As you now know, there are an enormous number of considerations that are taken
into account when designing a themed land.
And it takes a large number of people from over a hundred different disciplines to create it.
So with all these different people working together to create something that's never been built before,
how do we make sure that everyone has a common understanding of the vision?
Communicating complex ideas between all these different people can
be a real challenge we use lots of different ways to convey the ideas behind our designs.
Whether it's quick sketches, architectural drawings,
engineering blueprints, physical models, digital models, the list goes on.
One important tool we use is called a mood board.
Its role is to help convey the feeling of a land.
To help Imagineers understand what it should look like and feel like.
And how guests will react emotionally as they travel through the land/
Let's hear a little bit more about what a mood board is and how it's used.
When Imagineering sets out to design a new land or a new attraction or a new space,
we tend to put together what we call a mood board.
A mood board is a way of conveying how do I want you to feel - exactly - how do I want you to feel.
And who else ever in the realm of art history and design has ever tried to accomplish that and how did they do it.
We will use anything and everything to
communicate an idea from high-tech 3D models that you fly around to a scrap of
wood I found on the ground that it's just perfect for this and it all goes up there.
Anything that will help a person understand what are you getting at.
We start to do research in the materials, and the colors.
Oh you use anything - cutouts from a magazine.
Some images of how we might want the lighting to look.
Pictures of artwork.
Images of some of the buildings.
Pictures of ducks and bunnies
Images is some really good rust.
Hardware.
Vinyl that would go on the seats.
Textures.
Really unique wall covering.
Plaster.
Beautiful pictures of bioluminescent coral reefs with coral fish in it.
That's not what we're building but it's like what we're building.
Then we might do another board that's just about color. How do the color shift from place to
place to place? What are the areas that are warm? What are the areas that are cool?
What are the areas that are really vibrant and colorful and theatrical?
We'll have like an image of some of the foods maybe there's a great pie shop and
those pies look really good so you stick that on the mood board.
So it's two things emotionally how do we want you to feel and intellectually what do I want you to know?
And how am I taking you through this journey simultaneously as I
actually build the thing that I'm really going to build.
Generally it takes years from the time a land is first being envisioned to opening day when the first guests get to enjoy it.
Along the way projects will often evolve. Sometimes a little sometimes a lot.
A mood board can be very helpful in making sure that you
always stick to the vision: the core theme of your land
and what you want your guests to see, feel, and experience.
This business is very different from the private work of a single artist. Everything is negotiated and so you have
to have this very very open habit of being able to talk to other people about
their needs and their desires for the same project and shepherd this project
forward bringing all these people together, flowing in the same direction, but not very rigidly.
So the advantage of having these big boards with a lot of
images on it just put up with pushpins is that along the way, every time you
know a new designer artist comes to the project, they might bring a new idea and
then you can just take the old one off and put the new one on and keep updating it as more and more team members get involved.
So by the time you're done with
this process, very often you have something you could not have predicted at the beginning,
but if you've done your job right, it still reflects the intentions that you had at the beginning.
Let's just say I was gonna do a mood board for Pandora. And I want you to
understand this place is strange and new, and this place is not threatening, right?
So I'm gonna make a bunch of choices about shape language that might lead to
a chart of ovals and curves over here. I'm gonna express this with egg-like shapes, round shapes, soft shapes.
Those are friendlier and yet at the other side here are unexpected things.
Things that are the wrong scale, things that are upside-down, things that are a color I do not expect,
Details that I don't expect to see. So I'm telling you that it is strange and new, and I'm showing you that it is friendly and approachable.
If I was doing a mood board and I was presenting
it to somebody and I wanted them to experience taste and sound, I would
probably DJ my own soundtrack and play it while I'm presenting. And I would likely bring snacks.
Congratulations on reaching the end of this lesson on building lands.
Now, use this last exercise to create a mood board for your land.
Be sure to use as many different materials as you can think of.
Things like photographs, sketches, magazine clippings, fabric swatches, rocks, tiles,
whatever you think will help convey what your guests will see, feel, and experience as they move through your land.
After that, be sure to check out the other lessons on your journey through Imagineering in a box.