A-Ha - Take On Me 

This music video is one of the most popular of all that I shot.
Once again, the one of seven computer controlled Oxberry animation stands with an aerial image unit on Earth; the only one in Hollywood. The live-action shoot at A&M studios was developed. Using the rotoscope attachment as a presentation tool rather than an alignment tool, Michael Patterson sketched frames, a lot of frames on animation tissues, on John Dardareion's camera at night on Santa Monica Blvd.. Those sketches and mattes created by Candace Reckinger were brought to me where I tissue flopped and shot for days and days. The film was developed and the motion picture mattes were composited into a smash hit and MTV gold. I'm proud to have been a part of it's creation, although never credited. The thumbnail used here was the most difficult match to overcome of all mattes.
I was the cameraman that animated the project. The specialty of the DOS computer controlled Oxberry animation stand with aerial image projector was that it was accurate to 1000th of an inch. The "magic' is the Multi-Pass Traveling Matte effects combined to create many levels at varying speeds as well as glints, glows, blooms , sparkles, streaks, and step-printing. You can imagine the amount of cell flopping in the creation of high contrast film traveling mattes, which were then also duplicated in reverse image. These 'hold-outs' and 'let-throughs' are sandwiched in the camera head and matched at frame zero. The color raw stock is rewound and exposed with the next opposite matte; the process being repeated for each layer twice; holding out and letting through the color imagery. Fingers crossed the color film is developed.