There’s a school of thought in filmmaking that believes movies are made in preproduction before the first shot is even completed.
Storyboarding plays a key part in this process, allowing potentially costly sequences to be fully imagined at a fraction of their actual cost.
Storyboards all begin with words. Whether it’s a script or treatment, the jumping off point always begins with the question of where to begin? It’s not ideal to storyboard every single aspect of a movie – you’re better off focusing on the key (read: more costly) sequences in your script. Before diving into the process of sketching out scenes, consider which are the most crucial to telling your story, in both emotion (story) and financial (production) terms.
Once you’ve landed on which scenes you’ll be storyboarding, it’s time to really start thinking about them visually. Thumbnail sketches are fast, rough drawings that represent the basic idea of your chosen shot or scene. Intentionally created with little detail, thumbnails are meant to serve as a starting point in visualizing the layout of the story, enabling directors to focus more on ideas and compositions.
After thumbnail sketches are agreed upon, it’s time to refine the images by adding details, making sketches clearer, and implementing camera angles. As with thumbnail sketches, the goal is to align the artwork with the intention of the written narrative.
After objects and characters are made more detailed and clearer, storyboard artists will start to look at the spacing of the characters to objects and one another in the frame. Artwork can often speak louder than words and it’s the storyboard artist’s job to tell an easy-to-follow story with their drawings.
When the images are clear, completed, and detailed, artists will usually work with filmmakers to include whatever relevant notes to drive the intent of the image. These notes can be dialogue, camera movements, sound effects or any other pertinent information for the production team.
Like everything else in the filmmaking process, it’s often necessary to get feedback on work. Getting different opinions on artistic output is essential to nearly every step of the creative process before finalizing the art.
Software tools1 can be enormously helpful in enhancing, layering and editing images. Many of these tools also offer the option of creating a motion between individual shots, and building an animatic, which can be extremely useful when planning a sequence.
The process completes when all the artistic elements have been implemented, along with whatever creative input the filmmakers decide to use. Storyboards can then be distributed to crew accordingly.
Storyboarding dates back to the earliest days of cinema. The concept can be traced to the late 19th century when filmmaker Georges Méliès2 used illustrations to prepare for shooting sequences. Formal storyboarding actually began with Walt Disney and his team of animators in the 1920s and 1930s. It was used to simplify and facilitate the production process of potentially complex and costly animation scenes.
Artists would begin by breaking scripts down into smaller sequences, then sketching scenes in chronological beats, with one image organically leading into the next. The animation team was then able to discern the appropriate camera angles, frame composition, and character movements needed for each sequence.
Over the years, storyboarding techniques have evolved and expanded beyond animation and film. It is now an essential tool in fields such as advertising, video game design, virtual reality experiences, and marketing campaigns. The versatility of storyboarding lies in its ability to convey complex ideas and narratives visually, making it a universal language of creativity.
Storyboards are meant first and foremost, to be a communicative tool. So, simplicity is the name of the game here. The more quickly and cleanly your images are expressed, the more successful they’ll be. Focus on the essence of each scene and convey that.
Composition dictates where objects and characters fall within a frame. Think through which elements have the most relevance to the shot (and overall scene) and place them accordingly. With composition, you also want to consider focal points and camera angles to make the image engaging. And to that point…
Lighting, camera movement, and shot transitions all contribute to the overall aesthetic of any shot, whether that be an illustrated drawing or a fully-rendered film image. For some inspiration, take a look at these.
There are ways to make even still images kinetic. Energy can be conveyed in a number of ways in a single illustrated frame. Experiment with motion lines, unique camera angles and dynamic posing and position of the elements in the frame.
Make sure there’s an organic logic to the flow of your images. Do they mesh well together? Does one naturally lead into the next? Is anything missing? Are any redundant? Is the sequence cohesive? These are questions to pose as you’re looking at the frames in order.
Try a mix of close-ups and establishing master shots to express a sequence. Oftentimes, an audience’s emotions and context are manipulated by how close (or far) they are from a visual subject.
As stated earlier, feedback is an extraordinarily valuable part of the storyboarding process. Gaining an outsider’s perspective can often provide ideas you never would have come up with on your own.
Revising typically leads to stronger, clearer work. Make sure there’s a solid balance between artistic expression and contextual communication – it’s a fine line to walk, but you don’t want to come across as too stylized, nor do you want the work to be seen as monotonous and without flavor.
We listed the do’s, now let’s take a look at some of the don’t’s when it comes to creating storyboards…
It’s essential to place what needs to be placed inside of a frame, but you want to be careful not to overstuff things with nonessential elements. Clutter is something to avoid when striving for clarity in an image. And speaking of clarity…
As we’ve said, being clear is a crucial component to a storyboard. There should be no question as to what’s happening in the frame, as action, intent and characters should be depicted cleanly and effectively.
When it comes to camera angles, they’re necessary to add not just a viewpoint, but possibly even an emotional context. Camera movement exists to tell the story, not eclipse it. The last thing you want is someone reviewing your storyboards confused about how you’re going to pull off a specific camera movement.
It’s important to maintain a singular artistic style throughout your storyboards. A change from one type to another could jar the visual flow of the narrative. It can also further display an unprofessional quality to the work that you always want to avoid.
Storyboarding is about more than just still images. It’s also about how each flows into the next and creates a pace and tone for the sequence. Ignoring the rhythm of shots could disrupt the flow of the visual narrative.
Maintain consistency in character poses and proportions across panels. Inaccurate or inconsistent character depictions tend to confuse the viewer and hinder character recognition.
Dialogue should be used as an assisting tool to convey narrative and intent, whereas the primary focus of every storyboard should be the image itself. Film is a visual medium, and the chief aim of composing shots should be to convey as much information as possible through images without having to rely heavily on text.
Giving a variety to the types of shots (close-ups, medium, long shots, etc.) will keep your panels visually interesting and avoid monotony. You’ll keep your viewer engaged at a deeper level if the way the images are presented is constantly changing.
Storyboarding is a fundamental tool in the world of visual storytelling, enabling filmmakers to shape their imaginative ideas into cohesive and compelling narratives. It can be a key component of the preproduction process, saving time and money on set by effectively communicating creative intent to departments and the crew.