Storyboard
Encyclopedia
Storyboards are graphic organizers in the form of illustration
s or image
s displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation
, motion graphic or interactive media
sequence.
The storyboarding process, in the form it is known today, was developed at the Walt Disney Studio
during the early 1930s, after several years of similar processes being in use at Walt Disney and other animation studios.
during the early 1930s. In the biography of her father, The Story of Walt Disney (Henry Holt, 1956), Diane Disney Miller explains that the first complete storyboards were created for the 1933 Disney short Three Little Pigs
. According to John Canemaker, in Paper Dreams: The Art and Artists of Disney Storyboards (1999, Hyperion Press), the first storyboards at Disney evolved from comic-book like "story sketches" created in the 1920s to illustrate concepts for animated cartoon short subjects such as Plane Crazy
and Steamboat Willie
, and within a few years the idea spread to other studios.
According to Christopher Finch in The Art of Walt Disney (Abrams, 1974), Disney credited animator Webb Smith with creating the idea of drawing scenes on separate sheets of paper and pinning them up on a bulletin board to tell a story in sequence, thus creating the first storyboard. The second studio to switch from "story sketches" to storyboards was Walter Lantz Productions in early 1935, by 1936 Harman-Ising and Leon Schlesinger
also followed suit. By 1937-38 all studios were using storyboards.
Gone with the Wind
was one of the first live action films to be completely storyboarded. William Cameron Menzies, the film's production designer, was hired by David Selznick to design every shot of the film. Many large budget silent films were also storyboarded but most of this material has been lost during the reduction of the studio archives during the 1970s.
Storyboarding became popular in live-action film production during the early 1940s, and grew into a standard medium for previsualization of films. Pace Gallery
curator, Annette Micheloson, writing of the exhibition Drawing into Film: Director's Drawings, considered the 1940s to 1990s to be the period in which "production design was largely characterized by adoption of the storyboard". Storyboards are now an essential part of the creation progress.
of the film or some section of the film produced beforehand to help film director
s, cinematographers and television commercial advertising
clients visualize the scenes and find potential problems before they occur. Often storyboards include arrows or instructions that indicate movement.
In creating a motion picture with any degree of fidelity to a script
, a storyboard provides a visual layout of events as they are to be seen through the camera lens. And in the case of interactive media, it is the layout and sequence in which the user or viewer sees the content or information. In the storyboarding process, most technical details involved in crafting a film or interactive media project can be efficiently described either in picture, or in additional text.
Some live-action film directors, such as Joel and Ethan Coen, use storyboard extensively before taking a pitch to their funders, stating that it helps them to get the support they require, since they can show exactly where the money will be used. Alfred Hitchcock's films were strongly believed to have been extensively storyboarded to the finest detail by the majority of commentators over the years, although later research indicates that this was exaggerated for publicity purposes. Akira Kurosawa
was known, particularly in his later years, for painstaking detail in his storyboarding, to the degree that the storyboard paintings for Ran
(for which he storyboarded every shot) are regarded as fine works of art in themselves. Other directors storyboard only certain scenes, or none at all. Animation directors are usually required to storyboard extensively, sometimes in place of writing a script.
Constantin Stanislavski developed storyboards in his detailed production plans for his Moscow Art Theatre
performances (such as of Chekhov's
The Seagull
in 1898). The German director and dramatist Bertolt Brecht
developed detailed storyboards as part of his dramaturgical
method of "fabel
s."
and special effects work, the storyboarding stage may be followed by simplified mock-ups called "animatics" to give a better idea of how the scene will look and feel with motion and timing. At its simplest, an animatic is a series of still images edited together and displayed in sequence. More commonly, a rough dialogue
and/or rough sound track is added to the sequence of still images (usually taken from a storyboard) to test whether the sound and images are working effectively together.
This allows the animator
s and director
s to work out any screenplay
, camera positioning, shot list and timing issues that may exist with the current storyboard. The storyboard and soundtrack are amended if necessary, and a new animatic may be created and reviewed with the director until the storyboard is perfected. Editing the film at the animatic stage can avoid animation of scenes that would be edited out of the film. Animation is usually an expensive process, so there should be a minimum of "deleted scenes" if the film is to be completed within budget.
Often storyboards are animated with simple zooms and pans to simulate camera movement (using non-linear editing software
). These animations can be combined with available animatics, sound effects and dialog to create a presentation of how a film could be shot and cut together. Some feature film DVD
special features include production animatics.
Animatics are also used by advertising agencies to create inexpensive test commercials. A variation, the "rip-o-matic", is made from scenes of existing movies, television programs or commercials, to simulate the look and feel of the proposed commercial. Rip, in this sense, refers to ripping-off an original work to create a new one.
s edited together and presented on screen in a sequence
. Usually, a voice-over
, soundtrack
and sound effect
s are added to the piece to create a presentation to show how a film could be shot and cut together. Increasingly used by advertisers and advertising agencies to research the effectiveness of their proposed storyboard before committing to a 'full up' television advertisement
.
The photomatic is usually a research tool, similar to an animatic, in that it represents the work to a test audience so that the commissioners of the work can gauge its effectiveness.
Originally, photographs were taken using colour negative film. A selection would be made from contact sheets and prints made. The prints would be placed on a rostrum and recorded to videotape
using a standard video camera
. Any moves, pans or zooms would have to be made in camera. The captured scenes could then be edited.
Digital photography
, web access to stock photography
and Non-linear editing programs have had a marked impact on this way of film making also leading to the term 'digimatic'. Images can be shot and edited very quickly to allow important creative decisions to be made 'live'. Photo composite animations can build intricate scenes that would normally be beyond many test film budgets.
and Carl Barks
(when he was writing stories for the Junior Woodchuck title) are known to have used this style of scripting.
In Japanese Manga
comics, the word "nemu" (ネーム; modified Hepburn roomaji: neemu, IPA: [ne̞e̞mu͍]; the -u is devoiced) is used for manga storyboards. In Japan this is the standard way of presenting a new episode to magazine editors.
of Hughes Aircraft
. However that is not the case. Sequential Thematic Organization of Publications (STOP) extensively used storyboards. Walter Starkey, co-author of the 1965 STOP Manual, reflected on the genesis of STOP. The STOP technique became the preferred development approach for much of the defense and aerospace industry.
Storyboards are used today by industry for planning ad campaigns, commercials, a proposal
or other business presentations intended to convince or compel to action. Consulting firms teach the technique to their staff to use during the development of client presentations, frequently employing the "brown paper technique" of taping mock-up presentation slides to a large piece of kraft paper which can be rolled up for easy transport. The initial storyboard may be as simple as slide titles on Post-It notes, which are then replaced with draft presentation slides as they are created.
Storyboards also exist in accounting in the ABC System(Action Based Costing System) to develop a detailed process flowchart which visually shows all activities and the relationships among activities. They are used in this way to measure the cost of resources consumed, identify and eliminate non-value-added costs, determine the efficiency and effectiveness of all major activities, and identity and evaluate new activities that can improve future performance.
A "quality storyboard
" is a tool to help facilitate the introduction of a quality improvement process into an organisation.
Design comics
are a type of storyboard used to include a customer or other characters into a narrative. Design comics are most often used in designing web sites or illustrating product usage scenarios during design.
, software development
and instructional design
to present and describe, in written, interactive events as well as audio and motion, particularly on user interface
s and electronic page
s.
The process of visual thinking and planning allows a group of people to brainstorm together, placing their ideas on storyboards and then arranging the storyboards on the wall. This fosters more ideas and generates consensus inside the group.
If drawing by hand, the first step is to create or download a storyboard template. These look much like a blank comic strip, with space for comments and dialogue. Then sketch a "thumbnail
" storyboard. Some directors sketch thumbnails directly in the script margins. These storyboards get their name because they are rough sketches not bigger than a thumbnail. For some motion pictures, thumbnail storyboards are sufficient.
However, some filmmakers rely heavily on the storyboarding process. If a director or producer wishes, more detailed and elaborate storyboard images are created. These can be created by professional storyboard artist
s by hand on paper or digitally by using 2D storyboarding programs. Some software applications even supply a stable of storyboard-specific images making it possible to quickly create shots which express the director's intent for the story. These boards tend to contain more detailed information than thumbnail storyboards and convey more of the mood for the scene. These are then presented to the project's cinematographer who achieves the director's vision.
Finally, if needed, 3D storyboards are created (called 'technical previsualization
'). The advantage of 3D storyboards is they show exactly what the film camera will see using the lenses the film camera will use. The disadvantage of 3D is the amount of time it takes to build and construct the shots. 3D storyboards can be constructed using 3D animation programs or digital puppets within 3D programs. Some programs have a collection of low resolution 3D figures which can aid in the process. Some 3D applications allow cinematographers to create "technical" storyboards which are optically-correct shots and frames.
While technical storyboards can be helpful, optically-correct storyboards may limit the director's creativity. In classic motion pictures such as Orson Welles
' Citizen Kane
and Alfred Hitchcock
's North by Northwest
, the director created storyboards that were initially thought by cinematographers as to be impossible to film. Such innovative and dramatic shots had "impossible" depth of field and angles where there was "no room for the camera" - at least not until creative solutions were found to achieve the ground-breaking shots that the director had envisioned.
Illustration
An illustration is a displayed visualization form presented as a drawing, painting, photograph or other work of art that is created to elucidate or dictate sensual information by providing a visual representation graphically.- Early history :The earliest forms of illustration were prehistoric...
s or image
Image
An image is an artifact, for example a two-dimensional picture, that has a similar appearance to some subject—usually a physical object or a person.-Characteristics:...
s displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
, motion graphic or interactive media
Interactive media
Interactive media normally refers to products and services on digital computer-based systems which respond to the user’s actions by presenting content such as text, graphics, animation, video, audio, etc.-Terminology:...
sequence.
The storyboarding process, in the form it is known today, was developed at the Walt Disney Studio
Walt Disney Pictures
Walt Disney Pictures is an American film studio owned by The Walt Disney Company. Walt Disney Pictures and Television, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Studios and the main production company for live-action feature films within the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, based at the Walt Disney...
during the early 1930s, after several years of similar processes being in use at Walt Disney and other animation studios.
Origins
The storyboarding process can be very time-consuming and intricate. The form widely known today was developed at the Walt Disney studioWalt Disney Feature Animation
Walt Disney Animation Studios is an American animation studio headquartered in Burbank, California. The studio, founded in 1923 as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio by brothers Walt and Roy Disney, is the oldest subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
during the early 1930s. In the biography of her father, The Story of Walt Disney (Henry Holt, 1956), Diane Disney Miller explains that the first complete storyboards were created for the 1933 Disney short Three Little Pigs
Three Little Pigs
Three Little Pigs is a fairy tale featuring anthropomorphic animals. Printed versions date back to the 1840s, but the story itself is thought to be much older...
. According to John Canemaker, in Paper Dreams: The Art and Artists of Disney Storyboards (1999, Hyperion Press), the first storyboards at Disney evolved from comic-book like "story sketches" created in the 1920s to illustrate concepts for animated cartoon short subjects such as Plane Crazy
Plane Crazy
Plane Crazy is an American animated short film directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. The cartoon, produced in 1928 by The Walt Disney Studio, was the first to feature the character Mickey Mouse. It was made as a silent film and given a test screening to a theater audience on May 15, 1928, but...
and Steamboat Willie
Steamboat Willie
Steamboat Willie is a 1928 American animated short film directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. It was produced in black-and-white by The Walt Disney Studio and released by Celebrity Productions. The cartoon is considered the debut of Mickey Mouse, and as his girlfriend Minnie, but the characters...
, and within a few years the idea spread to other studios.
According to Christopher Finch in The Art of Walt Disney (Abrams, 1974), Disney credited animator Webb Smith with creating the idea of drawing scenes on separate sheets of paper and pinning them up on a bulletin board to tell a story in sequence, thus creating the first storyboard. The second studio to switch from "story sketches" to storyboards was Walter Lantz Productions in early 1935, by 1936 Harman-Ising and Leon Schlesinger
Leon Schlesinger
Leon Schlesinger was an American film producer, most noted for founding Leon Schlesinger Productions, which later became the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio, during the golden age of Hollywood animation.-Early life and career:...
also followed suit. By 1937-38 all studios were using storyboards.
Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind (film)
Gone with the Wind is a 1939 American historical epic film adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer-winning 1936 novel of the same name. It was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming from a screenplay by Sidney Howard...
was one of the first live action films to be completely storyboarded. William Cameron Menzies, the film's production designer, was hired by David Selznick to design every shot of the film. Many large budget silent films were also storyboarded but most of this material has been lost during the reduction of the studio archives during the 1970s.
Storyboarding became popular in live-action film production during the early 1940s, and grew into a standard medium for previsualization of films. Pace Gallery
Pace Gallery
The Pace Gallery is a New York City-based exhibition space. It was founded in 1960 in Boston by Arne Glimcher.-PaceWildenstein:From 1993 until April 1, 2010, the gallery became "PaceWildenstein," a joint business venture between the Pace Gallery and Wildenstein & Co....
curator, Annette Micheloson, writing of the exhibition Drawing into Film: Director's Drawings, considered the 1940s to 1990s to be the period in which "production design was largely characterized by adoption of the storyboard". Storyboards are now an essential part of the creation progress.
Film
A film storyboard is essentially a large comicComics
Comics denotes a hybrid medium having verbal side of its vocabulary tightly tied to its visual side in order to convey narrative or information only, the latter in case of non-fiction comics, seeking synergy by using both visual and verbal side in...
of the film or some section of the film produced beforehand to help film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
s, cinematographers and television commercial advertising
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
clients visualize the scenes and find potential problems before they occur. Often storyboards include arrows or instructions that indicate movement.
In creating a motion picture with any degree of fidelity to a script
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
, a storyboard provides a visual layout of events as they are to be seen through the camera lens. And in the case of interactive media, it is the layout and sequence in which the user or viewer sees the content or information. In the storyboarding process, most technical details involved in crafting a film or interactive media project can be efficiently described either in picture, or in additional text.
Some live-action film directors, such as Joel and Ethan Coen, use storyboard extensively before taking a pitch to their funders, stating that it helps them to get the support they require, since they can show exactly where the money will be used. Alfred Hitchcock's films were strongly believed to have been extensively storyboarded to the finest detail by the majority of commentators over the years, although later research indicates that this was exaggerated for publicity purposes. Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 filmsIn 1946, Kurosawa co-directed, with Hideo Sekigawa and Kajiro Yamamoto, the feature Those Who Make Tomorrow ;...
was known, particularly in his later years, for painstaking detail in his storyboarding, to the degree that the storyboard paintings for Ran
Ran (film)
is a 1985 Japanese-French jidaigeki film written and directed by Akira Kurosawa. The film starred Tatsuya Nakadai as Hidetora Ichimonji, an aging Sengoku-era warlord who decides to abdicate as ruler in favor of his three sons. It also stars Mieko Harada as the wife of Ichimonji's eldest son...
(for which he storyboarded every shot) are regarded as fine works of art in themselves. Other directors storyboard only certain scenes, or none at all. Animation directors are usually required to storyboard extensively, sometimes in place of writing a script.
Theater
A common misconception is that storyboards are not used in theater. They are frequently special tools that directors and playwrights use to understand the layout of the scene. The great Russian theatre practitionerTheatre practitioner
Theatre practitioner is a modern term to describe someone who both creates theatrical performances and who produces a theoretical discourse that informs his or her practical work. A theatre practitioner may be a director, a dramatist, an actor, or—characteristically—often a combination of these...
Constantin Stanislavski developed storyboards in his detailed production plans for his Moscow Art Theatre
Moscow Art Theatre
The Moscow Art Theatre is a theatre company in Moscow that the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Constantin Stanislavski, together with the playwright and director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, founded in 1898. It was conceived as a venue for naturalistic theatre, in contrast to the melodramas...
performances (such as of Chekhov's
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
The Seagull
The Seagull
The Seagull is the first of what are generally considered to be the four major plays by the Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov. The Seagull was written in 1895 and first produced in 1896...
in 1898). The German director and dramatist Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
developed detailed storyboards as part of his dramaturgical
Dramaturgy
Dramaturgy is the art of dramatic composition and the representation of the main elements of drama on the stage. Dramaturgy is a distinct practice separate from play writing and directing, although a single individual may perform any combination of the three. Some dramatists combine writing and...
method of "fabel
Fabel
Fabel is a critical term and a dramaturgical technique pioneered by the twentieth-century German theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht.Fabel should not be confused with 'fable', which is a form of short narrative...
s."
Animatics
In animationAnimation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
and special effects work, the storyboarding stage may be followed by simplified mock-ups called "animatics" to give a better idea of how the scene will look and feel with motion and timing. At its simplest, an animatic is a series of still images edited together and displayed in sequence. More commonly, a rough dialogue
Dialogue
Dialogue is a literary and theatrical form consisting of a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people....
and/or rough sound track is added to the sequence of still images (usually taken from a storyboard) to test whether the sound and images are working effectively together.
This allows the animator
Animator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...
s and director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
s to work out any screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
, camera positioning, shot list and timing issues that may exist with the current storyboard. The storyboard and soundtrack are amended if necessary, and a new animatic may be created and reviewed with the director until the storyboard is perfected. Editing the film at the animatic stage can avoid animation of scenes that would be edited out of the film. Animation is usually an expensive process, so there should be a minimum of "deleted scenes" if the film is to be completed within budget.
Often storyboards are animated with simple zooms and pans to simulate camera movement (using non-linear editing software
Non-linear editing system
In video, a non-linear editing system is a video editing or audio editing digital audio workstation system which can perform random access non-destructive editing on the source material...
). These animations can be combined with available animatics, sound effects and dialog to create a presentation of how a film could be shot and cut together. Some feature film DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
special features include production animatics.
Animatics are also used by advertising agencies to create inexpensive test commercials. A variation, the "rip-o-matic", is made from scenes of existing movies, television programs or commercials, to simulate the look and feel of the proposed commercial. Rip, in this sense, refers to ripping-off an original work to create a new one.
Photomatic
A photomatic (probably derived from 'animatic' or photo-animation) is a series of still photographPhotograph
A photograph is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of...
s edited together and presented on screen in a sequence
Sequence
In mathematics, a sequence is an ordered list of objects . Like a set, it contains members , and the number of terms is called the length of the sequence. Unlike a set, order matters, and exactly the same elements can appear multiple times at different positions in the sequence...
. Usually, a voice-over
Voice-over
Voice-over is a production technique where a voice which is not part of the narrative is used in a radio, television production, filmmaking, theatre, or other presentations...
, soundtrack
Soundtrack
A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...
and sound effect
Sound effect
For the album by The Jam, see Sound Affects.Sound effects or audio effects are artificially created or enhanced sounds, or sound processes used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media...
s are added to the piece to create a presentation to show how a film could be shot and cut together. Increasingly used by advertisers and advertising agencies to research the effectiveness of their proposed storyboard before committing to a 'full up' television advertisement
Television advertisement
A television advertisement or television commercial, often just commercial, advert, ad, or ad-film – is a span of television programming produced and paid for by an organization that conveys a message, typically one intended to market a product...
.
The photomatic is usually a research tool, similar to an animatic, in that it represents the work to a test audience so that the commissioners of the work can gauge its effectiveness.
Originally, photographs were taken using colour negative film. A selection would be made from contact sheets and prints made. The prints would be placed on a rostrum and recorded to videotape
Videotape
A videotape is a recording of images and sounds on to magnetic tape as opposed to film stock or random access digital media. Videotapes are also used for storing scientific or medical data, such as the data produced by an electrocardiogram...
using a standard video camera
Video camera
A video camera is a camera used for electronic motion picture acquisition, initially developed by the television industry but now common in other applications as well. The earliest video cameras were those of John Logie Baird, based on the electromechanical Nipkow disk and used by the BBC in...
. Any moves, pans or zooms would have to be made in camera. The captured scenes could then be edited.
Digital photography
Digital photography
Digital photography is a form of photography that uses an array of light sensitive sensors to capture the image focused by the lens, as opposed to an exposure on light sensitive film...
, web access to stock photography
Stock photography
Stock photography is the supply of photographs licensed for specific uses. It is used to fulfill the needs of creative assignments instead of hiring a photographer. Today, stock images can be presented in searchable online databases. They can be purchased and delivered online...
and Non-linear editing programs have had a marked impact on this way of film making also leading to the term 'digimatic'. Images can be shot and edited very quickly to allow important creative decisions to be made 'live'. Photo composite animations can build intricate scenes that would normally be beyond many test film budgets.
Comic books
Some writers have used storyboard type drawings (albeit rather sketchy) for their scripting of comic books, often indicating staging of figures, backgrounds and balloon placement with instructions to the artist as needed often scribbled in the margins and the dialogue/captions indicated. John StanleyJohn Stanley (comics)
John Stanley was a comic book creator, best known for writing Little Lulu from 1945 to 1959. While mostly known for scripting, Stanley also was an accomplished artist who drew many of his stories, including the earliest Little Lulu issues. His specialty was humorous stories, both with licensed...
and Carl Barks
Carl Barks
Carl Barks was an American Disney Studio illustrator and comic book creator, who invented Duckburg and many of its inhabitants, such as Scrooge McDuck , Gladstone Gander , the Beagle Boys , The Junior Woodchucks , Gyro Gearloose , Cornelius Coot , Flintheart Glomgold , John D...
(when he was writing stories for the Junior Woodchuck title) are known to have used this style of scripting.
In Japanese Manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
comics, the word "nemu" (ネーム; modified Hepburn roomaji: neemu, IPA: [ne̞e̞mu͍]; the -u is devoiced) is used for manga storyboards. In Japan this is the standard way of presenting a new episode to magazine editors.
Business
According to rumor, storyboards were adapted from the film industry to business, purportedly by Howard HughesHoward Hughes
Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American business magnate, investor, aviator, engineer, film producer, director, and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world...
of Hughes Aircraft
Hughes Aircraft
Hughes Aircraft Company was a major American aerospace and defense contractor founded in 1932 by Howard Hughes in Culver City, California as a division of Hughes Tool Company...
. However that is not the case. Sequential Thematic Organization of Publications (STOP) extensively used storyboards. Walter Starkey, co-author of the 1965 STOP Manual, reflected on the genesis of STOP. The STOP technique became the preferred development approach for much of the defense and aerospace industry.
Storyboards are used today by industry for planning ad campaigns, commercials, a proposal
Proposal (business)
A business proposal is a written offer from a seller to a prospective buyer.Business proposals are often a key step in the complex sales process—i.e., whenever a buyer considers more than price in a purchase.-Overview:...
or other business presentations intended to convince or compel to action. Consulting firms teach the technique to their staff to use during the development of client presentations, frequently employing the "brown paper technique" of taping mock-up presentation slides to a large piece of kraft paper which can be rolled up for easy transport. The initial storyboard may be as simple as slide titles on Post-It notes, which are then replaced with draft presentation slides as they are created.
Storyboards also exist in accounting in the ABC System(Action Based Costing System) to develop a detailed process flowchart which visually shows all activities and the relationships among activities. They are used in this way to measure the cost of resources consumed, identify and eliminate non-value-added costs, determine the efficiency and effectiveness of all major activities, and identity and evaluate new activities that can improve future performance.
A "quality storyboard
Quality storyboard
A Quality storyboard is a visual method for displaying a Quality Control story . Some enterprises have developed a storyboard format for telling the QC story, for example at Yokogawa-Hewlett-Packard in Japan, the story is told using a flip chart which is 6 feet by 6 feet...
" is a tool to help facilitate the introduction of a quality improvement process into an organisation.
Design comics
Design comics
Design comics are a type of storyboarding used in product and web site design. Design comics include product consumers or other characters in an illustrated story that shows how the users interact with the product....
are a type of storyboard used to include a customer or other characters into a narrative. Design comics are most often used in designing web sites or illustrating product usage scenarios during design.
Novels
Storyboards are now becoming more popular with novelists. Because most novelists write their stories by scenes rather than chapters, storyboards are useful for plotting the story in a sequence of events and rearranging the scenes accordingly.Interactive media
More recently the term storyboard has been used in the fields of web developmentWeb development
Web development is a broad term for the work involved in developing a web site for the Internet or an intranet . This can include web design, web content development, client liaison, client-side/server-side scripting, web server and network security configuration, and e-commerce development...
, software development
Software development
Software development is the development of a software product...
and instructional design
Instructional design
Instructional Design is the practice of creating "instructional experiences which make the acquisition of knowledge and skill more efficient, effective, and appealing." The process consists broadly of determining the current state and needs of the learner, defining the end goal of instruction, and...
to present and describe, in written, interactive events as well as audio and motion, particularly on user interface
User interface
The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...
s and electronic page
Electronic page
An electronic page is a term to encompass the grouping of content between basic breaking points in presentations or documents that originate or remain as visual electronic documents. This is a software file and recording format term in contrast to electronic paper, a hardware display technology...
s.
Benefits
One advantage of using storyboards is that it allows (in film and business) the user to experiment with changes in the storyline to evoke stronger reaction or interest. Flashbacks, for instance, are often the result of sorting storyboards out of chronological order to help build suspense and interest.The process of visual thinking and planning allows a group of people to brainstorm together, placing their ideas on storyboards and then arranging the storyboards on the wall. This fosters more ideas and generates consensus inside the group.
Creation
Storyboards for films are created in a multiple step process. They can be created by hand drawing or digitally on the computer.If drawing by hand, the first step is to create or download a storyboard template. These look much like a blank comic strip, with space for comments and dialogue. Then sketch a "thumbnail
Thumbnail
Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words...
" storyboard. Some directors sketch thumbnails directly in the script margins. These storyboards get their name because they are rough sketches not bigger than a thumbnail. For some motion pictures, thumbnail storyboards are sufficient.
However, some filmmakers rely heavily on the storyboarding process. If a director or producer wishes, more detailed and elaborate storyboard images are created. These can be created by professional storyboard artist
Storyboard artist
Storyboard artist is a profession specialized in creating storyboards for advertising agencies and film productions.A storyboard artist is able to visualize any stories using quick sketches on paper at any moment...
s by hand on paper or digitally by using 2D storyboarding programs. Some software applications even supply a stable of storyboard-specific images making it possible to quickly create shots which express the director's intent for the story. These boards tend to contain more detailed information than thumbnail storyboards and convey more of the mood for the scene. These are then presented to the project's cinematographer who achieves the director's vision.
Finally, if needed, 3D storyboards are created (called 'technical previsualization
Previsualization
Previsualization is a function to visualise complex scenes in movie before filming. It is also a concept in still photography...
'). The advantage of 3D storyboards is they show exactly what the film camera will see using the lenses the film camera will use. The disadvantage of 3D is the amount of time it takes to build and construct the shots. 3D storyboards can be constructed using 3D animation programs or digital puppets within 3D programs. Some programs have a collection of low resolution 3D figures which can aid in the process. Some 3D applications allow cinematographers to create "technical" storyboards which are optically-correct shots and frames.
While technical storyboards can be helpful, optically-correct storyboards may limit the director's creativity. In classic motion pictures such as Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
' Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
and Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
's North by Northwest
North by Northwest
North by Northwest is a 1959 American thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason, and featuring Leo G. Carroll and Martin Landau...
, the director created storyboards that were initially thought by cinematographers as to be impossible to film. Such innovative and dramatic shots had "impossible" depth of field and angles where there was "no room for the camera" - at least not until creative solutions were found to achieve the ground-breaking shots that the director had envisioned.
See also
- AnimationAnimationAnimation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
- FilmmakingFilmmakingFilmmaking is the process of making a film, from an initial story, idea, or commission, through scriptwriting, casting, shooting, directing, editing, and screening the finished product before an audience that may result in a theatrical release or television program...
- Graphic organizer
- Photomatic
- PrevisualizationPrevisualizationPrevisualization is a function to visualise complex scenes in movie before filming. It is also a concept in still photography...
- Pre-productionPre-productionPre-production or In Production is the process of preparing all the elements involved in a film, play, or other performance.- In film :...
- ScreenplayScreenplayA screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
- ScreenwritingScreenwritingScreenwriting is the art and craft of writing scripts for mass media such as feature films, television productions or video games. It is a freelance profession....
- Script breakdownScript breakdownA script breakdown is an intermediate step in the production of a play, film, comic book, or any other work that is originally planned using a script.-Film and television:...
- List of film-related topics