Best Storyboarding Software?? Storyboard advice?

J

jsauce

Active member
Hey All
Im directing my first legitimate short film next month, that is with a budget and a big crew, etc...
and I don't know how to draw.
I'm trying to be as perfectionistic as possible with this baby so i figured some storyboards to go along with my shotlist would be a good thing to give the DP.
ive seen all kinds of suggestions for storyboard software.
are there any great free ones that people can recommend???

thanks
 
I guess it depends on what your locations are and how much access you have or can get to them before you do your planning, but things that have worked for me:

1. Find an artist, or beg an artistic friend, and work with them on doing up some sketches. You can help the artist, if they don't have any storyboard experience, by picking up a book on storyboarding, which you can share with them. I uses one once that also gave you blank storyboard sheets that you could photocopy and give to your artist.

2. Use a still camera, with friends as stand-ins. Feed your friends for the help.

3. Use Google Sketchup. The learning curve for what you'd need to do isn't too steep, although I went into it with some (limited) CAD experience. It's free.

Also, the first thing a storyboarding book or guide will tell you is that you don't need to know how to draw. You can teach yourself the basics and get away with serviceable panels with the right instructions. But it's all a matter of preference. See what you're most comfortable with. Sketchup is nice because you can sort of navigate around your set, once you re-create it, by moving the "camera."

I've found that drawing up diagrams for camera movement and light placement, after the storyboards are complete, really help too. You may be planning on doing that already but I just figured I'd mention because it can really keep a production grounded to have several complementary blueprints available once the furor starts.

Good move getting started early on this, though. That's a good sign for a first production, as obvious a move as it may seem to you. I'm with you on the perfectionist wagon. Probably a crowded wagon.
 
Seconding the Sketchup recommendation. It's free, it's easy to use, and it comes with storyboarding templates.
 
You can storyboard perfectly well with stick figures, unless you're shooting some wildly complicated multi-million dollar epic. What matters is whether people looking at the boards can tell which character is which and what they're doing.

If your storyboards are just for the DP, then there's little point spending hundreds of hours doing artistic boards - talk to your DP and find out what kind of detail they actually want to see.
 
If'n you want sketchup goodies, check out Formfonts on line. They have a huge library of downloadable content.
 
Tools like sketchup render accurate views based upon focal lengths, very useful in working out setups.

You're not going to do that by hand without recourse to charts, projecting, and extensive practice.
 
> You can storyboard perfectly well with stick figures,

NG. Especially when you use storyboards to "sell" a project to a client.

> If'n you want sketchup goodies, check out Formfonts on line.

Nice, thanks for that.

> use your hand and a pencil

Not my hand. For me and my crew, OK. For client approval - HA!
 
Nothing wrong with a bit of stick figure action :P

Heres two examples of mine from last MV I shot - paid - this is what the client saw.

1.jpg


2.jpg
 
I played with it at Cinegear. It's a great program, and fills a great niche. It'd be perfect for commercial production previs to instantly show to a client. Almost enough to make we want to get an i-phone...
 
Looks quite powerful. Seems to be well worth $20. I wish you could export a QuickTime movie in addition to a pdf.
 
El Director said:
Blender! Allows you to do animatics very quickly once you learn a few basics.
Click to expand...

I didn't mean to, but I took a month off from my Blender projects... and now, mz Blender knowledge is almost all gone...

But maybe it will come back quicker...

But, where do you get the human models for what you do? I've gotten the freebee DAZ studio babalicious types but I don't think they import to Blender, or if they do there's some fuzting around needed.
 
Just downloaded "Hitchcock" for the iPhone. Very cool app, but still has a few bugs. However according to the developer's website they're working to fix those as quickly as possible, as well as taking suggestions for additional funcionality (video export being one of the things they're looking at)
 
How much do you think I'd have to pay someone to storyboard a 100 page script, with let's say some set number of storyboard images per scene? I wonder if I could find some student or really solid artist who would do it for fun and a few thousand bucks? Obviously if it was an indie project it'd be hard to afford more than a few thousand to visualize the thing, but maybe someone looking for credit and looking to show off their skills more would be interested. I have no clue.

I have storyboard software but that only goes so far, lol.
 
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