Technical Elements - Storyboards

Storyboards

A storyboard is a shot by shot visual representation where the director has the ability to choose how he / she wants to portray a certain character or how to set a scene etc. The director also needs to take into account the relationship between other characters and the scenes they are in so they must vary the shot types to get their point across. The location of where the shots are taking place is also something to be considered not to mention if a character is moving an arrow or some sort of note must be used to show movement within the storyboard otherwise the storyboard would be longer than it needs to be. going to be taken, any important vehicles or props must be included somewhere in the storyboard whether it be a note or actually drawn  into the storyboard. To avoid confusion if there is more than one person featured in a shot then they must be included in the storyboard as well as the main character in a particular scene. Lighting in the scene must also be noted not to mention the time of day in which the scene is taking place which is usually included at the top of the storyboard.

This Storyboard to my left is taken from a scene in the movie Inception, in this scene one of the characters Eames enters a vehicle only to be shot at two frames later, as you can see from the storyboard both characters involved in the scene are both featured in the first box to show the director how many people are involved in the scene, there is also notes on  the right hand side of the boxes to give the directions of whatever the characters are doing for example it might say "Eames enters the car and is immediately met by Saito who questions whether or not the job is done". The other shots also show facial expressions which also help when it comes to eventually filming the scene. The last shot on this image shows Eames ducking down as a bullet comes through the back wind shield there is also instructions as the text reads "the camera then quickly switches to" which is followed by an arrow to the final shot you see in  the image this is also incredibly helpful to the cameraman and director as it will be a lot easier when it comes to filming it.