A-Ha's Take On Me Music Video Had An Eye-Watering Budget For 1985 — And It Was Worth Every Penny

By the time that a-ha released the clip accompanying its single "Take On Me" in 1985, music videos were becoming highly artistic miniature movies, evolving away from their initial purpose as music marketing tools. But as MTV appeared in more homes in the 1980s, more artists really tried to make something special with their videos, and it would take a lot of time, effort, and money to create something that stood out from all the other rock videos airing around the clock. For a-ha, that meant securing from its record label a budget the likes of which had never been seen. The "Take On Me" production would help make such inflated budgets just a part of doing business in the messed-up 1980s music industry.

"Take On Me" is the kind of '80s hit that will stir up emotions in every Boomer. The rapidly paced synth-pop gem from the superstar Norwegian band a-ha is a sappy, earnest invitation to try out a romance, delivered in a plaintive voice supported by all kinds of lush, electronic, and oh-so-'80s instruments. Such an emotive song needed an equally emotive video, and that came to pass. During the creation of a-ha's famous and memorable "Take On Me" video, the band and its collaborators spent every cent of the shocking six-figure sum it received to do it.

"Take On Me" utilizes a seamless mix of live action and animation to tell the story of two lovers, one human (played by Bunty Bailey) and one illustrated (a-ha singer Morten Harket). A comic book character beckons a real-life woman into his dangerous world, and she becomes an animated pencil drawing, too, until bad guys give chase and they both wind up in the real world. A lot of plot and animations get packed into just four minutes, and director Steve Barron had been encouraged to do so by Warner Bros. Records executive Jeff Ayeroff. 

So convinced that a-ha could break in the U.S. with enough marketing, Ayeroff allocated what was at the time a massive sum for a video: £100,000, or nearly $500,000 in 2025's money. "We very rarely got that kind of budget," Barron told Vulture. "It was a budget designed to really do something spectacular." Ayeroff also told Barron to make an animated video and to hire animators Michael Patterson and Candace Reckinger, a duo skilled in a process called rotoscoping. In that method, animators take film frames and trace images from them. Strung together, they resemble drawings in motion.

Ayeroff's expensive gambit worked. "Take On Me" became a No. 1 hit, and a-ha's album, "Hunting High and Low," sold a million copies in the U.S. The video itself won six MTV Video Music Awards, including Most Experimental Video and Best New Artist in a Video.