Lessons

Lesson Info

Mood Boards

Mood boards what is a mood board other names for it our storyboard, a vision board inspiration board whatever else you want to name it, whatever your preference it basically involves in creating and organizing your concept into a visual collage of images collected from the web or cut out for magazines. The point of creating a mood board is to help you in your creative team um get the shoot to where you want it to be so as artists were naturally visual I'm very visual I need to see things before like I can really grasp what's going on eso taking the extra time to do this I can make your chute so much better so we'll go through this I'll have a mood board examples after but this is a good starting point I find it easy for me to start with clothing than build from there this is after I've already figured out the model kind of thing, right? So, um I should I should correct that a little bit come also lie okay sometimes I don't always know exactly like say for a shoot had done previous I di...

dn't know the model because it was the client who chose the model so not always, but when it's my own personal projects I so I always start with the model usually so anyways back to this so clothing yeah, it's easy for me to start with some clothing, the styling of the shoot that I want to do accessory ideas I would like to think I think about the accessories and if I want them or not, you don't always need accessories and every shoot, sometimes nothing is better, so I will look up, you know, on line or in magazines, different ways of styling with earrings and necklaces and scarves and whatever else excuse me? Ah, color palette. So I usually out of color palette to my boards to help with consistency, mainly for the makeup artist. So to this morning, when I was with a make up artist, I created a mood board for her, so she understood um, what we were going for with the models and stuff like that, I have examples I'll show you, but there was a color palette there and she's like, I'm so happy you put this color palette here because it's helped her when she's trying to figure out makeup and color tones and what we're doing so, um, emotion in mood, adding, this is good for everyone to understand what kind of vibe you want the shoot to betray is it's sad? Is it happy? Is it playful and so on, so, um again, I'll show you howto, you know, explain that on the board itself after just writing a small note and attaching it to the board stating some location options so locations this is a good thing to have when it's like I said like if I'm outside and I haven't come up with a plan b which I'm bad at you guys should not follow that suit so you should be doing this instead have a different you're back up plants so having like, you know, okay, I want to do it in the royal garden if that doesn't work and it rains let's go over to where ever you know, just kind of figuring out ahead of time what you can do because when it's buyers like when I'm doing a shoot alone and it's just a quick thinking thing and we're good you know to move do whatever but when it's a whole team of people it's a little hard to be doing stuff like that so having this will keep things a lot more less ah lot more organized and less chaotic your goals and intention of the shoot so um what do you want to get out of the chute? Is it for publication? Is it just a portfolio building projects you want to do with the makeup in the model on whatever um you know, do you want to learn something new? Are you are you wanting to figure out some new lighting techniques, make sure and emphasize that let everyone know like for this I want this to be published. We need to stick to this. We need to follow this guideline we need toe or for you know what? For this let's play around and have fun because I'm just playing with light if we get some good image is great. So it's good to explain this because there's been times I've done test shoots and, um and it's my own fault, I didn't explain like I'm not getting this published. I have no interest and then later on the makeup is like asking your stylus is like, are these gonna get published? Did you submit them in it? And then I have to go through this whole explanation. Well, they didn't make sense. We didn't really create a story out of it. So it's best to be up front in the beginning? Just tell people fright from the start to avoid any kind of headache or drama later on so it's good toe goals and intel intentions it's good to have on the board include makeup, inspiration, ideas. This is important, very important for the makeup artist to understand your vision, because if you don't have that, sometimes they will do whatever they want you don't want that so it's good to have makeup ideas on your board herr ideas the same thing for hair. It is good for your hair person if it's not the same as makeup to know what it is you would like to have done. And, um, this helps everyone to just stay on the path and not start doing your own thing. I will tell you guys a quick example. I had done a shoot a while back and I had planned it out with the, um, makeup artist um, she was in contact with stylists. Why didn't talk? This was out of town shoot, so I didn't really get to talk to the team. I didn't talk to the model. I had a quick facebook chat with her agent online, he didn't even he was so busy he wasn't paying attention to what I was saying. Um the stylist, she knew what she had to do, some they've got a hair guy. Anyways, the point like this is that I showed up, they were getting this girl ready had a time I arrived there all day, the girl was getting ready and it was a mess. It was the makeup was in one way, the hair was nothing like how I thought it was supposed to be that the clothing was beautiful, but it went nothing with what was going on, the colors were just wrong, and I was so I just could not get into the chute like I just wanted to be done and I couldn't cancel the shoot the model was ready we had to do it and the agent wasn't happy, you know? So there was all this miscommunication happening and from that I learned don't ever ever do that again because it was a waste of time for everybody I did nothing with the photos it was a total disappointment and I felt bad the model was amazing I had been looking forward to working with her for months anyways so mood boards are very important to have when you're working with ah whole bunch of people it's it's really good to have that in place. So any other diet ideas that you can think of toe add to the mood board that I may not have mentioned it's good to have that and so I will show you an example of a mood board so I cannot use any photos but mine so this mood board is this pretend these are not my photos okay, so this is an ethereal mood board example had to use my own images and I'll talk about some of the highlights so like I just mentioned so sharing the vision with your team ethereal mood board hair inspiration here in the corner I got makeup inspiration here okay, well this's what the makeup artists seeing or the hair styles the scene this's the color palette I was talking about, so I created a family of colors that I want everyone to stick by what the stylist to stay with that I want makeup to say what that itjust helps everyone to keep organized and not go off on their own little corners and it becomes a disaster elements I'm explaining that I want a lot of flowers in the shoot, so I used these images that had a lot of floral on the set here in her hair she's holding it just got a flower crown whatnot and then again with the other ideas that says main props are flowers, clothing is vintage in bohemian style location I need a garden possible idea shoot two models, maybe together maybe we can make it be like stirs I want images very painterly so the mood I've put over here it's a dreamy and romantic and the light I want sun flare, so this is not a real bored this's just I'm just explaining this is how I what kind of gather and there'd be a lot more detail to this, but I can't I can't put it on here for this for the workshop, so I just used my images that I had had and so you guys can get an idea visual of how you can put it together and your team will love it they will be very happy to see that because if it just it just helps everyone and it helps me to stay focused too because I can go off some moral so when I'm I have an idea and then later and then somebody is like but wait you said I'm like we I did like I just forget so it's good to have this visual for everyone to reference um here's another mood board example it's not as much in this one it's uh you know it's a gothic mood board so I again so I've put the mood here it's dark and dramatic I want lighting to be gels were going to stick with the blue gel lighting because it's very vampy and dramatic and whatnot these air just this is just an example of an image maybe I want to include like from black and white edits hair inspiration I've I'm saying like I want hair to be I'm sorry wait a minute no I wanted hair to be black or white with gothic type of imagery you khun do that like more vampy type of style makeup inspiration I put a picture there so that she can see what I want her to do makeup like and stick to that makeup color palette location options forest or old warehouse this is just pretending we want to look for something like that clothing ideas loose our sorry lace tool dark flowers leather all clothing needs to be black because sometimes the styles wish over those around his stuff so as long as the thing's thes things air pointed out I need a few headpieces created so this is just sort of like a starting point and it and it's good teo keep the focus so that's that unless you have everything already which isn't usually the case it's yeah it's good to show this to your team once it's done to bring it to the shoot while it's happening because if anyone says, well, wait I want to do this and I have had that I've had makeup artist maybe wanted to do their own thing and I'm like no we have to do this like sorry but don't feel bad you guys have tto you know you gotta speak up sometimes and it doesn't always seem like nice but it's lettuces so where to find images for the mood board? I'm going to go over that now so because I used for those woodward's my own pictures I'll explain to you guys how to do this in the the real way so google images you go to google you typing keywords of what you want gothic fashion or ethereal headpiece and so on you khun typing keywords like that and make sure you go on the images and then I'll just brings you all the pictures up and you can scroll through those see things you like I collect them so I went ahead I collect say I don't have a concrete vision in my head I will see things I like all through wherever I'm looking I'll save an image saving which I don't really use pinterest much I should probably start using them or I'll create a folder and it will be called gothic and I will see all these little elements and when I save the photo because later all might forget why I saved it you know something maybe she's wearing a piece of lace I'll say I'll rename the photo once I save and I'll say headpiece idea had peace idea one makeup idea to make up idea three and I name it that way so that I want to go back to the file I say, oh yeah, I want to make up like that and then I can in and I narrow it down and I create the board from that another website it's great with plenty of fashion editorials, lots and lots and lots of tape dot com this is a great resource and you just go there and I think there's a search bar in there I can't remember it's sort of like google you just go in there and you feet you know you just have a heyday because there's so much to look at these air again another a couple of websites that are great for resources and has tons of visual stimulation so fashion gone rogue dot com or fashion editorials dot com there is a lot to look at in there and like I said, these air good for inspiration and this is good for collecting and saving for your mood board you can create on digital mood boards too if you guys don't want to be printing cutting things out the the physical cut out one does help it's a little more work but it's so nice to have this big poster board sitting there on the wall everyone could just keep looking over at it it's good to have that soul either way pinterest create online boards and keep them private on ly for your creative team to see this is an easy way this this is easier I should say when you are not together like when I was out of town and I was on the way to see the girl I should have had something in place like I had should have something for them to reference, but I didn't so pinterest is a good way too. Share your bored with people head a time when you cannot be there with um um print magazines picking up magazines, cutting out pictures that you see uh you can find those anywhere, obviously, but you can also go to stores again like goodwill and second hand stores, people donate magazines. Crazy magazines are expensive, adds up, you know, like seventy dollars, not that that's expensive. When you, you're constantly looking through them, you don't want to be. They go, they get tossed out, recycled or whatever. You can actually find tons of stuff, and they're not even old it's. Just people like last month's issue when they just get rid of it.