🎬 Storyboard Study

For aspiring film-makers, this is a simple exercise to focus on cinematography, framing and editing. It may also reverse-engineer the storyboard and unique visual story telling.

• Select any film you like, and select a favorite scene to study.

• Best done where you can capture screen shots.

• Take a screenshot that represents a visual take, between cuts. And do so for every cut, camera change, etc.

• If it is not a series of cuts, rather one long shot—then capture screenshots of the beginning, middle, and end.

• Insert them into a document in sequence (e.g. can use a presentation format, but viewed with a number of cuts per page).

• While we absorb cinema as moving pictures, step back and appreciate how many (or how few) cuts were used, and their differences or the effect for the changes.

• Take notes of what resonates with you—lighting, framing, composition, focus, possibly interpret what lens was used.

• What might you do differently?

• How might you use some of these techniques on one of your pieces?

• From the perspective of a storyboard illustrator or editor, could you have sketched out thumbnails for each cut?

• How else could you communicate a storyboard to a team that is efficient and effective?