The brief - look and feel, mood boards, and reading the red flags
Getting into the client's mind's eye. And spotting, in the first email, the job that will eat your month.
11 minute read · one activity · lesson 17 of 21
The book has a name for the briefing phase: getting into the mind's eye. Your entire job is to arrive at the picture already in the director's head. You cannot do that on a script alone, and asking for more reference is not neediness - it demonstrates you are an adept professional.
What you must have before you start
- A FINALISED script - not a draft in motion.
- A SHOT LIST - script broken into beats, each with a camera angle, a director's description, and supporting visual notes.
- A LOOK-AND-FEEL BRIEF - the visual reference that grounds the whole treatment: theme images, video references, mood boards.
- A CASTING SHEET, including costume direction.
- A LOCATION LIST.
- A BUDGET. You cannot judge whether the job is feasible against your output and rate without one.
- Agreement, in writing, that you have received everything you need - and all of it run through on a VIDEO call, in batches of one day's output at a time.
Mood boards and key-frames - the best clients work this way
Some directors go further and provide frame-by-frame reference: photo screenshots filling every frame, chopped from many sources but cohering into a whole.
Crucially, this is not tracing. You are required to draw the vision TOGETHER - adding elements that are not in the reference, removing ones that are, and redrawing the key-frames from the direction.
The book calls this by far the most cohesive approach to director–artist collaboration and openly encourages directors to work this way: the direction is laser-focused, there is very little for the artist to get wrong, and the result is a higher-end product, produced in less time, with fewer changes - and a stronger chance of winning the pitch.
The red flag, stated plainly
Here is the diagnostic that experience buys, handed to you free: if you are given only a script and a look-and-feel brief, with NO director's shot list, you are in for a sticky transaction with many updates.
The mechanism is simple. No shot list usually means no director. No director means many voices. And many voices become a noise - many cooks, an unfocused amends phase, change after change until somebody stumbles onto the target.
That client type is usually inexperienced at working with a storyboarder. They know what they want when they see it, which is a different thing from knowing what they want.
You can still take the job. Just take it with the shot-list time priced in, the amends rounds agreed in writing, and your eyes open.
And one small rule with a large effect
Always request a video call over a phone call. You are absorbing visual information about a visual medium; do it with your eyes.
“As a general rule, if you have only been provided with a script, and a look and feel brief with no specific directors shot list - you are in for a sticky transaction with many updates.”
- Mitchell James Hughes, Storyboard Art
Interrogate a brief
Write the brief you wish clients sent you. Then you will know, instantly, what is missing from the one they actually send.
- Take any advert you have seen in the last week. Pretend you are the producer who commissioned it.
- Write the look-and-feel brief for it: 6–10 reference images (find them), a stated colour temperature (warm or cold), a filming style (handheld? locked off? corporate fly-on-the-wall?), and the mood in three words.
- Now write the casting sheet and the location list.
- Now swap hats. As the ARTIST, read your own brief and list every question it fails to answer.
- Turn that list into your permanent BRIEF CHECKLIST - the questions you will send to every client for the rest of your career.
What you should have at the end
A reusable brief checklist in your own words. It is the single most professionalising document a new storyboard artist can own, and it takes an hour to write.
Day 17 in one line
Get everything before you start: script, shot list, look and feel, casting, locations, budget. No shot list usually means no director - which means many voices, and many voices become noise.
This course is free and stays free. If you want to board in the suite Mitchell James Hughes built for his own work - script, shot list, storyboard, animatic, AI artist - the free tier opens every app with no card.
Start free →