AKA...What A Life Video Release

The official video for the song 'AKA...What A Life' by Noel Gallagher was released on October 6th 2011.

This image is from Noel's official website which shows the video for the song and a short description for when the song is available for download. It also goes on to give a brief explanation to where it was filmed and who was involved, the actor and comedian Russell Brand plays a large part within the narrative of the video.

"Noel Gallagher has shot an amazing video for Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds' new single 'AKA… What A Life!'. The video was co-directed by Mike Bruce and Blake West, who worked with Noel on the video for 'The Death Of You And Me'. Filmed in California, Arizona and New Mexico, the video features an outrageous performance by actor / comedian Russell Brand"

Below is the video for the song which will therefore give us many new ideas for our own video, it may also evoke some problems for the group as we cannot plagiarize the original video.

'AKA...What A Life' Is To Bring Out A Video!

During the weekend I was reading 'The Sun' newspaper and within the 'ShowBiz' section I saw an image of Noel Gallagher, I then went on to read the featured article.

The article informed me that Noel Gallagher is to release a music video for his new song 'AKA...What A Life' which will feature Russell Brand. The video will apparently be shot in Mexico, California and Arizona. This may cause a potential problem as we do not want to copy his style, because we want to create our own original house style for the music video.

The news of Noel producing a video for the song is not all negative, as it may help us think of more possible shots to take and a method to follow the style. Although the video is to be shot in other countries it could still prove to be useful as we want to follow an Alt Rock image in our own video.

The Sun website also revealed some shots which will be used in the video. Here are three possible shots which will be seen when it's released.

Basic Process Of Song Choice

Road To "What A Life" on Prezi

Above is a simple Prezi presentation which shows the process of our song choice of Noel Gallagher's 'AKA...What A Life' which is to be released on his bands new album 'Noel Gallaghers High Flying Birds'.

The ability to use Prezi is very useful in this case as it allows the user to click to see the show from start to end, as well as zooming out to see the whole presentation as a whole and therefore choose what areas of the presentation they wish to read.

What A Life lyrics

Lyrics Noel Gallagher lyrics - AKA... What A Life lyrics


The lyrics to the song of 'What A Life' have enabled us to create ideas of potential shots, as the song uses basic equipment such as an acoustic guitar and Noel's voice we can have shots with our artist with a guitar miming to the song.

The lyrics "chasing down that rainbow" and "take this tiger out for a ride" have given us ideas for shots such as the hustle and bustle of London streets, with people commuting to and from work. This may prove difficult as some places such as Rail Stations may not allow us to film inside, due to security reasons. However we will ask for permission and if we can take some shots in a rail station it may be a possibility for the video.

The chorus of the song could possibly sho

w people of London going about their daily routes and work. As the line "what a life" could show other peoples lives in relation to our performers life or just what he witnesses during his time in the city. This could range from the shoppers in Oxford Street to people living on the streets. We have not yet decided what time of day to film the shots, however we all like the idea of starting the video at dawn and ending the video at dusk, this will therefore show continuity and have a simple flow to go with the lyrics.

Another shot when "what a life" is sung could be part performance, with our artist miming the words within the streets or other location we choose. The image we may portray of our artist could be a busker, as we feel a busker in London will see many different people and experience different types of life as London is full of unique people. The shots could include Point Of View shots from passers-by who are watching the busker, this could create a sense of voyeurism.

Other lyrics to the song such as "maybe you dream" could show people with a facial expression

showing they are thinking about their life, and maybe how they want a more fulfilling life. This

could include someone after work or on a lunch break at a cafe or bar, thus portraying an idea of regret or sorrow during the song. A person with their face in their hands I feel would be an affective shot for this lyric as it easily shows despair or a high level of stress.

Soccer AM Website

During our group discussions over possible songs to use for our music video we all selected an Alt Rock genre, as this genre is popular between us.

Jay visited the Soccer AM website as he knew there was a section about music the show uses, we all thought this would be an effective idea as the show often uses less famous songs by a wide range of artists. After listening to a selection of songs Jay came across a Noel Gallagher track which was played on one of the previous shows, after all listening to it we agreed it was an ideal song as it was fairly unknown. As the song 'AKA...What A Life' by Noel Gallagher was popular between the group we did struggle to find inspiration of what type of video it could be, we therefore played the song and brainstormed possible ideas.

The image shows where the song was found on the website. Although the song was reasonably unknown at the time there is a risk of it becoming very popular as the show did promote it to its thousands of weekly watchers. If the song does eventually become more popular and a video is released we will have to ensure our video shows some similarity but has our own unique style, as we do not want to plagiarize the original video.

The Group's Song Choice

The song choice was extremely important for the whole A2 course, as the video we create will correspond with the song.

We had a group discussion on the song we will use for our video which showed so many different artists, we all decided on the general genre of the song which was between Indie and Rock. The artists we discussed to use ranged from:


The Kooks, Coldplay, Oasis, The Rifles, Two Door Cinema Club, Kings of Leon

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After discussion we preferred to use a song by Coldplay called 'Clocks', however the band is one of the most famous british bands of this era, so therefore we decided that making a music video for one of their songs may be too challenging as they are 'too famous'. We also discussed using a song by Plan B called 'Hard Times', we agreed that the song created many ideas for a video, however as Plan B is known worldwide we felt using him would be difficult as he already has many music videos out and connotes a certain style in many of them, therefore we would have had to copy his style and therefore the video would not be original. We therefore decided to use a song which is fairly unknown, which proved difficult as researching a song you haven't heard of is very time consuming.

After individual research Jay suggested a song by Noel Gallagher, which is 'AKA...What A Life' which has recently been used on the Vauxhall motor advert and had been on the TV show Soccer AM a few weeks earlier. After listening to the song in both studio and live format we decided to use the studio version as the sound was crisper and had clearer vocals.

Another reason for choosing this particular song was that it hasn't got a music video as of yet, this therefore allows us to be more creative with our video as we cannot copy any ideas from the original music video, as there isn't one.



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