R+P Post 11: Our Storyboard

We have decided to create a storyboard to help us through the early stages of pre-production, for a number of reasons. Firstly, we want to get a visual sense of our opening sequence idea. Secondly, we know it will be essential later on, for example, for the animatic. Lastly, it makes us more efficient in terms of time as we have a better idea of how our story will work. A large majority of film directors use storyboards to display their thoughts and visions for their film. Ridley Scott, for instance, always uses them.

Our Storyboard

We will use colour coded post it notes and stick them onto a large sheet of sugar paper:

Green = mid shot
Yellow = close up
Blue = long
Orange = master
Pink = titles

The post it notes and sugar paper were intentional. The post it notes meant we could easily rearrange our work or remove it; it did not restrict our work as the drawings did not have to be permanent. We chose to use large sugar paper as it meant we could stick it up to our workstation and easily see the images. Additionally, we could read the images clearer as being able to fit so many in one line helped the flow of the story. Lastly, there was space for the three of us in the group to work on it.

We based the storyboard on a timeline we initially created. This contained the basic description for each shot and the time. Each sheet of A4 paper for the timeline represented 30 seconds. All the shots appeared in order from left to right - the same with the storyboard. The main difference between the timeline and the storyboard was that the storyboard had drawings on.