Welcome back! I hope you had the best weekend. Today I’m going to be talking about storyboards. What is a storyboard you may ask, wellll, let me tell you. A storyboard is a visual outline of a film or animation. It’s a pretty important part of the preproduction process and consists of a series of images that show everything that’s going to happen in your finished piece. Most of these storyboards are hand drawn. The point of this is to translate your flow of ideas from word form to image form. Each image on your storyboard needs to include enough information that someone who has never read your script can look at it and know what is going on in that scene. Though you don’t want to give away too much information which can drown out the relevant details. Think of it as a graphic novel of your script. It’s a really great way to stay organized when you move into the filming portion of this process. It insures you never wonder what you are filming next and you know what your shot should look like. It’s like a visual roadmap to the final product. I’ll provide an example of what a typically storyboard will look like as our featured photo.

First you’ll want to make a shot list. You’ll make a list of each shot that needs to be filmed and sort them by camera angles. If you’re shooting from a second camera you would film all of those angles at one time. This way the crew isn’t going back and forth between the same two angles making the filming process take a lot longer than what is necessary.

Next you’ll sketch out the visuals of the scene. It’ll look almost like a comic strip of your script. You don’t need to be some detailed artists, stick figures work just fine as long as you get your point across.

Now you’ll fill in the details. Your storyboard has to contain the most important elements of each scene. While it may just be a picture the end result will be a moving video or animation that follows the storyline you created. This is where you’ll include camera angles and movement. Again you will describe the action the audience will be seeing in this scene. You’ll include any dialogue that is involved in this moment if any. You’ll include the scene and shot number to remain organized for the filming process. Include what type of shot this is (close-up, or birds-eye view). Don’t forget to include any special effects such as sounds effects or design elements. You should include any background music you plan to use in that shot along with how long that shot should last just to have an idea of how long filming could take. Remember organization is really the goal here.

There are various templates you can use from programs like Final Draft, Movie Magic Screenwriter, Celtx or StudioBinder which is free.

If these tips helped you in any way please leave a comment or any feedback down below. Don’t forget to share this tips with some friends!

See you next time!