Storyboarding

Storyboarding took three main stages in developing. As I like to have things thought through and planned before a shoot, so that no artistic decisions are being made on set, nearly all of what is seen visually in the final film is the result of this planning.
There are a number of reasons why in this instance the planning was done in this way, but it should be noted the decision to do so was never taken formally, it is just the way I wanted and everyone else was happy to work. For a start, I feel most comfortable working in an a way that allows me the time to be able to explore and fully develop artistic ideas outside of the high place pressure of the film set. I think that trying to make big decisions that will ultimately define the course of the final piece will result in under developed or even misleading meanings within the piece and trying to use some sort of inner meaning is just hopelessly romantic.
Perhaps the most important reason for completely pre-planning, though, was that we had an extremely small time budget with which to work and that trying to think through how we were going to shoot things mid shoot would have been fatal to completing of the film.

The initial stages of the shot and storyboard planning, once the script was finished, was to read through and mark it up with ideas for where shots would go and what they would look like etc.

Marking up basically involved writing on the script the impression of the shot imagined with an arrow pointing to its starting point in the script. Even at this stage as much description as possible was included, (i.e. shot distance, lighting scheme, lens angle etc).

*For extra detail, see post Marked script: extra detail

The next stage was sit down with Ben (director) and to talk through each others ideas from our own marked scripts. Then following a third marked scripted I went away to produce a rough storyboard of what we had talked about, this would serve as a base for the final boards and would also enable to work in more swift manner.

These boards included further detail to the marked script but also included details such as how they might be shoot logistically, minor blocking details and any lighting notes that were above ordinary.

When the final boards were drawn up, in three or four different meetings, Ben, Henry (editor) and myself all sat down to do them. I had wanted them both there for a number of reasons. Firstly so that, specifically between Ben and I, there could be no mis-communication by working apart and that instead of going back of fourth with ideas, just to sit down and discuss them and design them together, for times sake as well as communications. Also, having an editor there in Henry, helped me design a better shot flow. I generally tend to focus a lot on still frames and can often overlook the structure of a sequence as a whole, so having someone whose job it is to create sequences was very helpful. Also, Henry would be serving as something of a camera assistant to me and so it made sense that he should be present during the creation of the shots so that hey may better understand their purpose, but also not have to learn from scratch what they mean while setting them up with me.

These final storyboards included all the necessary information relating to the production of the shot, including a storyboard, blocking, lighting set up, estimation of lens to be used, jib notes, grip notes and anything else that might assist during production.

More details on the nature of the storyboards in post: Storyboard: extra detail