The Art of Storyboarding

Planning a Shoot. Decide what you want to end up with: What story do you want to tell? Who is your audience? How do you want them to react? What are your resources? How can you shoot your film to achieve the result you want . . . with the resources you have? All things are possible! . . . Some just take more time and more money than others.

Pulling it together. You’ve got story, equipment, crew, locations, cast, and you know your audience, so now . . .

Plan each shot of your film. More time used in preparation, but saves you (and your cast/crew/editors) time, energy, and money It may not feel like it during the preparation, but it does! (no reshoots!)

Planning each shot . . . Indicates you respect the time of others on your project. Gives you freedom! to IMPROV Once all your required shots are done, you can try some fun angles, or let your actors play in character! Best stuff often happens here!

“I would prefer to write all this down, however tiny the film [is] “I would prefer to write all this down, however tiny the film [is]. They should be written down in just the same way a composer writes down those little black dots from which we get beautiful sound.” --Alfred Hitchcock

Storyboarding Storyboard: A sketch of, and brief description of each shot. It includes: Shot number. Description of shot. (Long/Medium/Close-up) Camera Angle Brief Description of Action/Dialogue Duration of shot. --NxNW Storyboard handout

North by Northwest The premise: Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is a fugitive from the law. Against all odds, he must find a way to prove his own innocence. In this scene, he has been told he’ll get some information from a mysterious man named Kaplan at a remote intersection.

Storyboarding: To get to a point where you’re ready to shoot, you need to storyboard, so How should it look?

Description of shot. (Extreme Long Shot) Camera Angle (Aerial) Shot number. (1) Description of shot. (Extreme Long Shot) Camera Angle (Aerial) Brief Description of Action/Dialogue (empty fields, bus arriving, door opening, Duration of shot. (split with next frame at 52 seconds) -Why start with this shot?

-Why shift to an eye-level shot?

Now we’re near/with the character . . .

Turn to POV Turn to POV Turn to POV . . . WHY? Turn to POV

Introduce character/information

Watch scene.

Storyboard Assignment Create a series of Storyboards for your movie project: Must include Sketches of the scene with shot numbers. Description of each shot. (Close-up, Long shot . . .) Camera Angle (Aerial, eye level, etc.) Write the descriptions in the smaller box within the frame. Draw the shot in larger box. Brief Description of Action/Dialogue Duration of shot. (seconds) Every shot of your film must be storyboaded. I’ll randomly select 10 frames to evaluate. Each frame/description will be worth 10 pts. 100pts total.

Our storyboard template The following slides contain a sample storyboard using a slightly different template but you should understand just what a storyboard is by viewing it.

1st Day for New Teacher, pg 1

1st Day for New Teacher, pg 2

Complete storyboards for full film project are due on Wednesday, March 5th. Movies are due March 10th.