Digital Filmmaking For Kids For Dummies

PROJECT 16

Planning Your Shots with a Storyboard

Storyboarding your film is not essential, but it can save you a lot of time and make the filming process much easier. It also allows you to see what your film looks like before you even start filming. Storyboards are a series of images or a written list of scenes normally created before filming to show the crew the types of shots to film in a scene.

Storyboards are a way for the filmmaker to put what’s in his or her mind onto paper to show how he or she sees the sequence of shots within a scene being framed and working together.

Without a storyboard, filming on-location can be more complicated and may take longer because the director will have to choose the shots on the day of shooting, while the cast and crew wait around. With a prepared storyboard, filming can begin as soon as everything is set up. A storyboard also helps make sure that the director doesn’t miss any shots. From the storyboard, a shot list can be created to ensure that all shots are captured on the day of filming.

I use storyboard software, which makes creating storyboards quicker and simpler for bigger projects, but simple hand-drawings can also be fine as long as they’re clear enough for the crew to understand.

In this chapter, I show you how to create your own storyboards to impress your crew when filming.

Create a Storyboard

Some people who work in the ...