Initial ideas mind map

My group decided that it would be a good idea to write down all of our initial ideas into a mind map before putting them onto our storyboard so we have a clear idea of what we are going to do and what kind of shots would look best.

After starting to write our ideas down and the more we were discussing it we saw a pattern in our ideas of a girl who is obsessed with the band and so thought we could make our video around the theme of "obsession". We also thought that this would be a good theme for our group because last year when we had to make an opening for a film, our initial research, even though we did not go through with it in the end, was about a stalker, so we did quite a bit of research on stalkers which we can expand on this year and fit it in with our theme of obsession.

We took a photo of our initial ideas that we put into a mind map and this shows some of the shots we came up with and the actors that we are hoping to use:

Possible band names

As a group we discussed possible band names that we could use that represented our band brand and our music video. We looked at our wordle of our band brand ideas and used them to try to come up with a name. We also used websites on the internet such as www.bandnamemaker.com/generator/ which helped us with our ideas and gave us some funny and more serious suggestions. We also looked at other bands within the same American Rock genre to see their kind of names. We tried to make names that reflected the idea of "Kings" as the original band is called "Kings of Leon" and also names that reflected "Charmer" as this is the name of the song. We made a wordle for our initial ideas and this is what we came up with:

Meeting log update

This an update of our meeting log for our first few meetings explaining what we have been discussing in our group meetings:

Band Brand

As we need to create a band brand for our song we decided to create another wordle using all different words that represent our band, Kings of Leon, and the song, Charmer. We had to think about the costume, lyrics, genre, theme, musical influences, sound and instruments that represent our song and this is the wordle that our group created:



From this wordle we will also have another meeting soon about a possible name for our band by using these brand influences.

Audience feedback to treatment

When we presented our treatment to our class we asked them to respond to it by writing a few words or comments about what they thought about our initial ideas of our video.

After we collected all of the comments from our audience, we used the website www.wordle.net to create a wordle out of all the feedback. This website allows you to put in all different words and comments and then makes a "word cloud". The words that are most frequently used appear on the wordle as bigger and bolder so you can see the most prominant words. This will let us see our audience feedback in an easier way and see what the majority of the audience thought.

This is our wordle:


So from this wordle we can see that the majority of our audience thought that our treatment and initial ideas were creative and professional, while a few people said it was unique and a good interpretion of the song and lyrics.

Our treatment

We have made a treatment about our song "Charmer" by Kings of Leon which we pitched infront of an audience to gain audience feedback to see if our ideas are realistic, achievable and effective.

We made a document to hand out to our audience which included details of our initial ideas and included pictures for the visual concept of our video. Some of the things we needed to include in our treatment is:

• Background on song
• The basic narrative or concept of our video - performance, narrative or concept
• What ‘feel’ we want to provide for our audience
• How we will achieve this
• What are the codes and conventions of our genre
• In what ways are we conforming to or subverting them
• What themes are running through our video
• How we will use costume and make up to convey our messages
• The location

This is the document we handed out to our audience:

Kings of Leon Treatment

We also made a short powerpoint presentation to go with our treatment to make it more interesting for our audience:

Kings Of Leon - Charmer Treatment

We also filmed our treatment when we presented it to our audience but unfortunatly only 2 members of our group were able to be present to film, however we all worked together on the above documents and preperation of the treatment:

Asking permission from music producers

As we have chosen an established band to make a music video for, it is important that we ask permission from the producers of the song to use it in our coursework. Angelo Petraglia and Ethan Johns are the two men who worked on the album "Because of the times" by Kings of Leon which has the song Charmer on it. This is the email we sent them to request permission for the use of the song:

Dear Sirs,

Our names are Molly Wing, Aimie Condon, Sarah Isaacs and Charlotte Boag and we are media studies students at Enfield County School and we are currently in the early stages of producing a music video and promotional digipack alongside that. The reason for our email is to request your permission to use Kings of Leons' song 'Charmer' that you produced for our chosen video song. We have no intention of selling our video and we can assure you there will be no copyright issues at akk as it will solely be used for educational purposes.

If there are any issues please feel free to contact us.

Yours Sincerely
Molly Wing, Aimie Condon, Sarah Isaacs and Charlotte Boag