Treatment

Treatment

Group Roles Cinematography: Louis Russell, Sarah Warren Mise-en-scene: Sarah Warren, Shelby Poll Editing: Louis Russell, Shelby Poll

Title: “Cool Kids” by Echosmith

Synopsis: Our music video will be a narrative/performance. The story will be about a two girls who are unpopular and seen as unattractive by their school peers. They decide they have had enough of the bullying and work together to give extreme makeovers. They do this for self-confidence and to feel happy with their life; not for other people. We see the girls shop for clothes and go home to do their makeup. When they are happy with their look and unique style they confront the “Cool kids” and they are amazed. The girls are happy and no longer in the background. The performance will be of a main singer, and a few people playing instruments. They will be in a plain room, which will either be light or dark.

Key Genre Conventions: ·      Narrative ·      Performance ·      Intertextual ·      Fast editing ·      Transitions ·      Effects

Mood Board

Initial Ideas

Our initial idea process conisted of our group brainstorming and looking at different things that could be used as inspiration that could influence our final idea. We knew at this point that we were making a  video for Echosmith's "Cool Kids" and because the lyrics of the song were so influenced by the idea of popularity "Cool Kids" we quickly thought about a sterotypical high school set up with mean popular kids and awkward unpopular kids. We all agreed that a good example of this was Katy Perry's "Last Friday Night" music video and we decided to pull inspiration from this. 

After looking at this we decided to present our unpopular characters in the classic "dorky" fashion with glasses and what not. We also got the idea from this video to have a transformation where the unpopular kids get a make over and look more like "Cool Kids". Another music video with a similar theme that we agreed was good to take inspiration from was Taylor Swifts "You Belong With Me".When watching this music video we thought it coukd be interesting to so something similar with the unpopular person wining over a popular crush with their transformation however we realised this was really cliche and we didn't want to portray an idea of female character being dependant on the approval of a male, instead we decided to go for something focusing on them changing for themselves and their own happiness. 

We then decided it would be wise to look at the official music video for "Cool Kids" and see if we could find any inspiration however we found that it was a performance based music video and we wanted to do something more narrative based. This turned out to be a blessing as it meant we wouldnt be just copying the original music video instead we were able to come up with our own idea. 

After looking at these music videos we have a much better idea as to the direction we are looking to go in for our music video. It definitely helped us to develop an idea and start to plan a storyline and the things that we would need for our music video such as costumes and props. 

Info about the artist

Echosmith are an indie pop band from America, Chino California, signed to Warner Bro's records in 2012. 

The band was formed in 2009 by siblings Graham, Noah, Jamie and Sydney Sierota and released the album "Talking dreams" in late 2013.

 They are best known for their hit "Cool Kids" but also have other popular songs such as "Come together".

They are a very musical family as all of the siblings grew up playing instruments. Each of the siblings have their own specialty with Graham playing the drums, Sydney taking lead vocals and ocasionally playing the keyboard, Noah plays bass and sings back up vocals while Jamie is the lead guitarist and sings back up. 

Copy of the lyrics

She sees them walking in a straight line,
That's not really her style
And they all got the same heartbeat
But hers is falling behind.
Nothing in this world could
Ever bring them down
Yeah, they're invincible, and she's just in the background
And she says

I wish that I could be like the cool kids
'Cause all the cool kids, they seem to fit in
I wish that I could be like the cool kids
Like the cool kids

He sees them talking with a big smile
But they haven't got a clue
Yeah, they're living the good life
Can't see what he is going through
They're driving fast cars
But they don't know where they're going
In the fast lane, living life without knowing
And he says

I wish that I could be like the cool kids
'Cause all the cool kids, they seem to fit in
I wish that I could be like the cool kids
Like the cool kids

I wish that I could be like the cool kids
'Cause all the cool kids they seem to get it
I wish that I could be like the cool kids
Like the cool kids

And they said
I wish that I could be like the cool kids
'Cause all the cool kids, they seem to fit in
I wish that I could be like the cool kids
Like the cool kids

I wish that I could be like the cool kids
'Cause all the cool kids, they seem to fit in
I wish that I could be like the cool kids
Like the cool kids

I wish that I could be like the cool kids
'Cause all the cool kids, they seem to get it
I wish that I could be like the cool kids
Like the cool kids

Copy right - gaining permission

It is important to consider copy right laws when filming anything - especially a music video as the music will more often than not be copyrighted. Because of this when we were looking at some tracks to use for our music video we had to try and gain permission to use the track. Our first choice was a song called "Sucks to be you" by Emma Blackery. 

We sent her an email enquiring whether or not we could use her song but unfortunately we didn't get an email back and we had to change the track we were going to use. 

This is a copy of the email we sent trying to gain permission.

We chose Echosmith's "Cool Kids" because although we were unable to get permission you can often check on youtube to see if song covers are taken down to check if an artist will take action if you use their track. This is because YouTube isn't as strict sometimes. We checked fot the song "Cool Kids" and saw that their were tons of covers and so knew this song was safe to use. 

Choosing the track

When choosing our track as a group we started off by figuring out what type of song we wanted to go for we contemplated the possibility of rock as this would allow for a band scene but then some of us wanted to go for something more pop based instead and so we went for this as it would have been a little easier to create a narrative for the music video. This was a big factor when deciding on our track as we wanted to do something narrative based so we needed a track from which we could draw a natural storyline. We were also limited by the fact that we couldn't use a very well known artist one) because of the issue of copyright but also because if a song is well known the quality of the music video is expected to be a lot better and we didn't want to compete with this. 

As part of the research process we looked at previous students work and then looked on youtube to find some tracks and we found Echosmith's "Cool kids" which we thought would be a great song to use as we had the idea to use a narrative surrounding popular and unpopular kids in a school. This turned out to be a good idea as we were easily able to gather props and costumes fitting for the character roles within the music video. 

Our idea to do a narrative based video was very different to the original music video. 

Echosmiths "Cool Kids" video: