STORYBOARD

Storyboards are used to visual the images that will appear on the screen. You work out the types of shot, the angles, the camera movements, the mise en scene, the colours and shapes, anything and everything.

Storyboards are where the real work happens. Storyboards are much cheaper to experiment with, to try things out than messing about on the day of filming. A piece of paper and a pencil and a storyboard artist cost a lot less per day than the million pound a day that will be spent on movie.

Pop Videos are just the same. You work out all the shots on the storyboard before you even begin to think of filming. You spot the mistakes, the things that don’t work, and put them right in the storyboard before you film. It is a bit like creating a puzzle or a plan, which you shoot to, and then you put the puzzle together afterwards.

The storyboard was done in reference to the timeline. We tried to do the timeline in as much detail as possible, that way the storyboard would be easier. It is done to visualise the shot and work out the type of shot to use and why, whether tracking or craning will be used, and why. The details of the storyboard were quite difficult because in each shot Ruby is constantly moving and performing, therefore when drawing an arrow to show the direction which she is moving; it may change depending on how it looks on the day. Much of our camera movement is quite static because we want to represent the performance element of the piece, apart from the complex tracking shot to finish the song.

To help me get into the world of storyboard I decided to look at the storyboard for 'The Lion King.' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO49iR0HguE&feature=related

Our piece has 3 layers to it, one is a close up of the seats, therefore only the girl watching is seen, and Ruby if she comes out, 2nd layer is filmed as though the girl is sitting in the room with Ruby being performed to, and the 3rd is meant to represent that she is watching a film with the girl in it, therefore not in the same room. These aspects were taken into consideration when doing the storyboard, due to the drawings having to represent which layer they were on.

A shot that we needed to see whether it would work was the opening 8 seconds where we have a wide shot of the singer jump into the air in slow motion. Our initial worry was that the shot would be too long and therefore tedius, but due to it being in slow motion and the opening shot, therefore setting the scene, we realised that a wide/long establishing shot would be successful, I show this in the storyboard below:

One shot that we decided to use was in the ending sequence of the song, where a tracking in the round shot will be used. This is done in order to show the singer performing, then tracking round and revealing that the girl watching her is in fact herself. This is the main concept of the song that she is performing to herself because internally she is trying to make herself happy. I show this below through the storyboard:
Alot of our editing will be jump cuts, this is shown in the storyboard. This is done in order to give the performance element to the video. By jump cutting the video becomes fictional, because the singer moving round the stage would not be possible, this is therefore playing with perspectives and slightly confuses the audience, which will hopefully lead to their enjoyment of the video. Below I show a few shots where jump cutting will be used:


Our storyboard was a real test of how shots would work together. So we storyboarded – SEE THE EXAMPLES ATTACHED – and then filmed them. We could then edit them together in an animatic style and see how the whole thing flowed or did not flow. This led us to see a lot of shots that worked and a lot that did not.