storyboards: do you do your own or hire someone?

john threat

john threat

Carbonite Member
Hey guys!
do you do your own or hire someone?
I usually do my own because I draw decently.

I was thinking of hiring someone lately.

What is the going rate for storyboards these days?
 
I go out to the location and actually shoot the shots with stand-ins and a DSLR. 100% accurate and when I get to set I already know exactly where the camera goes and what lens goes on it.
 
i normally try to take photos too....i got a bunch of rates from storyboard artists and it varied. some charged by the page, some charged by the slide and others charged b the hour. it was all over the place. you could probably get a college dude for cheap or for decent price though....or even somebody in high school who was serious.
 
I usually draw my own. Even if they're rough it's cool. I recently took some stills on a location and did some cut and paste stuff to show an actor I wanted to play Hitler the look I was going for. He did it so it worked.
Germans.jpg
 
I try to do my own! i'M ALSO A DOODLER....so...
The skill of back and forth with a storyboard artist seems like quite a challenge, particularly if you cant afford a high end professional.

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I used to draw sketches by hand but I'm so bad at drawing that it took me more time explaining people what I had in my mind.

I tried both Frameforge and Storyboard quick and I ended up buying frameforge more than 1 year ago. The learning curve is more difficult than SQ but now it takes minutes to do a series of shots depending on how complex the set is.
The pros of SQ are that you can import photos and use them as background but FF lets me manipulate characters and locations in a way that it's impossible to miss what I have in my mind.
Most of the times I use it for my photo shoots as well.
Best,
Diego
 
The worst storyboards I've ever seen were the ones a director called Stanley Kubrick scribbled. Yet his films have been somewhat good I think.... ;-)

For dramatic work, imho, a storyboard does not need to try to be a near-perfect rendering of a movie, a scene, a shot - it's to me a tool to "pre-structuralize" more than to pre-visualize what I probably want to do. It helps me to find out how the shots should get planned and this not so much for the beauty of each one of them but for the flow of the scene and the pulse and timing of the montage.

Interesting that the decision which scenes you really need to pre-structuralize may give you a strong hint if they are scenes that are "owned" more by the camera or by the actors. I usually have about one third to halve of my script scribbled out in some way - the rest are "actors-scenes" where I do not want jail them or their movements to theoretical concepts.

But the most important thing for me is to fit a big virtual handle to every storyboard so I can throw it away the moment I see it won't really fit the situation.
 
For iphone or 4th generation ipod owners..cinemek's hitchcock program is a good look.take your pics,add your characters set up your framing and the style of shot it will be and your off to the races.
 
it eats up time, but now I just do them myself - they cost a lot to get done for my personal work.
agency stuff is another matter because its in the budget..
 
Personally I believe it's better to do it yourself. Even if not great there should be enough information to get the idea across and that's good. Doesn't need to be perfect. If you do it yourself you can work faster. If not you'll be explaining to someone what you want for a while.


I take pics of the location and based on that I can storyboard because I can see the physical space. Also it helps me to think of ideas after I leave and when I look at the photos, as apposed to posing someone on set and being stuck to that. I will pose people too but not much. Mostly the overall pic helps tons.
 
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