Using Storyboards

Chapter 2 describes storyboards and their role in filmmaking. Storyboards portray a film’s essential visual storytelling as it will ultimately appear on the screen prior to anything being shot. This is “shooting the film on paper.” Storyboards are used during preproduction for creating a visual storytelling plan, developing stunt sequences and visual effects, budgeting, and scheduling. During the production phase storyboards help with communication among the crew. For reasons of efficiency the shooting order of scenes is very different from the story order and can seem random. Storyboards help keep a director focused on a story’s sequence of events throughout production. Storyboard design and notation are described, including aspect ratios, indicating entrances and exits, animating action over several frames, the use of arrows, indicating camera movement, showing dialogue, adding descriptive text, and the numbering of scenes and shots. Several sample storyboards are shown.