Storyboards

Storyboards

Today I have finished my first draft of my storyboards for my final animation this semester. I have arranged a meeting with my mentor, Brian Robinson, for later today to get feedback on them. While I was talking to him he distinguished that I was using a certain type of method for storyboarding. Essentially there are two main types of storyboarding, one where the storyboard artist can draw up the scene from scratch while simultaneously thinking about the narrative and camera angles and how the camera might move around the scene. The other method is to use storyboards to first flesh out the narrative, once they have been used for this purpose, the storyboard artists then works in camera moves/angles. This second method is the one that I have naturally gone for with my limited drawing.

I have drawn all my storyboards from the same angle, which is also perhaps the main shot for the animation, it allows the audience to see everything clearly. I have not focused on the camera placement in these storyboards as I want to use these storyboards to first nail down the narrative in terms of story and timing. Once the narrative it settled, I can go back and decide where to cut to different camera angles to make certain moments more readable. For instance, there are some scenes that might require a close up of the face to allow the character’s emotions to be read.

Brian also mentioned about writing my experience with my own process with storyboards and to do some reading and get some quotes about this subject.

The History of Storyboards

Early filmmakers didn’t use much camera cuts or camera movements or even editing. They shot their films like a theatre is viewed with usually using wide shots. Storyboards were developed when filmmakers got more serious about storytelling. Storyboards weren’t introduced in the traditional sense until Walt Disney used them in his short animated film called Plane Crazy. (Paez and Jew, 2013)

This was the first use of storyboards to analyse the narrative of a cartoon in the pre-production phase of development.

Storyboards General

There are many things that could be discussed here for storyboards but I’m not going to mention them because they perhaps don’t relate to me as much considering that I am not a storyboard artist.

I will be trying to implement lines of action through the use of camera placement. This will help to create more dynamic shots that give an extra level of depth to my animation. My narrative takes place in the same environment with a single door and doorframe in the middle, so the camera angles will be crucial for adding more depth to the scene since there won’t be anything else really in the environment.

I will also use the rule of thirds as well to create a balance in my shots.

There is a lot about visual literacy in, Professional Storyboarding by Anson Jew, but I won’t have the opportunity to work a lot of it in. Some of these include contrast of shapes, contrast of background and foreground, perspective, depth and design of shapes. These are all important aspects of storyboards but I don’t have the time to do storyboards with this much detail to it. I am going to just use them to firstly nail down my narrative then secondly to get my camera angles working together.

Below are some pictures from this book that I found a good visual representation of key notions of storyboarding.

Paez, S. and Jew, A. (2013) Professional Storyboarding: Rules of thumb. London, United Kingdom: Taylor and Francis.

“Whatever format your storyboard takes, it needs to contain a specific amount of information. First and foremost, it needs to show the drawn frame that represents the scene or that action in a scene that you’re seeking to define.”  (White, 2009) My storyboards essentially will do this.

Filmmaking Techniques

Camera Shots

Wide Shot

“The wide shot is where the camera not only sees the full-figure character, but it also sees a large amount of the background environment.” (White, 2009)

Midshot

“Midshot framing usually features the top half of the character, from around the waist upward, and therefore significantly less of the background environment.” (White, 2009)

Close-Up

“The close-up shot focuses mainly on the character’s face, usually from the neck to just above the top of his or her head.” (White, 2009)

Ultrawide Shot

“The ultrawide shot minimizes the presence of a character (if the character is there at all) in a wide, expansive background environment. This is typical of the large-scale, epic kind of movie because it is wonderful for depicting wide expanses of landscape or big-city shots.” (White, 2009)

Extreme Close-Up

“The extreme close-up shot frames very tightly on a detail from the shot the director especially wants the audience to focus on, such as the face of a wristwatch, a drip coming from a tap, a fly crawling across food, etc.” (White, 2009)

Camera Movements

Locked-Off Shot

“The locked-off shot is the basic shot where the camera is in a fixed position for the selected framing setup with no movement in or out.” (White, 2009)

Track-In/Track-Out Shot

“Often described as a zoom-in/zoom-out shot in live-action filming, the track-in/track-out shot is where the camera moves in or out within a particular framed action. For example, a scene could start with a wide shot and end with a midshot.” (White, 2009)

Pan

“A pan is a shot where the camera moves along a background and reveals more of that background as it travels either horizontally or vertically. An example would be where a camera follows a character along a street, maintaining the same framing shot all the way.” (White, 2009)

Track/Pan

“The track/pan is similar to the pan shot, but the camera moves in and out of its framing position as it moves along. It is sometimes described as a dolly shot in live-action filming.” (White, 2009)

Dolly (Crane) Shot

“The dolly (crane) shot is where the camera rotates around a 360-degress arc, wholly or in part, to reveal more of the character that would be apparent otherwise.

Alternatively, the camera can “crane around” the character or object to reveal more of the background environment that would normally be possible with a more static shot.” (White, 2009)

Zip Pan or Zoom

“The zip pan or zoom shot is effectively a super-fast moving shot, where the camera covers the same amount of ground as it does in a conventional panning shot, but does so in very few frames. Quite often it works better if there is a speed blur added to the image throughout the move.” (White, 2009)

These are all types of camera shots and movements from Tony White.

These are shots I am going to think about during my second cut of storyboards.

I will create a new post of which to put my story beats and animatic on to keep things fresh. I have received feedback on this today and I intend on getting a second cut prepared for next Tuesdays mentor meeting. I will apply the feedback and also implement camera changes to make the narrative read more clearly.

  

References

Paez, S. and Jew, A. (2013) Professional Storyboarding: Rules of thumb. London, United Kingdom: Taylor and Francis.

White, T. (2009) How to make animated films: Tony White’s complete masterclass on the traditional principles of animation. Amsterdam: Elsevier/Focal Press.

Byrne, M. (1999) Animation: The Art of Layout and Storyboarding. Ireland: A Mark T. Byrne Publication.

Hart, J. (2007) The Art of the Storyboard: A Filmmaker’s Introduction. 2^nd edn. Amsterdam: Elsevier/Focal Press.