Storyboards and Shot Types

• Storyboarding is the process of producing sketches of the shots of your script. The end result looks like comic book of your film (without the speech bubbles).

• Why do it?

• It helps you think about how your film is going to look. You can work faster on set and as pictures communicate better than words it will allow your camera crew to move their camera and lights, for producers to foresee problems, for the art department to know which parts of the location are going to be in shot and so on. Even the actors will get a feel of what they are going to be shooting!

• So I need to be an artist?• Well you can be, but looking at storyboards by Hitchcock or

Spielberg you will see that they can't draw.

• There are professional storyboard artists that can give you results that look better than the final film. However its a good idea to bash them out yourself, it allows you to experiment quickly and cheaply, testing out different versions of how a scene may look and play on camera.

• Storyboarding is especially useful for complex visual sequences e.g. elaborate shots or special effects sequences. Sometimes a film only uses storyboards for difficult sequences other times the entire film is storyboarded.

Examples of Storyboards

Notice how arrows are used to indicate camera movement.

You can, if you are really artistic bring your frames to life by extending the action beyond the frame.

Here’s a storyboard from ‘The Matrix’.

SHOT TYPES

• Shots are one of the basic ‘building blocks’ of a film.

• In effect, a film is a sequence of carefully constructed shots, all contributing to the film’s impact on the viewer.

SHOT TYPES

In film and television there only seven different types of shots available to use. Using the sheet defining shot types complete the descriptions of the five most common shots. these are

Shot Types

SHOT TYPES

We also have different ways of framing and using these seven shots.

MASTER SHOT:

When a film maker is shooting a sequence, footage has to be taken that includes all of the action in that particular sequence. At the editing stage, any close-ups on character, or medium close-ups of conversations can be inserted into the master shot. Master Shots provide a back drop for any close-up or medium shot that might be cut within a scene.

Tracking Shots: The term tracking shot is widely considered to be synonymous with dolly shot; that is, a shot in which the camera is mounted on a cart which travels along tracks. However there are a few variations of both definitions. Tracking is often more narrowly defined as movement parallel to the action, or at least at a constant distance (e.g. the camera which travels alongside the race track in track & field events). Dollying is often defined as moving closer to or further away from the action.Some definitions specify that tracking shots use physical tracks, others consider tracking to include hand-held walking shots, Steadicam shots, etc.