Top 5 Special Effect Band Music Videos
Credit: Studio Daily
- 1986 – A-ha “Take on Me”
No clip did more to educate laypeople on the meaning of the animation term rotoscoping than this video for the Norwegian synth-pop band A-ha. It tells the story of a cartoon character who falls in love with a woman in a diner who’s reading the comic book he appears in. First, he invites the woman into his world.
- 1989 – Michael Jackson “Leave Me Alone”
Animator Jim Blashfield was a back-to-back Special Effects VMA winner, earning the same prize again the following year for his work on “Sowing the Seeds of Love” by Tears for Fears. “Leave Me Alone,” directed by Jerry Kramer, is not just a witty and wildly inventive bit of animation but also a piece of late-1980s cultural history
- 1995 – The Rolling Stones “Love Is Strong”
Fred Raimondi, at the time a VFX supervisor at Digital Domain, took home a Moonman for his VFX work on this high-profile Stones clip. Compositing the band members and assorted models into black-and-white New York City environments might not seem like a huge trick these days, but at the time the effect was stunning
- 1997 – Jamiroquai “Virtual Insanity’’
It’s not actually the floor that’s moving in this mind-bending video, but the walls. It’s an exceptionally clever idea that never gets old, as director Jonathan Glazer and Smoke & Mirrors founder Sean Broughton figure out different ways to make it pay off. The clip won Video of the Year, Breakthrough Video and Cinematography awards in addition to Special Effects
- 2001 – Robbie Williams “Rock DJ”
Brit-pop superstar Robbie Williams deflated his own ego with this video that has him struggling to impress a group of women at a roller rink by stripping down — first taking off layers of his clothes and then, when that fails to stop the traffic, peeing off layers of skin and tossing chunks of his own raw meat toward the women.