Oasis : Importance of Being Idle Music Video Analysis.

This music video came out with the song "the importance of being idle" and attempts to portray a man who basically wastes his life away, leading to an early grave, making all the wrong decisions along the way, hence the name "importance of being idle".

The theme of wasting ones life away is close to band member and lead singer of this song, Noel Gallaghers heart, as before he joined and captained his ex-band Oasis, he was living in a hostel, addicted to drugs, knowing that he was wasting his life away and looking at a meaningless life, leading to an early grave.

The verses in the song portray "the mans" people in his life all telling him the same thing, that he needs to sort his life out, with the choruses portraying "the mans" view that he just doesnt care, because, as the song says- "I can't get a life if my heart's not in it".

The start of this video begins with an old fashioned style opening, in the style of a film, with the words "a big brother presentation". As can be seen in the still adjacent, Dont Believe the Truth, the album title, and Big Brother, the record label, are shown.This old fashioned, black and white filming style is carried on throughout the whole video, giving an eerie feeling to the whole thing.

The titles then appear, with the words - "Oasis IN The Importance Of Being Idle". This style challenges conventions of music videos, and gives the music video a very strong feeling of being like a grand opening at a cinema, and gives the audience the impression that this music video has a story to tell. This opening is also an establishing shot, setting the scene early on for where the story is set, which looks like an old style, working class street in a tight-knit community. This all seems to reflect Noels early life, as he lived in a working class community in Manchester, and was brought up on a street that will have had characteristics similar to that in this video.

The main character in the video is set early on, when the camera pans along his body from toe to head, and then focuses on a close up of his face, to focus on his emotions, which are sadness and an apparent feeling of being lost and getting no where in life.

The man rises and there is then a shot of a framed picture of a woman, who we are expected to believe is this mans partner.

Unusually, the band have chosen to be more a part of the supporting cast in this music video, with Noel only being seen shaving occasionally, and Liam, Gem and Andy Bell only seen in fleeting moments in the video.

The bands role in the video has no particular meaning and really adds nothing to the story line, they perhaps just felt it was necessary to show their faces, as they are not a band who regularly act in music videos, with most of their videos focusing on live performance style filming.

With the words "i dont mind" the main characters mood changes, signifying that he will not conform to peoples expectations of him, and he starts dancing around the room in a kooky manner. This change happens along with an added layer of piano chords in the song, which changes the overall mood from the verses to a more uplifting one.

Various tracking shots of old fashioned cars are used, along with more shots of the main character dancing along the street, with lip syncing used to portray that this character is telling the story of his mind to us.

He then goes to a funeral directors, which is where we see the band is based, with Liam Gallagher posing as the boss of the funeral company, and the lead character dances into a coffin, supposedly happy, with a smile on his face as the coffin is closed, signifying that he has passed away and always saw life much differently to everyone else, and was never afraid of dying, still dancing around as he is closed inside the coffin.

We then see a group of people we take to be his family and friends mourning after his death, with the main character standing behind them. they are unaware of his presence in the room, so we must deduce that he is there as a sort of "ghost" looking on.

At points, the lead character looks miserable, although this mood quickly changes when the song moves to a more upbeat feeling.

The end of the video sees our main character leading his own funeral procession, still dancing, with the camera tracking back to keep the same framing throughout the whole shot as the funeral procession moves steadily towards the direction where the camera is filming from, with the main character singing directly to the camera. He then places his hat over the camera lens at the same time as the song finishing to bring an end to the song.