Communicating Looks: When Words Fail

I recently tried a new approach to solidify a 'look' with a director who was struggling to articulate their vision beyond vague descriptors like 'cinematic' or 'gritty.' Instead of endless conversations, I pre-graded a series of widely varying stills from our test footage into distinct styles, one high-contrast and cool, another soft and warm, a third desaturated and punchy, etc. I didn't try to guess what they wanted, just gave them a clear spectrum of possibilities.

This immediately worked wonders. The director directly pointed to a specific grade he liked and then, more importantly, could articulate why he liked it, referencing tones and textures. We then used that selected grade as our creative north star for the rest of the shoot, adjusting subtly from there. What didn't work as well was attempting to do this on the fly with raw stills; the pressure of creating a 'perfect' grade live made the director overthink. Having them pre-rendered allowed for a more objective choice. It streamlined our on-set approval process considerably.

I’m curious, do others find showing multiple, complete examples more effective than trying to build a look collaboratively from scratch?