1
Welcome to DIRECT. This magazine is a token of the small contribution that we can make to the film and video industry and especially to those of you who are interested in video production directing and do not have the means to enroll at a film school.
Our contributing writers are:
Johnny Taute - Editor
You might even enjoy amateur video making or need some tips for a school project. We are the personnel from iLine Films, a production company in South Africa and we have walked the hard road of on the job training and reading books and magazines. i – LINE FILMS was founded by Johnny Taute in 2003, primarily to specialize in entertaining, informing and equipping the people of South Africa. The production company is situated in Pretoria, South Africa and delivers video productions for the Broadcast, Documentary and Corporate markets.
Dirk Pieters - Photography
i-Line Films delivers from concept to final mix and supplements the video facility with Photography as well. We deliver on the following Solutions: Pre production Script writing
Jean Pohl – Audio & Video
Productions for the Corporate, Training and Broadcast spheres Post production services Audio production Corporate & Magazine Photography Our production team is the main contributor to this magazine and we hope the articles inspire you to grow and learn more about the exciting world of video production.
Shani Kuhn – Video production & Editing
Contact info: www.iline.co.za
2
In This issue: ™ The Storyboard
Storyboard The Storyboard is a diary of the film, in fact a diary of private thoughts and future events and they serve two purposes: 1. The filmmaker can now visualize his thoughts through illustrations and refine them like a writer develops a manuscript through a series of drafts. 2. They are also the most comprehensible way to communicate ideas to the production crews and their value escalates with the complexity of the production. Even short, romantic & dramatic films will profit from storyboards to assist the director to refine the atmosphere and dialogue. You the Director and the Storyboard: You want a unique look and feel for your film. Because of the blend of personalities and peoples, that look and feel is shared in varying degrees by you, the production designer, DOP and sometimes the editor as well. You need a team that can work well together. The major challenge of your relationship is interpreting the director’s view of the film script.
action sequences, usually requires a minimum of 3-4 months to illustrate and it becomes expensive. Digital images may be a more affordable option for low / no budget projects. Let us concentrate on cost effective ways of creating storyboards and illustrations. The Artist: The storyboard artists must understand staging, editing as well as composition and must be comprehensively familiar with the use of various lenses. The artist should be a sketch artist adept at drawing the human figure in a diversity of poses as required for various genres. The artist could base his illustrations on digital photographs of the locations chosen by the director, production designer and DOP, or he may visit the location in person and snap his own reference shots. Of course, digital prints can serve the same purpose as sketches. For a cheaper option, collect images on your cell phone or from the web. Style: Continuity sketches can convey the visual flow and mood of a sequence. Storyboards also include schematic diagrams of the scene (drawn from the top.) This serves to clarify the layout of the set when unusual or disorienting perspectives are illustrated because the creative team needs to understand the framing continuity of every scene without spending a great deal of time on exact detail.
A thorough storyboard for a majour film, as opposed to select
3
How to illustrate camera techniques: The limitation of the storyboard is its failure to demonstrate motion— within the frame, but also camera movements. Visual effects such as dissolves and fades need to be conveyed in ways, as are most manipulations of depth of field and focus. The most obvious solution is to use captions and several techniques used by artists to show camera movement and extended space that can be adapted to live-action subjects. If you are able to employ software such as Photoshop, CAD and Corel or even Paint, you can do a lot. There are software dedicated to storyboarding available as well. The first element we need to consider is the border of the storyboard frame. Its purpose is to indicate a viewpoint, selected from the whole of space. Therefore it is permissible to allow the drawing to extend beyond the edges of the frame.
The Pan - and the Track Shot: This wide panel illustrates a man jumping from a car, running down a street and climbing the ladder to the rooftop. The complete shot was drawn in Microsoft paint and will give the creative team enough
detail to work on to show tracking and pans. The frames around the character indicate closer takes of the same action.
Transitions between shots: In the top few panels we see how transitions like dissolves and fades can be handled. This shows a typical use of the space between panels. Also use colour markers to indicate different objects or groups and indicated where tracks and jibs / cranes are to be used. Jib shots can be illustrated in a sequence of sketches to represent a single, unbroken shot. Format and Presentation: There are several different ways to display storyboards, depending on the size of the individual panels. The use of software such as PowerPoint can be used in this way to reduce costs and is a convenient presentation size and format. Story boards are usually made available to several of the production departments during preproduction in various formats from paper to digital. The format of
4
the presentation depends on how they will be used.
Wide shot track / zoom in to med CU
indicates the camera direction as it zooms down to the size of the smaller left hand frame as the cars moves right to left. But you can pretty much design it the way you want as long as you clearly get the idea across. Dolly and Zoom Shots: It’s possible to draw a large panel and then frame smaller portions of the whole picture to obtain medium shots, close-ups (CUs) and extreme dose-ups. This is called a field cut.
This is a typical method to indicate a change in shot size. From wide to a closeup shot or vise versa. This type of panel (below) can be used to indicate a pan, jib or a tracking shot. In this version, (created through a montage of free clip art in Microsoft Paint) specific framing is some what indicated, however, the camera position and staging of the action is quite clear. A frame within the frame indicates the composition of the shot as the camera will see the action. The frame (A) is panned in with the car. The arrow in the frame Above is a typical easy story board, drawn on the back of the script to plan an action series for a low budget corporate training video. This ensures that all scenes are covered as per script, that everybody in the crew knows where to set up which shot and that the editing will be simplified when
5
all angles and cut-aways are covered. The Storyboard should convey: A description of the physical environment of the sequence / set /location and a description of the special qualities of the sequence (staging / angle / lens and movements in the frames. The artist can convey mood and lighting while the director will convey his ideas for the set-ups with simpler drawings. If you really can not afford an artist and you can not draw to save your life, employ words within frames to explain the actions.
Creative and experienced teams will soon catch up to what you are thinking.
If you can draw stick figures then schematic sketches will serve your purpose (and to show camera positions) if you combine it with the words as seen below:
By adding arrows you will illustrate movement of action and camera more effectively and can show complex paths of movement as well. Use various arrows (even swaying or stippled arrows) to illustrate movements. The frame can be used as an arrow as well. The storyboard is there to serve the director whether he leans on it or not during the production. The process of visualization on paper is a way of generating more angles and ideas and not just to explain the set-up to the creative team.
No matter how basic your drawings are it gets the thought process going and can be invaluable during the pressures on set. Above all, the storyboard communicates the shot flow of the scenes which is the mixture of dramatic and schematic design (a blue print) but the practical use of viewpoints, lens viewpoints and narrative movement are paramount.
6