Light workshop prep: Moodboarding

Moodboards are an essential tool for creatives to communicate the images that are in their head to others - before production is started. It is also a great tool to collect inspiration and exchange ideas. As preparation for a video-shoot it is absolutely necessary. Especially if you don’t «simply» want to work in a documentary style but want to make your video feel more scenic and stylized (to avoid the over-used term «cinematic»).

In the light workshop we will be working off your moodboards to learn how certain looks can be recreated. Therefore you’ll need to prepare moodboards to the following topics.

!! Only select medium, medium close-ups and close-ups shots of people. Primarily singles (only one person in frame), faces and hands. !!

Don’t create a general-purpose moodboard with all sorts of things, objects and textures - focus on lighting. No details on objects, textures, landscapes, wide shots etc. We will use your examples as templates to recreate light setups.

Topics

• Neon Futurism,

  • soft light, night

• Film Noir

  • interior, night, mix of hard and soft light, black and white

• [your topic]

  • define a topic for yourself and name it

Process

1. Build groups of 4

2. create a color palette for the topics that use color

3. Individually search at least 5 images to each mood (min 15 images in total)

4. collect the images, discuss them, cluster them and make a selection

5. arrange the images you have selected on a page (A3) and print them (1 page per topic)

6. bring the printed pages to the studio

AGAIN: !! Only select medium, medium close-ups and close-ups shots of people. Primarily singles (only one person in frame), faces and hands. !!

Sources

useful image sources

• https://shotdeck.com/ (is now payed but there is a 2-week trial)

• https://www.pinterest.com/

• Google image search

• Instagram hashtags

• https://www.filmsupply.com/ (or other stockfootage sites)

A couple of examples from Shotdeck:

Also use these as reference for shot sizes