Setting up Shots -- Storyboarding

Setting up Shots – Storyboarding

            “One of the primary reasons for using storyboards is to convey your ideas to other members of the production team, especially the director of photography (or cinematographer or camera man)” (Jones and Patmore 24).

Over the last weekend, I spent my Saturday night storyboarding some of the shots for my short-film that I thought might have needed some guidance. Although storyboards are supposed to apply to the entire film, because this is a short-film, I only storyboarded sequences where I didn’t know how I would approach them during production. As I’m not the best artist, I only drew the minimal amount of lines and figures that would help me (the one who will be filming this project) figure out how I want to set up each scene. As Movie Making Course suggests, each director or filmmaker will have his or her own way to storyboard. Some may choose to draw intricate pieces for each of their shots, while some opt for some scribbles in a box. (Jones and Patmore 24). I chose to practice a happy medium in this aspect.

In my storyboards, I wanted to keep them as concise as possible. In Movie Making Course, storyboard artist Rachel Garlick states that: “The simplest approach to storyboarding for a first-time-filmmaker is to draw basic thumbnails…for your boards and annotate them to convey technical needs, such as shot size, camera movement, etc” (Jones and Patmore 28). I did this, although my annotations stayed at a minimum. Above each box, I wrote how each shot would cut to the next and if any movement was necessary. I would also occasionally draw arrows if something within the scene needed to move.

            Something that I didn’t adhere to that is commonly done with storyboards is to paraphrase the dialogue and the other technical terms below the box. This is used so that whomever is reading through the storyboards knows the context for that frame. Because I am going to be the one filming this, I decided that it was unnecessary for me to do this, as I have the context already engrained in my head.

            After this, the next step would be to gather cast and crew, and set up detailed plans so everything runs smoothly. However, again because this is a short film and I’m a little short on time, I decided to just use some of my friends that act and that would fit the part. The cast is also just some of my friends. Scouting for a location wasn’t hard as I wrote the script with the locations in mind.

After doing all of this work, I have come to realize that storyboarding is a crucial part of making a film. It has helped me organize my thoughts and finally decide on shots that I was maybe more indecisive about. Storyboarding has made me a more decisive person both when it comes to film and in life in general.

            Now as I’m wrapping up this post, I would like to pose a question for all of you reading this: from reading this post, do you think that storyboarding is an essential part of filmmaking, or do you think that it could get in the way of other creative ideas you may have during production?

Works Cited

Jones, Ted, and Chris Patmore. Movie Making Course. 2nd ed., Barron's, 2012.