Cinematic Mood Board and how to edit movies intuitively.
I was fascinated as a child by collage making, taking paper clippings, magazine cut outs and creating something new out of it. This activity for me was freeing and intuitive as I wasn't analysing every step of creating this art work. It seemed to give this ability to create images with textures, photos that were completely out of my reach if I had to create them myself. Kind of, opened a new world of creative possibilities.
Digital Video Collage=Editing?
As I got involved in filmmaking, working with moving image - what I grew very curious or intrigued about was creating collages with moving image. Now, in many ways, that is the essence of film editing or montage. Juxtaposing different images, creating meaning - something I didn't plan to arrive at all, nor something that I realised until talking about the cinematic mood boards years later.
Absent of Analytical Intellectualised Thinking
As an exercise, the cinematic mood board is absent of analytical intellectualised thinking which is very helpful as you are developing your artistic practise, more so, in editing and filmmaking.
Cinematic mood board started as a need to create. It was the end of the pandemic in 2022 and I hadn't made anything in a while and I was facing a reality that making movies needs resources. I wanted to make but there was no money for production or a project to work on at the time. While I had used plenty of stock videos and was familiar with internet archive, public domain videos for my commercial work, I could never associate myself with using them for my creative work. I wasn't able to find a way. And I must admit that there was an idealist in me that was disregarding use of someone else's work or footage that you had no interaction creating. It seemed disingenuous for some reason.
In 2022, I watched Bladerunner 2046 and I was so amazed by the movie: its visuals, the atmosphere, the feel of it, the grittiness, and I just felt like I had to create. It was one of those rare times (somehow I don't experience them often nowadays) where you watch a movie and feel inspired to actually make something. To me, that's one of the hallmarks of great work.
Responding to a movie in its own 'film' language After watching this film, I had an almost intrinsic need to make something - something in that language, in its own cinema film language. (There is a term in film theory called film language) And that's when I kind of just put the first cinematic mood board together. It was a response to the movie Bladerunner 2046, a response to how it made me feel while watching it and evoking my experience, something that a review or words couldn't convey. And it seemed so much more powerful than that. It also felt like my own artistic expression and I enjoyed not being limited by resources.
Having this kind of a movie review or response to watching a movie and talking emotionally back to it in the same form that the movie was made, in the film language... That to me was something that a written review could not do. And even more interestingly, this exercise utilised the fundamentals of filmmaking which was writing by using sound and visuals rather than words. In some way, it embodied the camera-stylo where you your frame, your camera is the pen and the visuals in front of it as the words your pen is writing.
Why cinematic mood board? What I called this video collage was cinematic mood board. One, is that it has a characteristic of a mood board. As we know, mood boards are generally used for photo shoots, set directions, visual treatment boards and many other projects, events. Mood boards are effective in conveying the impression of the project They can help people and the team get a vibe or an emotion of what you're trying to achieve and communicate that to the team. The cinematic aspect of it, of course, is about the fact that it's a moving image, more similar in lines with a film or a movie. It's different than editing in a regular manner because the idea of a cinematic mood board is to create a glimpse of impression at the feeling level. It's to create a vibe. There are perhaps familiar terms in the film industry, known as pitch reels, concept videos but they all seem to stop existing beyond their pitch and I'd like to believe that the cinematic mood board is the basis of them conceptually but can also exist beyond the pitch.
Developing Intuitive Film Editing Skills
In a cinematic mood board, it's not at all about applying your analytical thinking, not at all about intellectualising your edits and shots. It's about developing your intuitive editing skills. I find that very necessary and you can't really pick it up from anywhere else but just doing it on your own. It's a very exciting exercise for editors, directors, filmmakers, artists if you want to develop being more intuitive with editing, especially if you want a film that is ruled and based in a mood and has a feeling that carries with it while watching it and after.
Comments