Storyboarding

So you've just finished your script and you're ready to shoot. What are you gonna do next? Well, fist of all, pack all your camera's back in their case again, and call off all of your cast and crew, because we're not gonna shoot yet. Because although you've written down everything in a script, you still have no idea how you want to translate that script into a visual story. Because in the end, it's not the words in the script, or the dialogue that's so important about a movie, it's the visuals that make a movie a movie. Otherwise you would just turn it into a radio play with images added to it.

So let's first sit down, and talk about what storyboarding exactly is.

Storyboarding is the process of turning your script, which is written in words, into something visual.

Since you need to translate your written words into images, you'll need to think about what the camera positions are going to be. It also helps with the planning, since you'll get a better sense of how many shots you'll need to do, and you can actually help the storytelling by picking the right shot, and tell the story in a visual way, without the need of any dialogue. Because in the end, storyboarding is about how you can advance your story with camerawork. It's not just about how many shots you need for your planning, it's also about where you're going to place things in your shot, basically it comes down to composition. Think about it as making a painting. You don't want to have a borring painting. If you can create an interesting shot, people will be more likely to be interested in your movie than if you have some boring standard type of shots.
And using composition, you can actually help your storytelling allong, if you play it right. Storyboards also help to prevent you from making mistakes on set, like the dramatic axis.

In my opinion you have three types of amateur filmmakers. The first type, is the type that doesn't make our use any storyboards at all. They just finish their script, get their camera, and just shoot their script as is written on the page. Sometimes this can result in a fun packed film, but most of the times it will result in a unimaginative film, full of standard shots which sometimes don't even make sense.
The second type of filmmakers are the type that make storyboards, but have no idea why. They make storyboards because they know it's part of making a movie, but lack any sense of why they're doing it. They often draw very standard storyboards, resulting like the first type in a unimaginative film.
The third type of filmmakers are the type that both make and understand storyboarding, often resulting in strong visual shots, with original camera camerawork.

Let's get an example to see how storyboarding can help you advance your storytelling, and cut down screen time, so you'll have more screen time for more important things in your storytelling. Let's say we have a girl, she has a boyfriend and another good friend, but things aren't going so well between her and her boyfriend. She just got fired from her job and needs someone to talk to. We want in this scene to make it clear to the audience that she feels more safe and secure with the other friend than with her own boyfriend, basically she's doubting about her relationship with him. We could shoot a whole scene with a voice-over of the girl, telling us how she feels. But than again, an image can say more than a thousand words, so it's probally quicker if we can capture this visually. So let's take a different approach. Let's say we have a her sit down somewhere in a park on a bench, and she grabs out her phone. Then we see a shot of the phone, with the name of her boyfriend selected. We cut back to her face, and see doubt in her face. Then we cut back to the phone, and she picks the name of the good friend, and then presses call. Nothing more needs to be said here. It's perfectly clear to the audience that she now prefers the friend over her boyfriend with these things, without even saying a single line of dialogue.
Let's get another example. Let's say we want the same girl to find a job somewhere as a waitress. Not the most classy job, but it demonstrates her emotions very well, that she'll even take a job as a waitress in a bar to make money. We could show this in a lot of ways, with many shots covering one or multiple scenes, but you could also do this in one good shot. Let's take a crane shot, and have the crane start at the top, not too high, but just high enough to let the girl pass under the camera towards the bar. She walks into the bar, and the camera slowly moves down and closer to the window, where we have a sign hanging saying: 'Waitress Wanted'. As we move closer a man comes and takes the sign away.
Again we're not using any dialogue, plus we're only using a single shot to tell a whole story! It saves us screen time, it saves us shooting time, and we get the same message across as with a longer scene.
As you can see, thinking about how you can visually tell a story, and planning things out, by drawing them in a storyboard before you go to shoot, might not only save you shooting time and screen time, it also helps your storytelling getting across quicker to the audience, and you don't need to bore your audience with a boring scene that is necessary or your story, but is not too interesting for the audience itself. In short, it leaves more time for the interesting parts of your story.

Now, besides making things look visually more fun, storyboarding also has a function. With storyboarding you can get a better idea of how long scenes will run. You can also get a better idea of the logistics of a scene, what equipment you'll need, what kind of lenses you'll need to use and how you can shoot your scene quicker. Basically it helps to plan out your shooting quicker. It's much easier and quicker to shoot if you have a plan of attack than if you don't have anything planned, and you need to figure things out on the set. Also it's a great communication tool, since you'll be working with other people, it might be usefull if they understand what you want before you come to the set. You'll also find out what you're missing in your storytelling. You might be so focusses on set shooting one person, that you'll almost forget that other person that has no dialogue, but is still there in the scene. Reverse shots, cut aways, reaction shots, mood shots, all kinds of shots that you don't really think about, or don't think are so important for the scene, untill you start storyboarding them, and realise there's something missing.

And remember, storyboards are just to give people an idea of the composition of your shot, and the movement of characters in the scene, and the movement of the camera. It's not about the design of things for your movie itself. So it doesn't really matter if your storyboard character looks like your actor, as long as you and other people understand which character is which character. It doesn't have to be stunning art work, it could be simple figures, as long as people understand the what's happening in the scene, you're good.