About Boards

Storyboards? Whuzzat?
There's so little useful writing about what storyboards are, and so many questions about it, that I'm going to try and contribute my thoughts on the subject as I have them. Thanks to DVD Special Features sections, more people are aware that storyboards play a big role in movie and television production. Simply stated, they're a rough guide to what action will be filmed or animated. They can unite a Director, designers and crew in a vision to realize what's written in a script. The final result often differs quite a bit from the boards, because no artist can take into account the reality of locales, sets, budgets, etc. that production actually has to work with when shooting time arrives. Animation depends more heavily on storyboards, and is usually closer.
What it's not:
This is always easier to deal with, and there's plenty of misconceptions about storyboarding. What it's not, mainly, is Comics. Though the two employ many of the same drawing skills, the mediums are vastly different, and have different rules. Comics storytelling is a series of chosen moments, dependent on readers to fill in much of the transitions themselves. Film is an ongoing and passive medium that feeds visual information to you at 24 frames per second. When storyboarding film, you must make clear what's being seen in a nonstop fashion.
There are too many instances where artists of comic books have gotten a storyboarding assignment and later handed the Director a stack of very pretty drawings that were completely unusable for production purposes. And this always ends ugly. It's not simply drawing some characters and arrows going every which way. While we're talking about that, I'll explain the arrows...Keep in mind that this is the way I indicate things, others do differently, but directors seem to understand my visual shorthand so I'll just explain my way.
Some arrows specify where characters or objects are coming from or going. Labeling the arrow or having it touch the moving element can make this clear.

		STORYBOARDS
		A rambling, unfocused collection of musings designed to help you take food out of my mouth.You may know all this already. It's not rocket science, but not any chump with a pencil can do it either. Though that's what many folks I meet seem to think. Suckers.
Storyboards? Whuzzat? There's so little useful writing about what storyboards are, and so many questions about it, that I'm going to try and contribute my thoughts on the subject as I have them. Thanks to DVD Special Features sections, more people are aware that storyboards play a big role in movie and television production. Simply stated, they're a rough guide to what action will be filmed or animated. They can unite a Director, designers and crew in a vision to realize what's written in a script. The final result often differs quite a bit from the boards, because no artist can take into account the reality of locales, sets, budgets, etc. that production actually has to work with when shooting time arrives. Animation depends more heavily on storyboards, and is usually closer. What it's not: This is always easier to deal with, and there's plenty of misconceptions about storyboarding. What it's not, mainly, is Comics. Though the two employ many of the same drawing skills, the mediums are vastly different, and have different rules. Comics storytelling is a series of chosen moments, dependent on readers to fill in much of the transitions themselves. Film is an ongoing and passive medium that feeds visual information to you at 24 frames per second. When storyboarding film, you must make clear what's being seen in a nonstop fashion. There are too many instances where artists of comic books have gotten a storyboarding assignment and later handed the Director a stack of very pretty drawings that were completely unusable for production purposes. And this always ends ugly. It's not simply drawing some characters and arrows going every which way. While we're talking about that, I'll explain the arrows...Keep in mind that this is the way I indicate things, others do differently, but directors seem to understand my visual shorthand so I'll just explain my way. Some arrows specify where characters or objects are coming from or going. Labeling the arrow or having it touch the moving element can make this clear.

Other arrows are for indicating where the camera is moving. I usually make the arrow part of the picture frame border to make this clear, and often label it too. No matter how clear the action you've indicated is, it never hurts to write notes by the frame. By the way, these samples are Live-Action Storyboards.

	Comps Comps are very rendered drawings, usually color, that are more for presentation purposes rather than to shoot from. Since I'm more interested in storytelling, doing these bores me silly, but many artists prefer to do them and make a very good living with it. They're important in helping a producer or an advertising client visualize the final work. And without those guys, you got no financing, so these will always be useful.


		On that matter, I find boarding for television commercials, even in black and white, is mostly like doing comps. With their limited time to get across information, commercials most often employ quick cuts rather than real-time storyflow (same with Music Videos).Except you have much less time to draw shooting boards for TV spots---filming is probably about to begin within the week, and no one budgets tons for the storyboard artist. As a result, you're doing 40-50 drawings a day. So they're not often going to be pretty samples for your portfolio, but very helpful to the production crew if you know what you're doing.



			A couple from a TV spot I just did. Useful for production, but nothing to write home about. And unless you have some freakishly generous amount of time to work with, about 85% of your boards will be like that--utilitarian, not pretty.


		Now here, someone from the Comics field can feel more at home! The exact opposite of this is boarding for Animation, which needs far more than just the set-ups drawn. Ironic, huh-- you probably thought Comics and Animation would be the closest in nature. In fact, animation boarders have to fill in far more steps to show what is happening in a scene. You can't draw a monster on the ground and then have him up on the building with just an arrow to indicate the movement. That could mean it just stiffly floated up there. You have to draw the extremes of the body movement and some of the steps in between, even before the "In-Betweeners" come in to do their job. If you work in TV animation, your boards will usually go overseas to be animated by someone who doesn't speak the same language as you, and any notes on the side you make about attitudes and speeds and action will probably go unacknowledged. So you better fill in as much of the action, down to facial gestures, as possible.

An across-the-board rule for all boards: Keep actions moving in the same direction. Don't draw a car heading to the left and then suddenly have it going to the right. This is the kind of thing you can get away with in comics but it becomes glaringly obvious onscreen why you shouldn't do it. It's chaotic and unclear. If you need to switch the direction a thing is moving, you must first have a shot of it moving to or away from camera to ease the 180 degree transition. In animation they can be extremely strict about this because the environment isn't as tangible as a live-action one. So if you have Character A standing on the left, and Character B on the right, even if you're cutting to Reverse Angle, you may still have to find a way to keep A to the left and B to the right. I think that can be going farther than necessary with the rule, but then I didn't invent animation. Winsor McKay did. This is all I can think of at the moment, but there are many more points to cover. If you have a question, write and I'll try to answer it. An excellent book that details rules of film storytelling is Shot by Shot by Steven D. Katz.

Obviously a very helpful practice is to watch good films that tell stories visually. Silent films are perfect for this. Another useful one: watch old Lassie episodes. Since the dog and other animals don't talk (as in Babe, which is still good to watch though), everything is pure visual information. Another bit that leaps to mind is in the Coen Brothers' Hudsucker Proxy, when the Hula Hoops are manufactured and sold.