Industry lingo time! Today’s interesting term you may or may not be familiar with is “Style Board.” Much like storyboards show shot-by-shot how the story will be told visually, the style boards, as you can probably guess, show the visual style of the film

The style boards we have access to today are from the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. John Hillcoats directed Viggo Mortensen, Robert Duvall, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce and 12-year-old Kodi Smit McPhee in the film adaptation for Miramax. Last year, it looked like the film could make the Oscar season, but was unceremoniously pulled for the line-up and is currently re-shuffled to October of this year.

The book is depressing, but McCarthy knows his atmosphere, which is why these watercolors, sketches and photo montages from Production Designer Chris Kennedy are so stunning in picking up a post-apocalyptic atmosphere. Most of what I’ve seen from this movie has looked really brown, dirty and muddy, but these frames pop and still get across that end-is-neigh look.

CLICK HERE to go to the Flickr page of all the style boards.