The Art & Craft of Filmmaking at TypoCircle

It’s the heartbeat of any film or brand story. It’s what lingers after the plot fades. And it’s what we obsess over at Be The Fox.

Look and feel.

Meg and Diana kicked off the session explaining their backgrounds, Meg as a director, Diana as a creative director, and how their careers have collided at the intersection of craft and emotion. One of their earliest collaborations was a purposeful brand film, and that sparked a shared passion for how Look and Feel shapes impact.

Emotion is the ink memories are written in. If your audience doesn’t feel something, they won’t remember your work. That’s as true in advertising as it is in cinema. Read on and make sure you request the talk recording for the full experience.

So, what is Look and Feel?

• Look = Visual aesthetic. Think lighting, framing, colour palettes. Moonrise Kingdom is a great example. Every shot feels like a painting.

• Feel = Emotional tone and rhythm. The pacing, the mood, the music. Take Alien 3, bleak, moody, and immersive.

You can have style without substance, you can make something that LOOKS cool, but without feel it's unlikely to land and won't have much staying power. That’s why building Look and Feel is a team sport. From production designers to editors, everyone plays a part.

At Be The Fox, we start every project by asking: Who are we speaking to? Because while we love art, we’re not making films just for ourselves. We’re creating emotional truths that resonate with real people.

In the talk Diana and Meg broke down key elements of Look and Feel for an audience of fellow creatives, albeit in the world of design and type.

The session covered:

• Lighting: Direction, diffusion, and tone all tell the truth about a scene. Half-lit faces? Something’s being hidden.
• Production Design: Costumes, textures, props, especially when shaped through collaboration with DOPs and graders.
• Framing & Focus: You can use space to create isolation, or pull focus to shift perspectives and relationships.
• Editing Rhythm: Pacing matters. A sharp cut can jolt you; a slow one can soothe.
• Sound Design: Music changes everything. The same visual can become comedy or horror depending on the score.
• Grading: Not just an aesthetic decision, it’s part of the storytelling. Think Gladiator’s blues or Mad Max’s teals.

We closed with a few case studies, our work with VoucherCodes and Hertility, showing how even a seemingly simple brand film is the result of countless Look and Feel decisions.

Take away the story, and what are you left with? If you’ve done it right: everything else.

 Request the talk recording for the full experience.

Find out how look and feel can be applied to your brand messaging and campaigns. Book in a chat with Meg and Diana.