Moodboard template

What this is about

Sixty images without a sentence are a screensaver. The board starts working when every reference answers to a category — light, color, framing, wardrobe, location, grade — and carries a caption naming the one quality it was chosen for. That last part changes everything: a photo of a kitchen can reference its window light, its color palette or its mess, and three viewers will pick three different readings unless you write down which one you mean. Anti-references close the remaining gap by marking the borders.

A template is the starting point, not the goal: once it has been filled in by hand twice, it is worth asking whether the document should come out of the plan instead.

What runs differently here

In planning terms, that means:

• References grouped by craft category — light, color, framing, wardrobe, location, grade — so each department finds its own chapter
• A caption per image naming the single quality it stands for, because an uncaptioned reference means something different to everyone
• An anti-reference section showing looks the film explicitly avoids, which settles debates faster than ten positive examples
• A freeze date after which the board stops changing, so departments prepare against a target that holds still

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Collect wide at first — film stills, photography, painting — without judging, until the direction starts repeating itself.
2. Sort the collection into the craft categories and delete duplicates that say the same thing with less precision.
3. Reduce each category to a handful of images that survive the question: what exactly does this one prove.
4. Write the captions, one intent per image, and rewrite any caption that needs the word vibe to work.
5. Add anti-references with equally clear captions stating what is being ruled out and why.
6. Review the board with DP and client, resolve conflicts between categories, then freeze it and date the freeze.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• A board of sixty images and zero sentences, admired in the meeting and useless in prep
• References shot with budgets and gear the production will never have, promising a look nobody can deliver
• The board quietly growing new images after approval, so departments prepare different films

With TillyGen

In TillyGen the look does not stay trapped in a PDF: the storyboard turns the agreed direction into concrete frames per shot, so mood and plan stop being separate documents.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.