Art of Noise - Close (To The Edit) version 1 (AI upscale)

Directed by Zbigniew Rybczyński, 1984. The video won MTV Music Video Awards for Most Experimental Video and Best Editing in 1985. The cast of this video later appeared together once more in the video for the Art of Noise track “Dragnet,“ also directed by Rybczynski. My upscale of that video is hosted on the official AoN channel: The girl “was possibly the daughter of a friend of the video’s director, named Sylwia.“ Despite some effort to find her, no one has come forward to confirm or deny this, and she’s not credited in IMDB or anywhere official. The men in the video are not members of the band. The distinctive “Hey!“ that reappears as a sample in tracks by the Prodigy and others was not performed by a member of the band. The voice belongs to Camilla Pilkington-Smyth, a student of band member JJ Jecsalik’s girlfriend. Other spoken word in the track is provided by Karen Clayton, girlfriend of band member Gary Langan. The video was commissioned by Island Records, who distributed ZTT (the Art of Noise’s label) at the time. The commissioner of the video, Kris P. Taylor, worked in the Artist Development and Publicity department at Island and was apparently a fan of Rybczynski, who had won the 1982 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film and emigrated to NYC in 1983. The video was shot in NYC on “a section of disused elevated railway that ran through a meatpacking district, between 450-456 West 14th Street (you can also briefly see a stretch it during the opening montage sequence of Woody Allen’s 1979 film Manhattan). It’s now a 16-block long elevated urban parkway called ’The High Line’ (or, ’High Line Park’).“ The band was not involved in supervising the shoot, and had mixed / negative opinions about it on first reaction, in part feeling misrepresented as “Huey Lewis and the News“ by the three male actors. Cultural reaction to the video however was largely positive, except in New Zealand where it was banned for apparently promoting violence toward children. Two other official videos for the track were produced, very similar to each other. Version 2 is hosted on ZTT’s channel here: and Version 3 is hosted on ZTT’s channel here: