Module 9 - Storyboarding

What have you already got before you storyboard?

By this point you have got your script, in version A and version B, and everything that goes with it. Welcome back. On the last video we talked about the call to action, so effectively you have got your script, version A and B, all there.

You will have worked out whether it is a female voiceover or a male voiceover, what your graphics screens are, whether there is any animation, all of that stuff. You have got all your words and all your graphics.

What is a storyboard and how do you make one?

A storyboard is a frame by frame picture of the video, and we set ours up in a design program. To us, we can often work with the scripts alone, but sometimes we do actually put storyboards together. Let me take you back into the document and show you one of the ones we use.

I use stick men or screen grabs from Google, just to give a bit of a flavour of what I want the story to be. Let us say we have got the picture of the guy in walking gear with no boots in the middle of a forest. Say that is one of the ideas, and the female voiceover talks about is this what it is like when you are walking. Or it is a male voiceover, or it is a graphic popping up on screen.

You basically work through each little scenario to work out what you want to go in each frame. It could be two pages long, four pages long, three frames long. Some people like to do this and some people do not. It is very much a matter of what helps you.

Why do professional crews always storyboard?

Because everybody on the shoot needs to know what is happening. We would always do it when we have done TV commercials. They are always storyboarded, always done really well. It is the vital thing for the entire team, the directors and the entire crew to know what is happening.

You can make a lot of notes around it as well. What do we need, do we need this, do we need that. There is a lot you can go to there.

What else is attached to the storyboard sheet?

There is a shot list, linked into the same document. The storyboard sheet is in a design program, and you will notice it sits at the bottom of the previous sheets in the script, just at the base, so we have got something to refer to. Linked into that document there is another really useful sheet, which is what you are filming and what you have shot, and it just gives you a little list to work through.

Do you actually need a storyboard?

Not necessarily. It depends on your budgets, it depends on your timescales, it depends on all kinds of stuff. As I have said before, if you are holding one of these you probably do not need a storyboard. If you are filming something quite complex, you might just want one.

Again, stick men. You do not have to be great at drawing. I just do little stick men and make little notes. I do not go overboard with it. It is just a quick visual reminder of what you want. If it is something highly stylised you might have loads of notes attached, and you can get to the point where you have got wardrobe notes attached for each frame. How long is a piece of string. Keep it simple, that is my advice. You do not necessarily need to do a storyboard, but you can do if you so wish.