First things first, the mood of my group's movie opener is reflective and melancholic. It has strong contrasts between "together vs. isolation" and "appearance vs. reality." The goal of setting this mood is that we want the audience to immediately feel the weight of grief, even before they fully understand the storyline. Many of the images focus on soft, natural light, sunsets, water, and shadows. Each image in my mood board represents either a stage of grief, a character's coping mechanism, or a symbol of loss and memory. A main feeling I am trying to capture is how the loss of someone you truly love affects people differently. Even though all three girls experience the same death of their best friend, my mood board reflects how each character emotionally responds in her own way.
As a group, we chose to evoke a reflective mood because our film opener is centered around the emotional aftermath of losing a best friend and how that loss fractures a close friendship. I want to show the contrast between the different pictures in my mood board, from peaceful, such as the beach and doves, and darker imagery, such as drowning and isolation, which reflects the emotional instability within the friend group. Now, to be more in-depth, I will explain each image and my thought process behind it.
For the first picture with the open book lying in grass and flowers, this image represents memory and story. The book symbolizes our shared history, while the flowers and sunlight suggest nostalgia and reminiscence. In other words, this image reflects that the life of the friend who died (Jahzara) is a story that has ended too soon. However, the book is open in the picture. The book being open reflects on the idea of new beginnings, as in that even without her, life has to go on.
For the next picture of the doves flying, the doves are a universal symbol of peace. The doves symbolize peace that is yet to come. At the beginning of the film, the characters will be overwhelmed by grief, but this image represents a new idea that healing takes time and is a future goal that has not been achieved yet. The two doves show that peace will come eventually, just in a matter of time. Next, in the picture of the girl in a white, flowy dress walking around the shoreline, this represents purity (white) and letting go. Similarly, in our movie opener, we plan to also wear white dresses that are flowy on the beach while throwing Jahzara's ashes into the ocean. We plan to do this to perfectly represent the concept of new beginnings.
In the following picture of the bright yellow daffodil against a completely black background, the strong contrast between light and dark represents hope existing within grief. The yellow daffodil symbolizes life and optimism, whereas the black represents mourning and emotional darkness. This image reflects how, even after Jahzara's passing, small moments of hope are blooming within the shadows. The next image, which shows a girl underwater who appears to be drowning, symbolizes feeling overwhelmed by grief. In this image, I am trying to connect it to the character who is visibly depressed, as it represents how she feels trapped beneath her emotions.
Next, I chose to include the picture of the two people sitting and staring into a field, with one of them faded away in my mood board, because this helps represent absence and loss. The faded figure gives the idea of the missing friend in the group. In other words, we want the audience to fully understand how Jahzara's absence is constantly felt among the three girls. Moreover, I chose the pictures of a girl partying with her hands raised and the red solo cups because this represents the concept of denial and distraction that me and my group are trying to convey within girl 1. (Girl 1 is the one who copes with grief by acting nonchalant and surrounding herself with loud environments to avoid facing her emotions. She is avoidant.) I then selected an image showing a collection of Polaroid pictures because the Polaroids represent memories that are frozen in time. The pictures right after are an extreme close-up of watery eyes and a dark bedroom. Both of these pictures demonstrate the emotional and sad aesthetic that my group is going for.
To clearly represent an important prop of our movie opener, I chose a picture of an urn to include in the mood board. In the picture is an urn surrounded by flowers. This directly symbolizes the death of Jahzara and, in a way, a sense of closure. This connects to the scene where me and my group plan on throwing or scattering Jahzara's ashes into the ocean.
Last but not least, I chose two pictures of a few girls sitting together in a landscape, one being on a hill and the other on a rock by the ocean. I chose both of these pictures to help convey the feeling of mourning and reflection to the audience. This is because in the pictures, the girls are always looking above or beyond somewhere. Looking toward the sky represents heaven and the connection the friends still feel to Jahzara, even after her passing.
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