Block Before You Storyboard

When people think of a director's process for pre-visualizing a film, they tend to think of a series of pictures, like a comic book, called storyboards. If a director has taken the time to think up how a scene will look, then it's going to be quicker and easier to shoot.

While that's certainly true, storyboards aren't where I like to start. Storyboarding is a lot like making a wish list of shots, and I'd rather dive right into the scene and see which shots are actually available and achievable before I start deciding what the most important parts of the scene are, visually. That way I can build my camera placement, and therefore my shot list, around how the scene actually flows, rather than what I think might be cool.

Rather than drawing pictures, I like to begin with a series of charts, one per scene, that look a lot like football diagrams. When I plot out the movement of the actors and the camera, I can see patterns emerge, opportunities to simplify the shoot, and camera angles I might not have otherwise considered - long before I make up my mind over what the scene really looks like.

Here's an example:

In this scene near the end of the second act, Sam, Max and Sophia enter Minor Stockman's home to confront him about the Resurrection of Antelao and his interest in Sam.

If you note the arrows, you'll see that the three characters I mentioned meet Minor Stockman at his door, and he lets them in. Max takes a seat while Mr. Stockman leaves the room to get tea. Max and Sophia refuse to sit, and Minor Stockman takes the other chair himself. When he and Sam engage one another at the end of the scene, Stockman stands, walks to the bookshelf and hands something to Sam before letting everyone out.

To understand the camera positions, all you really need to know is that those "V's" with the circles are cameras, and give a rough idea of the peripheral vision of the lens. An arrow indicates a camera moving from one position to another. Likewise, gray cameras are cameras that reposition during the scene. With that in mind, there's a total of six camera set-ups in this scene.

As I go into storyboarding, it becomes more like editing. I've got a good idea of what those six cameras can see, and I "cut" between them as I compile the shots in my boards. If I decide I need another camera or a different position, it's a lot less expensive to do it on paper than it is to leave the editing room and shoot more footage.

At least, that's how it works for me. For more information on how to block cameras, I highly recommend a series of videos called Hollywood Camera Work, at www.hollywoodcamerawork.us.