Videos and Storyboards

Published on: 13-May 03:40am

I promised you all I’d do a post on how I produce my storyboards. Here it is. 

 

We use storyboards to develop our story in a way that can be easily transferred to video production. 

 

Since we can see everything before we commit to filming, valuable time can be saved, ideas can be shared amongst everyone involved and the way I do it, I’m even able to produce a operational storyboard video that gives all parties an idea of what the final video should ( hopefully ), look like. 

 

I use Trello or Asana to distribute my storyboards to all parties concerned. It just depends on the complexity. 

 

I’ll be using as an example a 10 second video clip ( pre editing ), that involves two models ( male and female ), turning away from a poolside bar, walking 3 steps where the female removes here wide hat and smiles, then they walk another 2 steps. 

 

The second period where the female removes her hat will be a closeup with the video recording at 120 Frames per second. This will give me a real time  slow motion 4 second clip to add to the other recordings filmed at 25 frames per second. 

 

Total pre editing time is 10 seconds. 

 

With that knowledge. Let’s produce the storyboard. I’m using 3 iPhone 12 pro Max to record the above. 

 

2 are mounted on a gimbal, one above the other and one is set to 25 frames per second the other to 120. 

 

A third camera is mounted on a high tripod with a remotely operated pan tilt mounting. 

 

Everything is controlled by a remote operator using 3 iPads connected individually to the 3 iPhones running Filmic pro app and a separate pan tilt control. 

 

Focus, zoom and light colour and saturation is remote controlled as well. There are 4 led panel lights involved. 

 

Let’s setup the storyboard. 

 

I use standard A3 white paper I buy in pads. The whole 10 second scene will be on a single piece of paper. 

 

I turn the paper to a portrait aspect and draw a line horizontally in the middle. 

 

I then in the lower section draw another horizontal line, dividing the bottom half into half again. 

 

The entire top half is devoted to the models positioning and track. I’ve added one second increments to the bottom of the paper. That serves as a simple but effective time line. 

 

The two lower horizontal sections are devoted to cameras zoom and focus for one, the other is for the 4 lights, here following the timeline I can add colour, intensity, brightness, fade etc. 

 

This is achieved by using coloured pens and the end result looks like 4 waves that change height and colour. 

 

Therefore at any second interval I can look at the light timeline and see what light should be doing what, exactly. 

 

The exact same applies to the 3 cameras. They are represented by three different coloured lines and the focus setting is a graphical representation, again at any second I can see what camera should be doing what and where. 

 

Very simple and hugely effective. 

 

That’s enough information for most of you.  

 

Now let’s imagine I’ve got 20 different scenarios like the above, obviously with different timelines. 

 

I normally scan each A3 page, but you can just as effectively photograph each. 

 

I then assemble them, all 20,  in the correct order on a timeline of my video editing software. 

 

Now I’ve got a seamless simple video. I now find the music that I would like to serve as a basis for my music. 

 

Normally I’ll use 3 different music tracks. I download the music. Select the section of music I like off each of the 3 different music tracks I’ve downloaded. 

 

I then place that music in the appropriate positions ( in an audio track ), of my simple storyboard video. I then render that video. 

 

Now I’ve got a video that everyone can watch who is involved that gives a simple but very effective story as well as the type of music I would like my sound expert to produce, to mimic the sound effects I’ve used with the downloaded music. 

 

All that is shared to all parties concerned, the video is placed on a secure storage site and the individual A3 pages are sent via Trello or Asana. 

 

Obviously, there is much more but this will give you a great starting point.

 

Again you will not find this information lying around. 

 

I hope you can use some of this. 

 

Cheers

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