Music Video Analysis 2 A-ha - take on me

Narrative The story is about a cartoonist who’s sitting alone in a café, looking at her drawings. The drawings come to life as a hand reaches out and takes her into the cartoon, the narrative then turns into a love story. They get chased out by the other cartoons, the lead singer who's one of the cartoons, comes into the real world with the girl and then the video ends.

Costumes They are wearing casual clothes in the music video, the clothes they wear reflect the times in which the video was made which is the 80’s. The reason I think they decided to wear casual clothes in this is because the story they’re telling is about an aspiring cartoonist, and for the story to seem realistic they choose normal clothes as the costumes.

Actor positioning The positioning relates to Goodwin’s music video theory in that some genre’s have characteristics e.g. pop and metal bands show performances and how they need lots of close ups which A-ha have done, when the band are playing their instruments the camera man uses a medium shot to just show the upper half of them, to focus more on the band playing the instruments.

Lighting The lighting is high key and is also warm, this could be use to connote the theme of love. The high key white lighting is only used when they’re in the cartoon world.

Hybrid The video is a cross between a narrative and a performance, the narrative is a love story and the performance is the band playing their instruments.

The demands of the record label Andrew Goodwin’s music video theory states that most pop songs require that they have close ups of the main artist/singers face. One of the band members is doing direct address by looking directly at the camera making it seem more personal to the audience.