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Moodboards

Who can do this: Moodboards are available on your first project on the Free plan, and on every project on Supporter. Editing a moodboard follows the permissions of the board it lives on, so if you can edit that scene, character, or location, you can edit its moodboard.

Every production starts with a pile of references: frames you screenshotted at 1am, a photo of a hallway you liked, three greens that are almost the right green. A moodboard is where those go, attached to the scene, character, or location they belong to instead of a folder on your desktop. Find them under Visual → Moodboards, or on any individual board (scene, character, location) as Moodboard cards. A moodboard has two layouts, and you can switch between them at any time without losing tiles:

• Grid tidies tiles into even columns. Use it for a straight reference sheet.
• Freeform gives you a canvas where you drag, resize, rotate, and overlap tiles wherever you want, across as many pages as you need.

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Create a moodboard

1. Open any board in the project. The project board works too, for project-level moodboards.
2. Click Add Card.
3. Select Moodboard from the card type list and click Continue.
4. Give the moodboard a name, for example “Direction 1: Midnight Blue” or “Act II Wardrobe: Elena”.
5. Pick a theme color. Choose a preset swatch or enter a hex value.
6. Click Create Card.

The theme color sets the background for new text tiles and the accent bar on the board preview card. One board can hold several moodboards. A wardrobe item board might carry “Option A: Dusty Rose” and “Option B: Forest Green” side by side for comparing directions.

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Switch between Grid and Freeform

1. Open the moodboard.
2. Click Grid or Freeform in the layout toggle at the top of the board.

Your tiles are kept either way. Switching to Freeform the first time lays the existing tiles out on the canvas so you can start moving them. Switching back to Grid returns them to even columns, and your freeform positions are waiting for you when you switch again.

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Arrange tiles on the Freeform canvas

Click a tile to select it. A selected tile shows handles and a row of controls.

• Drag the tile to move it. It moves in the same gesture, so there is no click-then-drag.
• Drag a corner handle to resize.
• Drag the round handle above the tile to rotate.
• Click Bring to front or Send to back to change what overlaps what.
• Click Toggle frame to add or remove a card-style frame.
• Click Remove to take the tile off the board.

Images sit raw on the canvas by default, so a board reads like prints pinned to a wall. Turn on a frame per tile when you want one. Click any empty part of the canvas to deselect.

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Add images to a Freeform board

Three ways in. The first two skip the menu entirely.

• Drop files. Drag images from your desktop onto the canvas. The tile lands where you dropped it, and you can drop several at once.
• Paste. Copy a frame or a reference from a browser, click the board, and paste.
• Add from library. Click Add from library to pick from images already uploaded to the project.

Images added to a moodboard are tagged as reference images and count toward your project’s media storage.

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Add an image in Grid

1. Open the moodboard.
2. Click Add Image.
3. Choose an image from Project Library, or upload one from Upload New.
4. Click Insert.

If the board is empty, Add Image is in the empty state instead of the action strip.

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Add a text tile

1. Open the moodboard.
2. Click Add Text.
3. Enter a Headline. Body text is optional.
4. Set a Tile color, or leave it on the moodboard’s theme color.
5. Click Add tile.

Use text tiles for mood descriptors, color names, or lighting directions you want sitting next to the references. On a freeform board, Add text drops the tile straight onto the canvas in edit mode. Double-click any text tile to change its words in place.

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Work across pages

A freeform moodboard holds up to 50 pages. Each page exports as one sheet of the PDF, so a costume board can run a page per look and a location board a page per room.

1. Click Add page in the Pages bar.
2. Click Page 1, Page 2, and so on to move between pages. Arrow keys work once the page bar has focus.
3. To move a tile, select it, click Move to page, and pick the destination.
4. To delete the page you are on, click the trash button at the end of the Pages bar.

The trash button is disabled when only one page is left. A page with no tiles shows a dashed outline, and empty pages are skipped when you export.

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Reorder tiles in Grid

Drag any tile to a new position and release. The new order saves when you release.

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Remove a tile

• In Grid, hover the tile and click the X in its top-right corner.
• In Freeform, select the tile and click Remove.

There is no confirmation step. Tiles are quick to re-add, so removal is deliberately instant.

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Change the theme color

1. Open the moodboard.
2. Click Change theme color (the color circle) in the top-right header.
3. Choose a preset swatch, or use the color picker and hex input.

The color updates right away. It shows as the accent bar on the board preview card and becomes the default for new text tiles.

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Open a moodboard full screen

Click the moodboard card title or preview on the board. In Grid, tiles show in four columns on large screens, dropping to three, two, and one as the screen narrows. In Freeform, the canvas keeps its shape and scales as a whole, so tiles hold their positions relative to each other on any screen.

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Find every moodboard in the project

Go to Visual → Moodboards. Each entry shows where the moodboard lives: “Scene 12 · INT. KITCHEN”, “Character · Elena”, “Wardrobe · Elena’s Act II Dress”, or “Project · My Film”. Click any entry to open it.

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Export a PDF

1. Open the moodboard.
2. Click Download PDF, then Export PDF.
3. Wait while the button reads “Exporting…”.
4. The download starts on its own when the export finishes.

What you get depends on the layout:

• Grid exports a title header, the context breadcrumb so the recipient knows which scene or character it came from, and a four-column layout. Image tiles keep their natural aspect ratio and render at higher detail for print.
• Freeform exports full-bleed landscape sheets matching what you arranged on screen, at the same sizes and angles, one sheet per page. Positions are stored as proportions of the canvas, so nothing is re-flowed to fit.

Text tiles keep their color and typography either way, so callouts stay readable in print. The PDF is the right format for sending a moodboard to someone without a Spell Slate account.

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Related

• Lookbook: the full-project visual document, with scene pages, color bars, and shot lists.
• Media: the project image library. Images added through a moodboard appear here tagged as reference.
• Boards and cards: the board system moodboard cards live on.