Storyboards and shotlists?

Azmyth

Azmyth

Veteran
I've done storyboards and shot lists for both of my last shoots..

I've wound up with WAY more coverage than I needed, which is not really a bad thing.

However, it takes a ton of time to do and for example this weekend.. most of the shots I need to get are basic angles.

I was just curious how many people storyboard every single shot, or if you just use shot lists in conjuction with drawings of specific angles that you can't create from looking at just a shot list. I'm pretty familiar with the location now, so I can already see most of the shots I need to get in my head, and only need to be reminded to shoot those angles from a shot list, vs. having to draw out medium closeups, OTS shots and things like that. Things I ALWAYS get anyway.

Thoughts?
 
For me it depends on the shoot - I shoot and direct, mostly music videos. If it is pretty straight forward, simple or on the flip side a location I'm not familiar with I'll go with a shot list and basic story boards. If it is something more complex, or a location I can really visualise I'll do a pretty thorough storyboard for most shots.
 
Same here, it depends.
I find I usually need the process of storyboarding to clarify everything in my mind. It's the validation that the vision of the shots I have in my head will indeed edit together. We're talking stick figures here. Then I transfer that to a shotlist, add some additional coverage for safety, and that's what we actually work from.
 
Storyboards aren't just for you -- they're for your crew. You can describe a picture in words all day long; it doesn't mean someone else will get it. Show them a picture, and setting up the shot to create it is a done deal (well, sorta :)).

And for you, the more you previsualize, the better off you are. If you're ending up with extra and unnecessary shots, then you probably could have eliminated some of those shots before you got to set.
 
I don't draw on the level for it to be that much use to the crew.
I know they are indeed used that way at the level where you can hire a storyboard artist or if you are decent sketch artist yourself.
 
David Jimerson said:
Storyboards aren't just for you -- they're for your crew. You can describe a picture in words all day long; it doesn't mean someone else will get it. Show them a picture, and setting up the shot to create it is a done deal (well, sorta :)).
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To back up what David's saying -- storyboards are NOT for you just to remember what you wanted to shoot! They're for every department head and every crew member to know what's going to be going on throughout the day. Give a stack of the day's storyboards to the props guys and the art director and the sound guy and the cinematographer -- and now they all know what they're going to be working on, they know how tight and wide the shots are going to be, they know beforehand what they need to get prepared, what mics they'll be needing, what lighting effects and size of equipment they'll need to bring, what wardrobe is necessary, whether they need to spend three hours on special effects makeup (closeups) or whether a quick & dirty makeup for a wide shot is adequate...

Plus, as David said, now you won't HAVE to describe in words all day long. To every crew member. To every department head. Now, you show once, and you get on with your job. People aren't asking you all day long "what's next", "what type of shot is this", "will you need this or that today", etc. You can settle down and do your work instead of constantly and repeatedly dealing with interruptions.

Properly executed storyboards are a massive, massive help in keeping a production flowing.

Of course, if you're a one-man crew, they're less important. But the more people who are involved in the production, the more vital storyboards become.

And for you, the more you previsualize, the better off you are. If you're ending up with extra and unnecessary shots, then you probably could have eliminated some of those shots before you got to set.
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Amen amen amen. In fact, the more you can cut at the SCRIPT stage, the massively more efficient and less expensive and faster and happier your experience will be. Cut and combine scenes at the script stage, not on the set! A key to keeping a lower-budget production running well is to keep morale up, and wasting people's time is a huge, huge, huge morale killer. Have your act together, and everyone will be infinitely happier and more inclined to work harder and assist more. Show up scatterbrained and trying to do it all from memory, and you'll find people's interest (in working 14-hour days for free) waning very, very quickly.

Cut, trim, refine, coalesce, combine, merge, and simplify in the script stage.

Then storyboard the film. And for those who complain (or is it "whine") that storyboarding takes too long and it's killing your energy and you are too fired up and you don't want to waste your time storyboarding, you want to get out there and SHOOT, I would say -- good heavens, it's infinitely less effort to take a couple of minutes and draw a PICTURE than it is to get everyone together, set up a shot, shoot it, and then in editing decide that it doesn't work! Cut it at the picture stage, not at the shooting stage!

Draw pictures. Tell the story in pictures. If the film doesn't work at the storyboard phase, what makes you think it'll work at the actually-filmed phase?

(and no, I can't draw whatsoever, I use the absolute most rudimentary stick figures, and it's still infinitely more valuable than showing up on set and trying to direct "out of your head").
 
I find drawn storyboards to be pretty useless most of the time as it's a lot more difficult to merry them up with reality. Often times I just use the artemis viewfinder and go to the location a week or two before production with the director and a few stand-ins. Then we figure out how we're going to shoot the entire movie and take pictures of everything along the way. This way I know what moves are possible given the space, what lens we're going to use on every shot, and then later I can take all of these and put them in a PDF with shot descriptions and pictures next to them. These are then handed out to all the department heads in order of how we're going to shoot. Just the fact that my AC's will know all the lens changes for the entire day without even having to ask me is a huge win and hopefully helps you see how potentially awesome it could all be.

I watched the behind the scenes commentary for Delicatessen long ago and Jean Pierre Jeunet said he would always go to the set with a camera and just explore the possibilities. I adopted the idea from him and it's really worked fantastically for me. When I show people on the crew what the next shot is, it's always an immediate understanding, where as when I did storyboards I had to make excuses about how they were drawn and what was actually in the frame...It's just a little more difficult to get an amazing storyboard artist than it is to get an iphone with a 30 dollar app on it, not to mention that it will tell me way more info than the storyboards ever will.
 
Very good points, coming from someone who CAN draw pretty well.. I find it hard to not to try go get way too detailed with them and spend hours drawing something that should have only taken a few seconds.

My crew is pretty small, and recently I've spent more time explaining "what the heck is that supposed to be?" in my storyboards to other crew members, that its only really served its purpose for me. It was like trying to play a game of "draw something" on a smart phone. Stick figures are fine if its easily detectable as to what your trying to get across.
 
I should add, I DO use Aretmis and pre-shoot most of the angles I have planned. Didn't really initially think of it in that way, but on one level those are storyboards as well.
 
gonzo_entertainment said:
I should add, I DO use Aretmis and pre-shoot most of the angles I have planned. Didn't really initially think of it in that way, but on one level those are storyboards as well.
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Absolutely.
On a recent commercial shoot I did (with Stephen Mick) that's exactly what we did.
Went through every spot and shot key frames using Artemis (which gave us not only the framing, but focal length info per shot)

So many people here are shooting with DSLRs and the like, and even those who aren't have phones that can run an app like Artemis - there is really no reason NOT to get reference frames before your shoot as long as you have access to the location.

It can be a great timesaver, helps you figure out what you actually need - what you can physically get (given the contraints of the location size), and helps give everyone else a clear idea of what is in the frame at any given time.
 
This is an interesting thread.

I think use of story boards really depends on the 'level' of the film - If I were producing a million dollar film I would story board!

In my indy world I have found that the director wants Side on Both wide, Over shoulder of actor one, OTS of actor two and a CU of each

Thanks - I know that - without your pretty pictures

In indy world often the story board just fights the reality of the location and disregards what the cinematographer can bring to a scene in subtelties of composition

Now - A telephone call (a simple example) - two scenes shot different days/locations to be cut together - yep we need a sketch to remember the side of the actors on screen

What I find is more lacking is a chat from the director describing the scene and its motivations

"Jimmy and Ellie are in a room - they have been 'at it'"
"Its really important to be right in on Ellie when she says 'But I love you' and the tear rolls down her cheek"
"It is really important to frame so that we dont see the machette in Jims hand for the first 2/3 of the scene reavealing it just before he pushes it up into her face"
"the final moment we see the full scene as a wide - only then do we see Roberts body slumped in the corner on the chair"

Also a chat about the timing - maybe the scene will be intercut with another scene - or maybe it will run real time - in the first situation continuity can be all over the place - in the second it must be 100% sustained..

With such 'chats' the cinematographer can then bring the directors vision using his own internal story boarding that he has been developing since he first picked up a camera aged 6

Is the director hiring a technician or an artist?
 
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As others have mentioned you can shoot stills to be your boards or to have a friend or two pose in them.
Or they can be very simple stick figures. And you can just use them as very rough guides by using generic two shots, singles, etc.
This means you have ot work out the specific framing on set but provides a visual reference that a shot list does not.
You have to determine what's most efficient for you, your crew and type of shooting.

If you're ending up with too many shots consider dropping them in imovie or other editing program simply to get some basic timings.
You can record your voice doing the dialog so you have basics. That should show if you have too much coverage. You can then either eliminate shots or mark them as lower priority. That can also serve as your 'previs' that you can drop your shots into, especially if it's over a few days.
 
" what you can physically get (given the constraints of the location size)"

That's the biggie. I know basically where the camera goes for every shot and what focal length lens we want because I walked around the space during pre-production.

I do still crudely storyboard for my own purposes to clarify my thinking of how I want to shoot it.
 
A lot of directors do floor plans instead of/in addition to storyboards. It's a good way to show how you want things set up.

I like to go through a scene and do thumbnail storyboards, then look through them and see which shots can be combined. I want to end up with the minimum number of setups that will convey the visual story I'm creating. Not the minimum number possible, but the minimum number that are required for the effect I'm creating.
 
I think it depends very much on the visual style of the film and your shooting style.

To me storyboards serve 3 purposes: Making the shoot move faster because you already know what to setup, helping you be assured that your vision will work, and communicating important visual information to various people.

However I do think there are pitfalls for relying too much on storyboards. Sometimes it can be an unnecessary use of time (especially if you are storyboarding insert shots and such) but more dangerously I think it can force a film to seem too produced. Some of you may wonder why that could possibly be a bad thing, and perhaps it is just a stylistic choice. But I look at a film like the Star Wars prequels which Lucas storyboarded to death, and the style of the film has absolutely no soul. Everything was too mechanical, too perfect. I think there is a danger in having everything planned perfectly and mearly mechanically reproducing it once you get to set. Of course you could always throw Hitckcock at me as a counter example, so I suppose it really just depends.

My advice is to generally storyboard every scene. Definitely storyboard complicated camera movements and sweeping long takes. But make sure you leave yourself open to spontaneity on the set of the film. If you are too set in the vision you have in your head, you might close yourself off to better ideas on set.

Essentially: plan well, but be flexible to new ideas.
 
PopcornFlix said:
A lot of directors do floor plans instead of/in addition to storyboards. It's a good way to show how you want things set up.
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I really like doing this too. It helps you see what all the cameras are looking at at the same time and really allows you to be a lot more efficient in your blocking. I try and start with an overhead diagram and fine tune with the storyboards.
 
As a DP I want my director to have a storyboard so he doesn't have to explain what every item in a shot-list means. Maybe it's just the director's I've worked with, but they usually have a very specific idea of what they want but little ability to communicate that in camera-eese. I even want to see standard inserts and whatnot. We're not talking Monet or Picasso - stick figures are fine (even better than elaborate and specific drawings, honestly).

What I don't want is a director who's so set on what he's come up with that he's not open to ideas from me. I want to see his storyboard, make notes / draw my own, and then go from there. I'm not hired just to set up some lights and push "REC" on the camera. If it were totally up to me, I'd be the one to draw the first storyboard based on the script and take his notes, rather than the other way around.
 
having a storyboard for everything helps, that way you can see it all laid out like a comic book and anticipate a few problems that might arise... plus it helps keep you on track, on smaller shoots a single shot on a shotlist can get overlooked, a big box with people in it is harder to miss.

however it definitely is time consuming, so a lot of times if you're under the gun you can get away with just having storyboards for the complicated shots, i.e. like jester said, the ones that aren't easily described. You can probably skip the standard wide/medium/close coverage (though yeah, it helps to be able to describe them in camera lingo, not just make a frame with your arms like kevin smith does)
 
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