Storyboard frames from the action sequences of Steven Spielberg's Raiders Of The Lost Ark.
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How To Storyboard
Martin Scorcese says that paper is cheaper than film. Add to that the cheaper price of DV video tape (recycled ones are even cheaper), and does the process of pre-visualising your project become redundant?
Probably not. It certainly saves time in setting up shots if you have planned them before hand, and time costs money. It also makes your job easier later on in the edit suite, and time saved while on location means there's more scope to try other things when you're there.
So, for the uninitiated, what is storyboarding? Well, simply put, it's a series of drawings that depict the flow of action, the camera angles, and the camera position changes within any given sequence.
Each frame on the storyboard represents one camera setup, and shows the framing of the action and actors, as well as any planned camera movement. Notes on each frame can describe the movement, the lighting, or the music, and will often contain lines of dialogue from the script.
A more sophisticated version of a storyboard is the Pre-Viz process, whereby sets are built in a 3D computer program, and animated characters stand in for real actors. The benefit of this over traditional storyboarding is that you can pick and choose camera lenses, plan exact motion (to the point where you can take the data and plug it into a motion controlled camera to replicate the move exactly), and you can film in a virtual environment. This process costs hundreds of thousands of pounds though, so perhaps the pen and paper approach is best for now.
Techniques
Simple frames with no movement will be self-explanatory - just draw what the camera will see, whether it's a two-shot, over the shoulder, or point of view (see How To Shoot). You don't even need to know how to draw, just be able to convey your idea visually.
This very simple sketch clearly shows what the shot should look like. If you can't draw it, eg, deep focus, then jot down a note underneath. Incidentally, the logical reverse angle of this shot should look like this:
Already we can see that this sequence lacks any kind of visual dynamic. Adding a little movement might help. Maybe the person in shot one is nodding, while the person in shot two is shaking their head:
But what if the script does not call for this kind of obvious movement from the actors? The easiest, and therefore cheesiest way would be to zoom in on their faces as they talk. Add arrows in the corner of the frame and draw a box where the zoom should finish, like this:
Note the different colours for the arrows this time, blue denoting a camera move - so long as you are consistent, you can choose any means you like to discern between camera and actor movement, perhaps a thick black arrow for actors, a white one for camera.
This zoom in is going to look rubbish, it'll be like a shot from a bad soap opera. How to achieve the same effect without the zoom? We could reposition the camera with each edit, producing this effect:
This already looks a lot better, and it's now telling us that we will need to shoot the scene either with two cameras and three set ups, or one camera and six set ups. With two cameras you would shoot both actors at the same time from the three camera positions. With one camera, you shoot one side of the scene from three positions, then reverse the set up and shoot three more positions. While the zoom eliminates these extra set ups, the overall effect is better.
But it's still not quite right. This is why storyboarding is so useful. These shots are still lacking something. While they capture the geography of the moment, they don't really convey the emotion of it. Let's say our script has these characters arguing. One person is winning the argument, gaining the upper hand. By simply rearranging the very same frames, we can change the emotion:
While one person gets larger in the frame, the other gets smaller. So, we prefer this new sequence, but we know that it's going to require too many set ups (for whatever reason). A quick solution would be to change positions with a zoom, so from one angle we zoom in, and from the other we zoom out. Then we can break each zoom into three parts in the edit suite. If the zoom is slow and steady enough, this will actually add something more to the scene. The best option is to track the camera in from one side and out from the other.
The effect can be greater emphasised by moving the camera up and down in opposing frames. That way, as we track away from the person we will end up looking down on them slightly - while we will be looking up at the person we are tracking into. This can best be illustrated using an extension of the storyboard process, the animatic.
Animatics
Sometimes seeing the storyboard with motion will give you a better idea of how a sequence will look. Not everyone will have access to this, but if you can get hold of, or borrow, a copy of Flash, you can do some very simple animation very quickly. For example, the simple zoom below was put together using geometric shapes and the scaling feature.
Using an animatic can demonstrate effectively the difference between the sequences we have already storyboarded above. We'll start by looking at the zoom and it's reverse angle, then examine the cuts closer, comparing those with cuts closer with a zoom, before looking at a track in.
There is no right or wrong way to shoot this simple scene, but the benefit of storyboarding it is evident. In fact, it is often more beneficial to storyboard a static scene than an action one, if only to explore the visual possibilities. We have gone from a very simple over the shoulder shot with a reverse, to a more visually compelling track in and tilt. In a low budget production, this latter option would probably be unfeasible, but now you have a representation of what you really want, you can start to explore what you can actually achieve. It's probably more than you think.
Storyboards serve two purposes. First, they help you visualise your shots, and refine your ideas. Secondly, they provide a clear and effective way to communicate those ideas to other people. The more prepared you are when you come to filming, the better for everyone involved.
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Martin Scorcese says that paper is cheaper than film. Add to that the cheaper price of DV video tape (recycled ones are even cheaper), and does the process of pre-visualising your project become redundant?
Probably not. It certainly saves time in setting up shots if you have planned them before hand, and time costs money. It also makes your job easier later on in the edit suite, and time saved while on location means there's more scope to try other things when you're there.
So, for the uninitiated, what is storyboarding? Well, simply put, it's a series of drawings that depict the flow of action, the camera angles, and the camera position changes within any given sequence.
Each frame on the storyboard represents one camera setup, and shows the framing of the action and actors, as well as any planned camera movement. Notes on each frame can describe the movement, the lighting, or the music, and will often contain lines of dialogue from the script.
A more sophisticated version of a storyboard is the Pre-Viz process, whereby sets are built in a 3D computer program, and animated characters stand in for real actors. The benefit of this over traditional storyboarding is that you can pick and choose camera lenses, plan exact motion (to the point where you can take the data and plug it into a motion controlled camera to replicate the move exactly), and you can film in a virtual environment. This process costs hundreds of thousands of pounds though, so perhaps the pen and paper approach is best for now.
Techniques
Simple frames with no movement will be self-explanatory - just draw what the camera will see, whether it's a two-shot, over the shoulder, or point of view (see How To Shoot). You don't even need to know how to draw, just be able to convey your idea visually.
This very simple sketch clearly shows what the shot should look like. If you can't draw it, eg, deep focus, then jot down a note underneath. Incidentally, the logical reverse angle of this shot should look like this:
Already we can see that this sequence lacks any kind of visual dynamic. Adding a little movement might help. Maybe the person in shot one is nodding, while the person in shot two is shaking their head:
But what if the script does not call for this kind of obvious movement from the actors? The easiest, and therefore cheesiest way would be to zoom in on their faces as they talk. Add arrows in the corner of the frame and draw a box where the zoom should finish, like this:
Note the different colours for the arrows this time, blue denoting a camera move - so long as you are consistent, you can choose any means you like to discern between camera and actor movement, perhaps a thick black arrow for actors, a white one for camera.
This zoom in is going to look rubbish, it'll be like a shot from a bad soap opera. How to achieve the same effect without the zoom? We could reposition the camera with each edit, producing this effect:
This already looks a lot better, and it's now telling us that we will need to shoot the scene either with two cameras and three set ups, or one camera and six set ups. With two cameras you would shoot both actors at the same time from the three camera positions. With one camera, you shoot one side of the scene from three positions, then reverse the set up and shoot three more positions. While the zoom eliminates these extra set ups, the overall effect is better.
But it's still not quite right. This is why storyboarding is so useful. These shots are still lacking something. While they capture the geography of the moment, they don't really convey the emotion of it. Let's say our script has these characters arguing. One person is winning the argument, gaining the upper hand. By simply rearranging the very same frames, we can change the emotion:
While one person gets larger in the frame, the other gets smaller. So, we prefer this new sequence, but we know that it's going to require too many set ups (for whatever reason). A quick solution would be to change positions with a zoom, so from one angle we zoom in, and from the other we zoom out. Then we can break each zoom into three parts in the edit suite. If the zoom is slow and steady enough, this will actually add something more to the scene. The best option is to track the camera in from one side and out from the other.
The effect can be greater emphasised by moving the camera up and down in opposing frames. That way, as we track away from the person we will end up looking down on them slightly - while we will be looking up at the person we are tracking into. This can best be illustrated using an extension of the storyboard process, the animatic.
Animatics
Sometimes seeing the storyboard with motion will give you a better idea of how a sequence will look. Not everyone will have access to this, but if you can get hold of, or borrow, a copy of Flash, you can do some very simple animation very quickly. For example, the simple zoom below was put together using geometric shapes and the scaling feature.
Using an animatic can demonstrate effectively the difference between the sequences we have already storyboarded above. We'll start by looking at the zoom and it's reverse angle, then examine the cuts closer, comparing those with cuts closer with a zoom, before looking at a track in.
There is no right or wrong way to shoot this simple scene, but the benefit of storyboarding it is evident. In fact, it is often more beneficial to storyboard a static scene than an action one, if only to explore the visual possibilities. We have gone from a very simple over the shoulder shot with a reverse, to a more visually compelling track in and tilt. In a low budget production, this latter option would probably be unfeasible, but now you have a representation of what you really want, you can start to explore what you can actually achieve. It's probably more than you think.
Storyboards serve two purposes. First, they help you visualise your shots, and refine your ideas. Secondly, they provide a clear and effective way to communicate those ideas to other people. The more prepared you are when you come to filming, the better for everyone involved.
Tweet
Back to the How To Guides