I like to consider myself an artist who isn’t artistic. At least not when it comes to drawing. I cannot draw worth a lick. If I need to make a storyboard, it’s going to be stick figures all the way.
But as effective as stick figures may be for me personally to get an idea of what a shot or series of shots will be like, they wouldn’t instill a lot of faith in clients. So what I will often utilize is what’s known in the industry as a “mood board.” Essentially, it’s a collection of still images (either from actual photos, or screen grabs from movies or videos) that captures the essence of the visual style you plan to incorporate into your film.
A couple of weeks ago I when I wrote about video creative briefs, I told you about the client who builds furniture out of cardboard. Here’s the mood board I created for that film.
If you’re wondering what mother and daughter photos have to do with a furniture maker, well, you’ll just have to wait and see. 😉 In the meantime, here’s a collage of stills from the raw footage giving you an idea of how closely I stock to the mood board. (See the film below. It’s actually the first episode in the SoundandSEA.TV film series I’m producing.)
Mood boards are also great if you do a lot of documentary style work. Most of the work I do falls into this category. There’s no specific narrative story we’re telling, and much of the b-roll we get will be based on the interviews we capture. So mood boards work great for letting the client know what kind of b-roll you plan to capture.
How do you convey your visual ideas to clients?
