Best Storyboarding Software?? Storyboard advice?

FrameForge is a good storyboarding software. And, hell, it's damn easy to cheat the trial version. And that's not illegal. (Mods, if my sentence violates some of the rules, please let me know and I'll delete it)
 
Why don' t anybody use the help of friends or relative and just photography them, how you intend the shots to be and organise them in a software like celtx.
 
Danielvilliers said:
Why don' t anybody use the help of friends or relative and just photography them, how you intend the shots to be and organise them in a software like celtx.
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Some people don't have friends, and don't want to deal with relatives...

But snark aside... there is a difference between photographing reality, and constructing a film 'set', even if the set is eventually based on reality, like shooting on location.

With real photography, one does have to play by the rules of the real world, so one would have to setup lights, etc. to get the same effect as what one would like to do 'virtually' without
having to roll up the light truck, get someone to dress the set, etc... all of which is part of why one wants to have storyboarding capability... to avoid all that...

Then one shows the art director (even if that happens to be oneself...), what the set ideal is... shows the talent where their positions are on the set, in the camera frame, etc...

At the moment I'm looking at Blender (since forever...) and Google's SketchUp.

The above mentioned iPad app, pretty much seems to require paying for 'art' services, since they have only limited characters, props, and set ups, and the like.
 
Photographed storyboards would still be useful for selecting focal lengths and arranging compositions, though. I can't speak for anyone else but I find storyboards most useful for compositions and action continuity, which don't much involve lighting or set decoration.

In my experience set designs (conceptual and construction documents) aren't something one establishes as part of storyboarding, although of course they can influence one another.
 
clang said:
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.
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Yes, you can use stick figures, but actual drawings are so much easier to understand, plus it can open up many doorways for the DP and crew. If time is of the essence, which it usually is. A nicely drawn out storyboard is worth it's weight in gold.
 
There's this new iPad app > http://tamajii.com/storyboards. Looks like you don't need to draw. There's a demo video on the web site, looks amazing.
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I downloaded this app and even purchased the $25 option to save PDFs and stuff. I am directing a large budget narrative style industrial for a major company, and I was excited to use this. The options are fairly limited but there are workarounds for that. Is a great tool...but one MAJOR problem. I finished 15 shots in the storyboard and saved it to go eat dinner. Came back, and a bunch the drawings were gone. 5 random drawings just vanished. The "title" screen still says there is 15 drawings there...but there clearly is not. A ridiculous bug that nearly caused me to throw my $600 ipad out the window in frustration.

UPDATE: Their customer support is fantastic. I sent them the storyboard file yesterday and they sent it back fixed...the same day, on a Saturday, and on a holiday no less. They told me they were able to determine the bug, and will fix it in the next update. In the meantime, I need to use the app because I need to finish these boards, and I'll just export after I create each drawing just to be safe. At least I know that if the problem comes up again I can just send them the file to fix.
 
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Is it possible that it's a hardware problem? I'm not familiar with iPads so if that's a silly question you'll have to excuse me.
 
jsauce said:
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
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Celtex is the free storyboarding software.Celtx is a fully integrated software for pre-production and collaboration of film, theatre, radio, AV and comics. It has all the tools media creators need to bring their stories to life, combining intelligent writing and planning tools, storyboarding, and scheduling with internet-friendly technologies.
 
You probably didn't know that you have a very powerful and easy to use 3D Animation App included in Adobe CC 2014 Called Cinema 4D Lite that you can use to not only create storyboards and animatics, but to build your scene and play with different angles, camera moves, and lighting. Here's a tutorial to show you how it works.

http://vimeo.com/121839768
 
Now that it's 2016 and Google has spun off Sketchup (which now costs about $700 to buy), what are people using for their storyboards?
 
It's mid 2018. Are there any new options?

I have been limping through the process with Poser Debut, but at this point, I'm thinking about shelling out the $350 for Storyboard Quick: Studio Edition. Thought I'd check in here in case anyone knew of any alternatives.
 
Check out Storyboarder. Free and open source. Actively developed (as in: they are actively improving it). Some pretty good tools. Last I looked a couple months ago, you couldn't easily reorder scenes. But the developers know know; perhaps they'll be able to add that feature (or maybe even already have).

Pretty interesting:
https://wonderunit.com/storyboarder/

Active discussions with the developers on their Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/storyboarder/

At least worth a serious look...
 
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