This video for me is one of the most iconic music videos and definitely one of the best. The video was directed by Steve Barron. The video features a pencil-sketch animation and a live action combination which is called rotoscoping. The live action footage is traced over frame by frame to give the characters realistic movements. Around 3,000 frames were rotoscoped, taking 16 weeks to complete.
The theme of the video is a romantic fantasy narrative. The girl featured in the video, played by Bunty Bailey, is reading a comic book. As the girl reads the hero of the comic winks at the girl and his animated hand reached out of the comic book inviting the girl into it. She gets taken inside into the comic book and she appears animated too. There is then a fight with two thugs and the hero tears a hole in the wall for the girl to escape. She's then found outside a dustbin where the waitress from the cafe placed her comic. The hero is then shown seeming lifeless and she begins to cry. But he wakes up and attempts to break out of his comic book frames. At the same time his image then appears in the girls hallway, torn between real and comic form as he is trying to break his barriers. He manages to escape the comic book by becoming human. The final scene is based on the 1980 film, 'Altered States'.
The music video won six awards at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards. The awards it won were:
Best New Artist in a Video
Best Concept Video
Most Experimental Video
Best Direction
Best Special Effects
Viewer's Choice
The video was also nominated for two others which were Best Group Video and Video of the Year. It was also nominated for Favourite Pop/Rock Video at the 13th American Music Awards, 1986.
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