1) The document provides guidance on creating an effective storyboard, including drawing each shot, labeling technical details, and planning camera movements, sounds, editing, and more. 2) An effective storyboard is a detailed, shot-by-shot plan that clearly conveys visual design and technical production details for a scene. It should include information like shot duration, camera shots, movement, sounds, and editing. 3) The document emphasizes that storyboards are technical pre-production tools rather than artistic works - they just need to clearly demonstrate design ideas through simple sketches and annotations.

1. Storyboards – for your Treatment in Part 4
You have to createyour storyboard asan originaldocument during the
controlled assessment timebut you can prepareit completelyin advance
so you know exactlywhat it’sgoing to look like when you’re done. This is
intended as a detailed guideto creating a storyboard. Therearenotes
following this about writing your justification.
a) You canhand-draw and hand-labela storyboard on a templatewe
provide. Thisis not an art task, it is a design task – if you can draw well
then that is lovely but if you can’t draw well it doesn’t matter solong as
you canclearly show and label what you’ve done. I can’t draw at all but I
canstill createa hand-drawnstoryboard. Thereisa blankstoryboard
form attached
b) You can createa photographicstoryboard –you can take
photographsfor each shot that you need and thenlabel thephotographs
appropriately. You canedit thephotographsinany way necessary.
c) You canuse a storyboarding app or program tocreateyour
storyboard. This might involve uploading some imagesof your own and
using some of the imageresourcesthey provide.
So what do we meanby a competent storyboard, with proficient
preproductionskillsand a high technicalstandard and qualitythat
illustratetheintentionsof your adaptation?
1. A good storyboard ismuch more thana comic strip adaptationof a
moving imagetext. It is a detailed shot by shot plan for a scene,
containing clear and detailed technicalproductioninformationaswell as
a clear visual designfor each shot.
2. It will containinformationabout shot duration, camera shot, camera
movement, diagetic and non-diagetic sound, and editing, aswell as
about performance –the actual‘content’of theshot. It mayalso contain
specific informationabout miseen scene and iconography, especiallyif
they are particularlyrelevant to your plans for making meaning within
the shot.
3. It is not an ‘Art’ task – you don’t have to producebeautifulphotorealistic
drawingsand you don’t have to take photographs(although you cando
either) – thebest storyboardscanclearly demonstratethebest design
ideasusing simplepencil sketchesof shapes, labelled with moredetailed
visual informationasis required.

2. 4. It is a technicaldocument aswell as a creativedocument –it has to have
all of the technicalinformationincluded inpoint 2 above in order to do
itsjob.
So what do we need?
Image
You need a clear sense of what the shot is going to look like, with some
attentionpaid tothe key mise en scene detailsin theshot. Thisis not
quiteas easy as it sounds. QuickTask: draw a storyboard frameof an
over-the-shoulder shot of a manstanding on the street at the gateof a
house looking up the path at the front door. It’s worth making yourself
thinkcarefully about every frame by looking through a lens – you could
do it with your phone – to thinkabout what your plans will actuallylook
like.
Some basics…
 Don’t draw stickpeople, becausetheybear no resemblanceto what the
screen will actuallylook like. Bubble people arefine. Higher quality
representationalimagesaregreat ifyou can do them.
 A clear sense of shapeand colour is important –you can use little
scribbled shadesof colour as well as annotation.
 Key aspectsof mise en scene and iconographyshould be obviously there
in the frameand should be mentioned in annotation.
 Thinkabout planes of focus – are you using a deep focusshot, so
everything is in focus in the foreground and background, or do you have
one shallow plane of focus so the rest is blurring? Which leadsto…
 Movement in the shot – do you pull focus withintheshot? A manlooks
down the street, in an OTS shot, and over four seconds we pull focus
from foreground to background. You can’t draw that ina singledrawing
but it canbe clear in your annotation.
 Movement in the shot – you canuse arrowswithintheframeand
annotationtoexplainhow people/cars/whatever movewithinthe shot
 Camera movement withintheshot – thereare two waysof dealing with
this. If there is one simple camera movement – Character POV ashe
looks at the door and then tiltsup to look at the upstairswindow – you
canuse arrowsand annotation. Ifit’s a long lasting shot with a lot of
different images (thinkof Shaun’s walk to the newsagentsand home
again in‘Shaun of the Dead’) you should treat thesingle shot as a series
of shots on the storyboard, drawing them separately, with a clear note
that thereis no edit from frameto framebut it is one single shot.

3. Shot Duration
Thinkabout it, talkthrough your actionand timeit, do it againand time
it again, and then think about it again. What ishappening ina single
shot and how long will it actuallytaketo happen? What kind of rhythm
do you want to develop for the scene? Is the tension building up, shot by
shot, so should the shot durationsbegetting shorter? Doyou suddenly
burst intoan actionsequencethat needs lots of very quickshots? Do you
want a regular rhythm of shot durationtomatch thebeat of the
soundtrack? And how long will the whole sequence last, and how long
does it taketo get to the ‘meat’of thescene, and how long does the scene
last after the mainpoint of the scene has been achieved, and does that
work for you? Golden rule – Get In. Get Done. Get Out.
Camera Shot and Movement
Describethe shot with thecorrect technicalterm. Mid shot? Extreme
close up? High angle POV close up? Aswith ‘movement withintheshot’
above, describecamera movement with thecorrect technicalterm –pan,
track, tilt, cant, zoom…
Diagetic and Non-Diagetic Sound
 Diagetic –madewithintheworld of the film. Dialogue, traffic sounds,
music on the radio, spacealiens with their spacealien ships and space
alien ray guns. If you were there in the scene, you would hear it.
 Non-diagetic –not madewithinthe world of the film. Background
music and voiceover. It’s there for the audience – if you were there in
the scene you wouldn’t hear it.
You need to specificallyidentifytheuse of both types of sound – or to
identifythat thereis no non-diageticsound in the shot (of very
occasionallyno diagetic sound – completesilence can be very effective
used in the right way).
For diagetic sound, you can use broad termsto describethe
obvious. ‘Ambient noise’is fine for someone walking down thestreet,
you don’t need to say ‘carsgoing by, birdssinging, a few voices of people
talking, footsteps – unless withinthat ‘ambientnoise’there is something
specific that needsto be highlighted (thefootstepsof the person
following you, the car that isslowing down as it approachesyou causing
you to look at it).
For ‘non-diagetic sound’you need to be specific – both about exactly
what pieceof music you are using, and the extent towhich the music will

4. dominatethesoundtrack(sometimesit will be all you hear, sometimesit
will be mixed with dialogueor other diageticsound).
The best sound work makesdiagetic and non-diageticsound work
closely together, and often makes them work in synch (or interestingly
just out of synch) with editing.
If non-diagetic sound isa particularlyimportantelement of the scene
you arecreating, it would be a good idea to provide an .mp3or a .wav file
of themusic you areplanning on using.
Editing
Thinkvery carefully before you decideto do anything more complex than
a simplecut (other thanat the end of a scene, when you may well want
to fade out or cross-fade). And then thinkagain. And then, as a rule that
you need a very good reasonto break, decideto stickwith the simple
cut.
Beyond this – thinkabout building parallelediting intoyour scene and,
as mentioned above, thinkabout how the editing workswith the
sound. It’s very commonto ‘cut’ to thenew sound a half-second or so
before you ‘cut’ to the new image(a ‘J-Cut’) or to cut to the new image
before the sound cuts(an ‘L-Cut’) Both so called becauseof what they
look like on the editing programmescreen. It can also be very good
practicetocut with thebeat of the soundtrack.
BUILDING A SEQUENCE
Draw and annotatea storyboard for the RugbyN-Gagepromovideo,
paying attentiontoall of the above issues.