people in the diner looking at her, wondering what just happens. She doesn't care though, and she grabs the comic and runs back home. Upon arriving home, she opens the comic back up to discover the man's fate. It looks as though he has been beaten, perhaps even killed. But then...he starts to get up! And he starts to break out of the comic and into the real world, there at her door! The video then ends here.

Now, is there a deeper significance to this whole video? I sure hope not. I realize that by posting this up here, I run the risk of a digital media artist coming by and completely spoiling my happy little thoughts, but I don't care. I still think it's an awesome video, if for no other reason, then how it draws together the worlds of reality with that of comics and animation. The technique is pretty amazing, if you ask me. This was somewhere around 1985, I believe, so there still weren't many spectacular animation tricks like we have today. No specialized computer generated cold images, only hand-drawn stuff here. There's something about animation to me that just...I don't know...it seems best when it's created through actual human hands and not through digital means. Maybe it's just me, but it seems to give it life. Blood and flesh and a heart. And it just makes it seem more...captivating, as a result. Not that computer animation is all bad, mind you. But I hope that's not what people start to depend on completely.

So those are just a few of my thoughts on this. Anybody else have something to share?

posted by Caitlynn @ 5:22 PM